Advent Day 8
Thoughts are running off in a different direction this 2nd Sunday in Advent - but as mylodon commented earlier just 'going with the flow'.It is, as some other LT friends have been commenting lately certainly unseasonable weather here in parts of Britain and certainly in the west of England and I find the view from the window quite beautiful but disconcerting because there is blazing sunlight on a marina which is reflecting back the light and you could imagine easily that it was high summer - it it were not for the fact that in between the window and the water there is line of trees in skeleton winter shapes..
Its that feeling of thinking you know where you are and what you are experiencing and yet something not being quite right -
or to return to the sailing metaphor that we began with: to believe that you are on one coastal stretch when you are in fact on quite another. Which can be not only disconcerting but dangerous. We are wrong footed when we think we know what to say and realise we have said just the wrong thing or when someone proves to have completely misunderstood us.
Advent words and prayers often use some very old images to describe God's actions in human life - some of them well known like the flower growing from the root of the tree of Jesse and the dawn or the dayspring.Another, slightly less well known, is the as the compass to the chart. We have the charts of our experiences which we sometimes fail to update in the light of being wrong, having a need to stick to the versions of people and events we have formed
but the compass in the helmsman's hand quietly points out that we need to be going the other way.
Its that feeling of thinking you know where you are and what you are experiencing and yet something not being quite right -
or to return to the sailing metaphor that we began with: to believe that you are on one coastal stretch when you are in fact on quite another. Which can be not only disconcerting but dangerous. We are wrong footed when we think we know what to say and realise we have said just the wrong thing or when someone proves to have completely misunderstood us.
Advent words and prayers often use some very old images to describe God's actions in human life - some of them well known like the flower growing from the root of the tree of Jesse and the dawn or the dayspring.Another, slightly less well known, is the as the compass to the chart. We have the charts of our experiences which we sometimes fail to update in the light of being wrong, having a need to stick to the versions of people and events we have formed
but the compass in the helmsman's hand quietly points out that we need to be going the other way.