Advent Week 4, Day 1: Space for Love to Grow

[A seed contains all the life and loveliness of the flower, but it contains it in a little hard black pip of a thing, which even the glorious sun will not enliven unless it is buried under the earth.  There must be a period of gestation before anything can flower.

Advent is not only a time of growth but also a time of darkness and hiding and waiting…and trust.

For nine months Christ grew in His Mother’s body.  By His own will she formed Him from herself, from the simplicity of her daily life.  She had nothing to give him, but herself. He asked for nothing else.  She gave him herself.  Working, eating and sleeping, she was forming His body from hers. His flesh and blood.  From her humanity she gave Him His humanity. 

While washing, weaving, kneading, sweeping, shopping, visiting friends, sleeping, and eating she carried Him. Christ was dependent on Mary during advent: He was absolutely helpless; He could go nowhere but where she chose to take Him; He could not speak; her breathing was His breath; His heart beat in the beating of her heart.

        ~Caryll Houselander

I remember the long waiting of my own pregnancies. After the initial wonder and joyfully sharing the news with family and friends; after the persistent nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, there is a long period of waiting, with not much happening on the outside except for growing rounder, needing different clothes, and the delightful flutters of first movements.

The sense of miracle remains but the days and weeks and months especially in the last trimester seem endless. Towards the end, I am often so uncomfortable, I cannot believe I still have weeks to go! Surely the doctor must have calculated wrong. I can't possibly last another month.

But in the waiting, something holy is happening. Like Steve Garnaas-Holmes says below, In our waiting.... "We give ourselves over to the power of Mystery" and "in our waiting, the space we make for love grows."

I remember during my third pregnancy I was nine months pregnant at Christmas. On Christmas Eve, as my family sat in the dark church softly lit by flickering hand-held candles, I felt such a deep kinship with Mary. We were both surrendered to the love that was growing inside of us, taking shape, and ready to be born in us.

Song: Be Born in Me (Francesca Battestelli

https://youtu.be/5eimaffzsLk?si=t2T7gL8STaaRBa9g

lyrics:

Everything inside me cries for order

Everything inside me wants to hide

Is this shadow an angel or a warrior?

If God is pleased with me, why am I so terrified?

Someone tell me I am only dreaming

Somehow help me see with Heaven's eyes

And before my head agrees, my heart is on its knees.

Holy is He. Blessed am I.

Chorus:

Be born in me

Be born in me

Trembling heart, somehow I believe

That you chose me

I'll hold you in the beginning

You will hold me in the end

Every moment in the middle

Make my heart your Bethlehem

Be born in me

All this time we've waited for the promise

All this time You've waited for my arms

Did you wrap yourself inside the unexpected

So we might know that Love would go that far?

(Chorus)

I am not brave

I'll never be

The only thing my heart can offer

is a vacancy

I'm just a girl

Nothing more

But I am willing.

I am Yours.

(Chorus)

Waiting

Waiting is not always delay,

as for a bus that's late.

Sometimes it's gestating,

perfecting, becoming whole,

a rose unfolding,

the heart growing.

You don't really want the baby to come

before full term.

In the powerlessness of waiting,

the passionate passivity of patience,

we give ourselves over

to the power of the Mystery.

In our waiting

the space we make for love grows.

The Christ-seed has been planted in each one of us and is being formed in us.

Christ is growing in us...

During this time of Advent we must carry Him in our hearts

to wherever He wants to go...

Waking, working, eating, sleeping, being

–each breath is a breathing of Christ into the world.    

~Caryll Houselander

For Reflection:

• How have you experienced waiting this Advent?

• What would it be like to carry Christ with you in your heart... in your "waking, working, eating, sleeping, being... and trust that "each breath is a breathing Christ into the world? This final week of Advent, could you make that your intention?

Sources:

Caryll Houselander, Reed of God, Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2006, pp. 42, 45

Steve Garnaas-Holmes, Unfolding Light, unfoldinglight.net