This is the time of the year when the nights are the longest. Darkness comes before dinner and greets me when rising for an early start to the new day. The dark December sky envelops each day with its own language. It is a celestial language of mystery, humming with eternity, stretching my awareness to multiverses.
I think of our new cosmological knowledge and remember I am, everything is, made of stardust. From that first flaring forth of creation, that cosmic explosion, everything sparked and continues to spark. From stardust I have come and to stardust I will return is my mantra. That truth carries so much more meaning than the dust-to-dust description I learned as a child.
Every year, the Christmas story comes in a new context and awakens alertness. Beginning with Advent. Advent is a time of wonder, even in this pandemic time, for it is annunciation time. It is a pregnant time of waiting. I think of the interpenetration of divine creativity in all that is. Astonishing! It is a unique creativity with cosmic proportions and ever-expanding mystery. Amazing how the angelic realm broke through when Gabriel spoke to Mary. Surely all Heaven and Earth waited on tiptoe for her response. She, so young, yet strong of faith and devotion, gave her consent to something she could not comprehend, and never did. Her momentous decision, and ensuing life, is really unimaginable still, millennia later.
The world was a dark place then, as it is now. There was an urgency in the world and in God’s own heart for a revolution of revelation. It is no surprise that the dark sky, the dark womb, the dark ignorance, and the dark violence call for a backdrop of dazzling starlight and cosmic change. The sky draws our attention and evokes new awakening to divine possibility.
What most moves me in the story of the annunciation* is that it is so big and so little at the same time. Our Creator, the Revealing Source of all Generative Power, is personal. The divine Originating One is intimate, in the center of every living being, closer to us than our own breathing. And, having given human beings free will, waits on our choices. Somehow Mary, without comprehension, had another kind of knowing that shaped her humble and holy consent.
Mary chose to say yes. We know Jesus was born. In mystery, the Creator created a divine human life, a form of the eternal Word through which everything that is came into being. Jesus, the light of the world. That bright illuminating Word was in the beginning and is forever a beginning. The important thing now, is seems to me, is to listen with the same strength and devotion that Mary evidenced. To awaken to deeper intimacy with the Eternal One. To be able to say yes to impossible beginnings.
–Ann Dean, Dayspring Church
Reflection Questions
- What is the dark sky saying to you this December?
- Do you have an Advent practice for awakening to the present moment?
- Do you notice anything “impossible” repeatedly showing up in your prayer or imagination?
