Join us in our Advent Audio Retreat series where we remind ourselves that everything is a gift and that God goes on creating – if we only allow the room.
Each week we will release a workbook and digital audio file that you can listen to in the run-up to Christmas.
Advent – in its starkness – is a time to be in touch with inner emptiness and need. It is a season of longing and expectation directed towards Christ, revealed as God-with-us, Emmanuel. It reminds us that the beginning is the meeting of our longing and God’s generous giving. For we do not make ourselves: we create the space for our making. Advent reminds us that everything is gift and that God goes on creating – if we only allow the room. Tiredness, restlessness, the inability to bring about meaningful change become the open door to God if we turn that way.
This week we are thinking about how waiting is an expression of relationship: the halting of our desire to control, grab or manipulate, so as to make a respectful, humble space for the other. A good listener knows she must wait…not fill in the gaps… allow the silences that in their time give birth to words. Waiting is the art of attention. The one willing to wait with attention provides a rare place of shelter.
Prayer is a form of waiting – not our filling the space the words, but the holding of our attention towards God. An open door allows the other to come in; relationship deepens, transformation takes place.
Listen to the audio on YouTube or below and download the workbook to help you reflect on the retreat.
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