Saturday, December 12, 2015

Advent 14: THIRTEEN, A LUCKY NUMBER

 

Can you feel it?  It's getting closer, each and every day.  Only 13 more days till Christmas.


This is the point at which I usually give up the struggle and succumb--succumb to the mad rush to finish all my self-imposed tasks in time for Christmas--and too frequently that necessitates severely curtailing my daily Advent spiritual practice.  Not to mention abandoning all attempts to keep up with normal housework, cooking reasonably healthy meals, and sticking with any sort of exercise regimen. 

If you're like me, usually during the first couple weeks of Advent things are fairly quiet, quite even-keeled and nicely manageable, thank you very much.  I join the people who hum along with carols in the shops, and everybody smiles at each other and exchanges pleasantries, and admires all the season's most up-to-date decorations; sales clerks are friendly and cheerful and helpful and it seems good will to all has arrived on the planet early.
 
And then, what we are pleased to call "reality" sets in.  Day 13 of our Advent journey together.  And I can feel things starting to come apart.  I had to go out shopping yesterday (of course) and there was an incredible amount of traffic. At two different locations on the Post Road in Southport and Westport there was road construction, making the already crowded roads even more constricted.  I struggled not to take this situation as a personal insult.  (Don't these road maintenance people realize some of us have very important shopping to do?!)

In every store parking lot available spaces were few and far between and hotly contested.  Inside the shops people's faces looked strained and even grim; clearly we were all on the same mission:  trying to accomplish more than could easily be done in the available time--and time was running out.

What to do?  

 

How do you stop the momentum toward hassle and anxiety and stress when you feel it start to build? 


It seems like the answer should be complicated and challenging, but it is embarrassingly simple:  if we are awake enough to realize what's happening we can change it.  We are in charge of the season, not the other way round.

That good old Advent word, "awareness," is the key.

So.  I'm going to make a list.  I'm going to check it twice.  And then I'm going to cross off all the things on it that aren't really that important. 
  
This year I would like the holiday season to became an opportunity instead of a responsibility.

An opportunity to reclaim the gifts that the season is meant to offer--the gifts that don't appear on any shopping list:  family and friends; generosity; happiness; peace of mind; spiritual growth; thoughtfulness; understanding; and wisdom.

And anything else you might be inclined to add.

Right at our fingertips is the Power to shift everything.  Even traffic.









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