Remaining present to the moment!

 This is the longest Advent season that we will experience leading up to Christmas. Already we can sense that even though it is a full four weeks the time can seem to pass by too quickly. I think part of this is an expectation of how we want Christmas to be guided by our experience over the last few years. The last few Christmases have been clouded by lockdowns, travel restrictions, and the fear associated with the spread of COVID. Some of the remnants of these fears remain as people become tentative about how far they can venture from home. We are kept on tenterhooks waiting for the next event to strike us and restrict us. Yet this is not the attentiveness spoken about in the readings for this weekend.

Rather we are called to remain awake to this moment. It calls us to be people who are guided by kairos time not chronos time. The difference is palpable. When we are guided by chronos we become beset by to-do lists and by when lists. We start to notice being pulled in multiple directions all at once. We seek to experience activism that seeks to bounce from function to function, party to party, and shop to shop. We become breathless and splintered trying to please everyone and we become distant from ourselves. There is a dulling of the senses and an experience of exhaustion that creeps up on us. 

Kairos time on the other hand seeks to allow us to be present in this moment and to this person. It seeks to befriend us in a way that does not alienate us from ourselves. We become awake to the possibilities of where God's grace is at work in our lives. Each day provides the opportunity to be awake and aware of how God is present at the heart of all things. It calls us to be focussed on who we are with and what we are doing at this moment. The more we become prayerfully aware of how we are called to match the rhythm of our own breathing the more likely we will notice people more than things. It allows us the opportunity to be guided to be present rather than rushing on. 

Will we be awake to those moments where we accompany each other along the way? As pilgrims who await the coming of Jesus at an unexpected hour and in ways that endear and befriend us with hope. We develop expectant hearts which are open to His presence.