By Sister Carole Shinnick, SSND
I have a large window facing east in the room where I pray each morning.
In the summer, the sun clambers over the porch railing, flooding the room with glorious light. Summer’s dawn in my living room is sudden, breath-taking, explosive. I try to stay still and quiet, to soak up the light, to bless me, to guide me until the next morning when I will wait for another avalanche of grace to wash over me again.
Since mid-summer, I have watched the sun inch further southward on the horizon.
Now it is November. Dawn is later and less flamboyant, but no less faithful than summer.
In Advent, I will be drawn to the midnight-blue darkness before dawn, just as I had been to the floods of light in the summer. Both are blessings. Both are gifts. Both are healing.
I shall sit in the darkness, letting it roll over me as I did the light.
I will wait quietly in the company of terrified mothers of Gaza, maimed children in Lebanon, exhausted soldiers in Ukraine.
I have nothing to offer them other than some company in the dark, and a tiny hope that light will come again.
Each season offers its own unique sacrament of transformation to us and our world.
Advent is a hushed season when the thinnest thread of light stretches taut on the eastern horizon.
It is a lone cello playing in the night.
It is miraculous possibilities of lions cradling lambs, of hearts whispering to frightened neighbors we have yet to meet, “Comfort, comfort, my friends.”
Stay. Pause. Wait.
