We are a world of multi-taskers. It is a badge of honor in most circles to be able to do many things at one time…cook dinner while finishing up a work project….make phones calls while wiping the kitchen counters…running while listening to a podcast…texting with a child while walking the dog. The list goes on. Of course, much can get done while juggling these many colored balls. Most of us can come to end of the day feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

And then there are the times when you realize you have driven several blocks and don’t remember having done so. How did you get to this place, past that house you particularly enjoy, on down the road from that amazing red oak tree, the one that turns such a lovely color in autumn? Looking back on the day, it is easy to have swaths of time that seem impossible to recall. Like a person with some kind of amnesia you can realize that you simply don’t know where those moments went, how they were spent and with whom.

Recently I received an email from an online community I connect with on a semi-regular basis. The writer who hosts this group told of a monastic practice called statio. This word was new to me and I perked up at its presence. Statio is the commitment to stop one thing before beginning another. In that suspended time between acts, the practice is to pause(I liked this!) and to breath five long breaths. Once this has been done the next activity can begin. The writer said that this practice in a monastic setting even extended to moving from one place to the next, one room to another, taking time to pause at the threshold, giving honor to each moment as unique and pure gift. Since reading this I have thought much about what impact this practice might have on my life.

Given that Advent is itself a threshold time, I wondered about the ways we move so quickly from one activity, one event, to another during these times. Doing so is so counter to what the rhythm of the season is about and even what is happening within Creation. Looking out my office window right now darkness has already arrived at 4:50 p.m. I can see the snow hugging the limbs of the oak tree I consider my work companion and the lights are twinkling from the balcony highrise next door. The scene calls for a slowing down, a paying attention to a threshold of day and night, of light and dark, of work and rest. Rather than barreling through I have decided to take those five long breaths and honor this moment, one that has never been before and will never be again.

Like the threshold, like the breath, like this time of day, there is possibility in the in-between time. Taking those five long breaths as I did I felt myself sink into the moment and that place of possibility opened in ways I would have missed otherwise. I was reminded of a poem I have always loved by David White :

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused again and again
until now.
Until now.

Perhaps Advent is an ‘until now’ season. Its invitation is to pare away the distractions and the mistaken belief that we can do it all. Its invitation is to do one thing at a time and to breathe deeply in between. This practice just might bring us through the darkness and into the light of Christmas fuller and more ready to welcome the Light of the world.