"Here, in the center of my chest, their constant dwelling: the persistent yearning, the insistent craving, the unbidden imagining, the desire awakening, the daydreams, the nightdreams, the reverie unfolding: the language of longing, drawing me home." Jan L. Richardson

Advent is a season of longing. We don’t use the word much…longing. In some ways it is a painful word, conjuring up feelings that are too difficult to reconcile. Carol Lee Flinders wrote a book called At the Root of This Longing about her deep desire to make peace with her longing for an authentic spiritual life. Between the pages she manages to both tell her story and create a feeling of longing….longing for the connection, the relationship, the union with the Holy, a home. It is pure genius.

In walking the mall last week I witnessed people in pursuit of what might fill their longing. It is easy to get  mixed up at this time of year. We are searching for ‘just the right gift’, the  ‘the perfect present’. Of course, retailers are quite happy to help us try to fill that desire. If we admit it to ourselves, we often also are hoping for the perfect present. We are hoping that someone knows us so well, loves us so much, wants to please and surprise us so much that they will present us with that gift which will get at the root of our longing.

Now this is not meant to be a tirade against Christmas shopping or consumerism necessarily. I love it as much as the next person. What my point is, I guess, is that Advent fills us with a knowing, a deep knowing that we are a apart of a much bigger story than our small life might suggest. We are a part of a story that goes as deep as the ocean and as high as th heavens, that has its beginning at the dawning of Creation. We are a part of a story that is about love that is unimaginable, hope that defies the odds, sacrifice that is beyond reason and life that begins anew with each sunrise, with each blessed breath.

And so at the root of our longing this season is that in the presents we buy, in the lights we light, in the sweets we bake and offer out of our love, in the songs we sing till the tears run down our face, that we will…each of us…remind one another of the holy, sacred story of which we are a part. And that in that reminding, we will find home.

So, you see,in so many ways the gifts don’t matter. It is the intention with which they are offered. As we give a gift, large or small, inexpensive or not, the real gift is offering a reminder of belonging to another person that helps them to know home, to know they are welcome in your life, that they are a part of your story.

"Thou my source and my returning, my beginning and welcome home, bless the path on which I journey; be the way that leads me on."