Encouragement for the Journey
Greetings fellow Traveller,
Today is our second Sunday in Advent. The candle we light during our Advent Candle Liturgy is for PEACE. The word Peace, offers many different connotations and descriptions, from the international scene to the personal.
Focusing on the personal, I am sure you have experienced a time when you felt at peace. In those moments, we respond deep within our being to what is occurring in an external environment.
Travelling through Advent, with the corresponding pressure of having to do and be in three different places at the same time. We may forget to plan moments when we ensure we are in an environment which is conducive to us experiencing peace. Without these moments we will become frazzled, anxious and in danger of breaking down physically and emotionally.
I leave you with a favourite poem of mine from Wendell Berry:
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life
and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water,
and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free
Wendell Berry
Meanwhile may peace visit you this Advent
Alf