Here's my journal page, about Advent:
And here's the picture I used, full-size, just because I liked how it came out:
And here's the quote, of which I only had room to use a bit on the page:
"The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before…What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you begin to grasp what it was you missed, like Moses in the cleft of the rock, watching God's [back] fade in the distance. So stay. Sit. Linger. Tarry. Ponder. Wait. Behold. Wonder. There will be time enough for running. For rushing. For worrying. For pushing. For now, stay. Wait. Something is on the horizon." -Jan L. Richardson, Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas. (Zowie, that's expensive on Amazon!)
I really like that quote. It reminds me of this story in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, by Connie Willis (which I recommend all the time to anyone who will listen) called "Epiphany," which is about Jesus' second coming and unlike anything I've ever read on the topic before. It's hard to describe, but it has the same shadowy, dark, expectant feeling as the quote.
One of the things I like about this time of year is the early dark and the lights shining through it. The dark seems to fit with that mood of waiting, wondering, expecting.
It's been a quiet week here (in Lake Wobegon...no, no, that's not right...)--I've been turning in early nights, with a book, and nursing a sore throat and headache that seem to come and go and not develop into anything. Also making out Christmas cards, wrapping presents, etc. Todd had jury duty on Monday and a very distasteful incest/rape case (as he said, "Why couldn't I get a nice, easy cocaine possession?") and other than that, he's been waiting for the chance to go night fishing when the tides and winds are right. He went last night and came home with a few more big striped bass, one of which we'll be having for dinner tonight, yum.
And it's coooold! (Yay!) That's it from here.
