Hurry Up and Wait

Tis the season of hurry up and wait. If there is any time in the Christian year when it is appropriate to learn the discipline of sitting with ourselves in the stillness, Advent is it. Yet every year, Advent springs upon us just as we’re gearing up for finals- and patient waiting couldn’t be further from our minds.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve seen a steady but predictable decrease in students attending midday prayer in the chapel and an equal increase in people coming on their own to de-stress through meditation or jamming on the piano. Students studying English as an Additional Language are learning the word “stress” for the first time and even the cafeteria is unusually empty over lunch.

It is strangely counter-intuitive, then, to begin December with a practice of quietness which helps us step back from the rush of exams and holiday preparations to simply wait. This doesn’t have to take a great deal of time, but I encourage you to set the coming season apart as different, as new, the hope-filled waiting that our ancestors declared it to be.

When I was a student, I found my Advent practice to be particularly refreshing amidst the busyness because it reminded me that there was more to life than my impending exams; that this too would pass and the world we long for will one day be a reality. Each night before going to sleep I would light the appropriate candles in my Advent wreath and say a simple prayer before sitting in silence before God, watching and waiting for something much more than the end of term.

My second practice during school was a wonderful little Advent meditation put out by my Lutheran chaplain friend, Sherry Coman, and her colleagues. Last year it included a short reflection, some kind of service response to the reflection happening in the world, a musical meditation, and a prayer. What it’s going to look like this year is still a surprise! I’ll post the URL here when it becomes available on December 1^st, but in the meantime check out their facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/574263379294230/.

What about you? What kinds of contemplative practices are you going to engage this Advent as you practice waiting and watching?

Calm in the Storm: Contemplative Life

     As I wandered through the streets of New York City for the first time this week, I found myself swept up into the great rituals of consumerism, mesmerized by the flashing lights, the soaring buildings, and the windows filled with beautiful things I suddenly wished to own. A rural Canadian in NYC for the first time is a bit like a child in Disney World, amazed by the sights and sounds and smells which heretofore did not exist.

     Wandering the streets through Time Square, I imagined myself in a magnificent temple, the worshippers carefully attending to every detail of décor, ritual, and celebration. Of course, there was sacrifice too, but no one was thinking about that at this moment. Everyone was rushing about in preparation for some magnificent feast day. It occurred to me that I could be walking through both a movie set and some celebration from long ago.

     My thoughts shifted as I came across something rather unexpected in the midst of the festivities. There, between high rises and neon lights, stood a magnificent old church. But while it’s style and décor was a bit out of sync with its surroundings, I wasn’t too surprised because it was just as magnificent and beautiful as the theatres on Broadway.

     What I did not expect, however, was the serene sense of stillness I would find as I entered the building, leaving the clamour of the street outside. I wandered into the nave, the cavernous room filled with pews, and was surprised at the number of people gathered there to pray. As I moved closer, however, I saw that these were not people gathered to pray but homeless men and women finding sanctuary in the worship space. They were sleeping, their tattered bags and grocery carts scattered around them in the pews and on the floor.

     In the stillness, I knelt to pray in the chancel (at the front near the altar) and suddenly suspected that the earth was standing still. The entire world was whizzing by outside, but inside I was experiencing a deep sense of peace like the calm after a storm. This is the beauty of the contemplative life: that even amidst the busyness of our 21^st-century lives we can learn to anchor our internal selves in a stillness quite apart from the rush of the world.

     Over the coming months, I propose that we have a conversation about the contemplative life and what it looks like to find that place of internal stillness. I work at fostering such a life in many ways, but the most transformative have been ancient prayer rituals passed down by my ancestors in the faith. Sometimes I run into the holy like I did in the church of St. Mary the Virgin, while other times I fail miserably, but the contemplative life is never about “arriving.” It is about opening the door to the church again and again, hopeful about what we will find there.

     If you would like to join me in this conversation about the contemplative life and finding places of stillness, I would be honoured to hear about the ways in which you’ve encountered the holy, the sacred, and the presence of life in the daily and mundane. Similarly, I hope that my own encounters will challenge you to reach deeper into the recesses of the soul to meet the one who waits there.