FOLLOWING JESUS

This "Follow me" thought was part of my morning breakfast reading. I hope to be following this Advent Calender through all of Advent. I am hoping that the coming days give me not quite so difficult propositions. This is HARD. Really hard!

How will I answer the call? I am not liking it that I am questioning that I am not already doing it. And that gives me reason to question whether I am doing it good enough. And just what is good enough, anyway? So I am going to give myself credit for thinking I am answering the call -- present tense. That at least the journey is in progress. That I am aware of what I do and how and even why.

ADVENT 1 2009

Don't know how it got to be Advent already. Seems like it was just Easter. My father-in-law said, too many times more than once, 'It's tough to get old.' Well, at seventy two I don't feel like I'm old yet. Time sure is doing funny things though. I am becoming a believer in the time warp. You know, the theory that time isn't' really linear, that it evolves in and through and back and beyond and forward and back again -- and all at the same time. That's why it seems as though it were just Easter and, walla, here it is Advent.

Our priest, revLois, gifted us an Advent Calender. Each day is a little cartoonish type drawing with a variety of inspirational thoughts and ideas. It is perfect for the kid in me to want to color. So I am thinking gel pens and highlighters, maybe some color pencils. Fun stuff. And THEN I had the idea of posting it up on the "Purple Crayon" project board at church and .... and .... and... what? That took a bit of thinking. I finally decided to cut the days separate from the frame of the calendar and just post the frame, adding in the days as I got into church to paste them up. AND then, I thought maybe other people would do their own days and paste them up. Maybe not, but wouldn't that be fun?

This is how it looks on this first day of Advent. The text is a prayer, "Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light ..." I really liked the thought of putting on an armor of light. Rather like a protection against all the things that trouble me. All the nonsense of the world. All the frivolous stuff that drives me crazy. Also the darkness of allowing time time to dither me and throw me into a panic. An armor of light to carry me more wholly into the world. Hmmmm, maybe I can even make that more 'holy.' I like that thought even more.

And so I begin this Advent with a 'lightened' spirit.

Follow the journey with me if you wish......

THE TICKING OF TIME

I have a small bedside travel alarm that ever so softly goes tick, tick, tick, tick. Each tick soft and distinct and separated by a slight pause. On the far side of the room there hangs an eight day coo coo clock. It cannot go a whole eight days because the ceiling is not high enough for the weights to be able to drop eight days worth. But that's okay, it goes for five days before I need to pull up the weights. This clock generally goes TOCK, TICK. I know this sounds strange and I have concentrated on hearing TICK, TOCK but it just isn't. It is a very definite TOCK, TICK.

In the wee smalls of this morning, however, when I awakened to a quiet, restful peace, and lay awake listening for the hour to strike, there was a different rhythm. Now, my sister has a coo coo that is only a twelve hour coo coo. The tick of this coo coo sounds to me as a frantic ticktickticktickticktick with no pauses in between at all. The grandfather clock at my sisters keeps time with a rich and regal TICK pause TOCK pause TICK pause TOCK etc. This aside is to illustrate that I am well aware of a lot of different ticking sounds and rhythms.

So in this morning's wee smalls as I listened, I heard -- TICKity, TOCK, TICKity, TOCK, TICKity, TOCK. Very strange. I listened for quite a while and it did not change. Four o'clock came and went as did the half hour, and then five. I decided that I had been in bed for long enough and just got up, showered, had oatmeal and coffee and am on with my day.

Any why does all this ticking seem important to me today? Could be because it is my seventy second birthday and I am all too aware of the ticking of time. Which, by the way, seems to be passing me by faster and faster all the time.

AND -- Advent begins tomorrow. Didn't we just do that? Obviously not. And so .... on into Advent ...