“The more present we are to the now, the more grateful we are to what is, the more we tap into joy.” -Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama

Sometimes it’s in the most sacred seasons that we feel most lost.
Days strung together in the holy weeks of Advent,
A sacred pull to abide.
And yet the weight and wonder,
Leaves us to wonder,
How do we fully enter in?
How do we close the rift between the hurried blurried thoughts and hours,
Anchoring long enough to absorb the stillness of hushed lights dancing over holy love held in the nativity.

How do we keep from running over the wonder,
Or running past the present,
To hold the holy,
To not miss the moments.

How do we posture our hearts so that the miracle of the Messiah has space to permeate and change us,
To not just silently slip by.

How do we abide when the to-do list feels endless,
When the pulse of stress and gatherings and gifts and bustle,
Leaves us more worn out and wired than peaceful and present.

How do we put the mind on lockdown and the situations on silent,
To make space.

To make space.

To make space.

How do we make space?

These days we wait for all year,
They spiral by like loose leaves in wild wind.
How do we hold the holy,
Not just in the three minute Advent devotional,
But in a daily posture of knee bowed, eyes open, heart malleable,
In the messy mundane,
And in the miracle moments.

I’ve been wondering how,
To stay awake.
Sometimes feeling more wired, waiting, and worn out.

We all are.
In some way.
These beautiful blurry human experiences.
Lavished with blessings,
Beckoned by beauty,
And sometimes still feeling a little lost.
In our heart.
Our mind.
Our body.
Wearied by the sting of situations that you can’t control.
Wandering through time with hindered heart and tangling thoughts.

How do we make space?

There’s no button to trigger silence.
To stop sadness.
To contain all that is sacred.

But maybe it’s not in the shutting off of all noise,
Or the chipping away of tasks to make space.
Maybe it’s the exhale that makes more room for the inhale.

If we can’t turn off to more fully tune in,
Maybe we can exhale deeper,
In lungs, in life, in love, in light, in looming hours.
Because the exhale makes room for the inhale.
The next breath.
The next life-giving oxygen.
The next blessing.
The next inch of opening,
That keeps us awake, malleable, willing, and transformed.

The exhale.
Not confined to the emptying of the lungs,
But permeating the mind and spirit and moments.

Making room in body, in heart, in soul.
That space that somehow survives off of short stunted breaths and frantic flurried rhythms,
Now given permission to expand.

To make space.

If the chaos comes, the body beckons, the heart shifts, the situations stay,
Then maybe it’s more about expansion,
Creating space by exhaling as a whisper of surrender and faith.

Exhaling before things change.
So that things can change.
Because change doesn’t often precede the exhale.

So maybe we don’t have to be better,
Or become a vessel free of clutter,
Because Advent comes to find us.
To fill us.
We just make room.

Maybe our ability to abide,
Isn’t dependent on escaping inevitable noise and pain and falling short.
Maybe it’s not in choosing the right devotional, the forced silence, the picture-perfect peace.
Maybe those things bridge us into a deeper ability to engage,
But maybe we can start by just expanding our moments.

By exhaling.
Not as a release of the lungs,
But as a broader vapor that melts the tension of moments and mind.

We exhale.
By acceptance of the mountains we can’t move,
By awareness of light woven relentlessly through mountain and valley,
By a posture of steadfast gratitude.

Here we find space.
We make room.
One moment at a time,
Of acceptance, awareness, and gratitude.

This.
This is our exhale.
Expanding us.
Into wider vessels,
For the Holy to permeate.

Acceptance.
Awareness.
Gratitude.
A salve for fear, anxiety and sadness.
For heavy hearts, for weary bodies, for chaos and flurry, for mundane moments.

So this Advent,
When you and I find in our human hearts an ache without words,
When we feel lost despite arrival,
Lonely despite being surrounded,
When we long for our loved ones,
When we feel suffocated by lists, by pain, by pressures,
When we feel guilt for not knowing how to truly abide,
When we search for the perfect tradition or book or activity for the season,
When we wonder at the future or feel the scars of the past,
When we're enamored by the abundant blessings but no stranger to brokenness-

May we humbly abide in the present,
With acceptance of each bruised path to becoming,
With awareness of the light that will always outrun the darkness,
With gratitude that awakens moments into miracles.
For this is our exhale.
This is how we create space.
This is how we expand the soul to make room for the joy of the Arrival.

For the King has come beloved.
A light that shines in the darkness,
A hope for all mankind.

Peace to you dear friend,
-Christina