The Texture of Longing

Take a moment to close your eyes, breathe deeply and settle. Notice your body. Where do you feel tension? Ease? 

Bring your attention to a point of bodily tension. Notice is there a fear or longing associated with the tight shoulders, or knotted stomach? Don’t try to change it, just acknowledge its presence, make space for what is. 

Picture wrapping that tension in compassion as your breath flows into your body see it wrap around the places of tension, of longing with tenderness.

Advent is a time of longing, the acknowledgement that not all is right with the world.  Our hearts speak forth our desire for healing, wholeness, justice in this the world’s darkest hour. Come God, break into our sadness, break into the silence, bring life, love and hope.

What is the texture of your longing? Is it an itch that can’t be assuaged, rough and insistent? Or more like a pebble in your shoe, sometimes causing pain with every step, other times shifting so it’s barely noticeable. 

Advent invites us to pause, to see a world longing for healing, groaning under the weight of sorrows, yearning for rescue. This itch, the restlessness that says all is not right which longs for change, restoration, resurrection, this is God in us: God in us resonating with Divine love yearning to bring all things to greater wholeness. Divine love is so committed to the created world, it incarnated its self living and dying to proclaim the possibility of loving community that need not harm and exploit to survive and thrive. 

What is the texture of your longing this advent? Divine love longs to meet you there.