Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent. I love this season especially in Mexico because as the weeks approach Christmas you see the church interior blossom as in a time-delayed photography. The anticipation of Christmas builds slowly until finally on Christmas morning the altar is a full-blown manger scene with everything you can imagine including chickens, ducks, geese, goats, dogs, stragglers, ragamuffins, Christmas trees, flashing lights, kings, angels and Jesus – all the ordinary everyday things along-side the extra-ordinary.

Advent is about waiting. Not the kind of waiting that makes you tired and anxious to race to nowhere, frantic to control, consume. Advent-waiting is paying attention while developing a taste for the heavenly in each little thing that makes a present of itself – the present moment, the only place to savor the fullness of life.

I like carrying this happy anticipation in me; it is like being pregnant. I don’t know what tomorrow brings but it is for my perfection, God alive and at work in me. I am be-coming as I go and what I will be I don’t know. It will be a surprise when I get there.