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