Welcome to Advent week four,
Waiting on joy.
These meditations are an opportunity for us to stay connected to the Advent season all week,
Not just Sundays,
And think about Advent in the context of our everyday lives.
My name is Jess and I have engaged Advent in everything from strict adherence to a tradition that waits for the joy of the season until Christmas morning,
To not engaging Advent much at all in a way that would look different from the American holiday.
So these times are meant to take the focus off the busyness of the season and any religious duty you may feel,
But engaging the season as a time for spiritual growth and renewal.
To start,
Let's take five big breaths together.
The sense behind mindfulness practices is really quite amazing.
As we slow down and do this,
We dampen the activity in a part of our brain called the amygdala and increase the connections with the prefrontal cortex.
This connection helps us to be less reactive to stressors and to recover better from stress when we experience it.
It sharpens focus and over time it can make us more compassionate,
Have positive impact on relationships and mental health.
We are training our minds to be more attentive to life and prayer.
So let's just take one minute to feel your body breathe.
Try to be particularly mindful to feel your body as you breathe.
Be your own company for just one minute.
That was literally 60 seconds.
If your mind went to other places just now,
Where that happens throughout this time,
It's okay.
It's natural.
You're still here.
So let's move on.
We'll take one moment to identify where God has been today.
Just think about the last 24 hours in a season that is about waiting on the coming hope.
Where are you seeing the divine show up in large or small ways?
In week four,
We are focusing on waiting on joy.
Many Christian traditions use different combinations of four concepts in this season.
So if you are following Advent with faith community,
They may have a different focus than the ones we are using for these meditations.
That's okay.
You can use both and let inspiration fall where it may.
Joy is so perfectly spiritual.
Is there any greater spiritual evidence than true joy?
It can be so easy to choose a melancholy spiritual posture as if that type of sobriety is more mature.
It can be so easy to choose refined cynicism masquerading as spiritual self-righteousness.
It is so easy to exchange real spiritual joy resulting from God's gifts for an intellectualized version of faith.
More and more,
I have learned to trust as spiritual guides,
Those that have refined the art of enjoyment,
Thrill,
And gladness in their expressly religious times and everyday life.
So what keeps you from joy?
What things have kept you bound up that need to be released in order to live your true and joyful purpose before God?
So if you're able,
Extend your arms out and turn your palms up or rest your palms on your lap.
We do this as a posture of release towards the creator.
Let's take a moment to reflect on what keeps you from joy.
Imagine you wrote these things on the palm of your hands as they are turned up to God.
Take a minute in mind for reflection to in your imagination,
Write these kill joys on your hands and offer them to God.
Let's take a moment to reflect on what keeps you from joy.
God,
We give to you what bogs us down.
Christmas is coming.
It isn't a perfect holiday.
We don't have perfect lives.
So we rely on you to birth joy in us this season.
God,
We place into your hands our need for the spiritual sustenance of joy.
We live with so many reasons for despair.
So we wait on the savior who is being born that will bring joy into the world.
It is so healthy to release negativity,
But in releasing that,
What are we needing to take on?
As you close your hands,
What accompanying things can you be committed to that cultivate joy?
We exchange the ugliness that is so easy to see for the joy of this season that can be so hard to perceive.
We exchange the temptation for despair for the reality of new life that is and will spring up around us if only we are mindful to see.
The great spiritual writers in the Christian tradition frame this season as an activity of spiritual imagination and challenge.
We are asked to venture back into the space in the scriptures when they were waiting on the fulfillment of God's promise.
So we spiritually engage this season,
Identifying our own waiting.
As we count down the weeks until Christmas,
How do you want to plan outside of the traditions and routines to make this time more spiritually alive and engaging?
Amen.
Amen.
