Advent, Waiting, and the Goo Phase

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What happens when you combine the “like -it-or-not”, encapsulated, broken down to “goo”, anchored in for the long haul, stuck in the process and nowhere else to go sort-of existence…. with Advent? 

Advent’s very definition means waiting.

First consider what is happening in the cocoon while we …
daily secure our cremaster,
continually weave night prayers into our breath,
constantly reorient ourselves to our world from this upside-down position? 
We enter the goo phase; a phase in the caterpillar’s process in which the imaginal cells overtake the old, ill-fitting, non-serving confines of the caterpillar’s silhouette. 

It is fascinating.

Once overtaken by the imaginal cells, the caterpillar is broken down into a jell, a goo, that becomes reconstituted into the shape of the butterfly, sharing almost no molecular similarities with the former organism that it once was, the caterpillar.

For some of us, being in the cocoon is a choice – we dive in because we want more of life.  For some of us, “life on life’s terms” gets us there without our consent, but we dare not come out too soon. Can you imagine, what if the cocoon burst open during the goo phase? Y. U. C. K.

For those of us who can relate to the broken-down state of waiting,
Advent just might be EXACTLY what we need.

What exactly are we waiting for?  What is it exactly that we need? Resolution? A happy ending? An answered prayer? Jesus riding in on the clouds, returning to set all wrong things right?

I am learning that the resolution or healing or whispered prayer is not really the hope.  It is easy to make it my hope. REALLY tempting.  But I am learning.  Learning that if I insist on the happy ending, I begin to serve it. And anything we serve, as good and holy as it might be, if it isn’t the Fountain of Living Water, it will tear us apart and dangerously drain us.

Didn’t Jesus say, the kingdom of God has ALREADY come? It is here. We don’t have to wait for things on the outside to line up with what we know on the inside, in the unseen. Jesus is in the middle of our mess, our hurt, our dirt- he is leaned in close – and He comes to us now….as a baby… bypassing not one single human emotion but dignifying and honoring them all.  We don’t have to wait for heaven.  Heaven came down to us here and now, in this present moment as you take in your next breath, so that we don’t have to wait for the outcome or our specific shape of our healing or resolution.

I think Advent looks like tuning into the frequency that takes us, transcends us, beyond the need for outcome. It is the Presence. It is the Person. It is Jesus. He is available in each moment. If we slow and pay attention.

It is curious: Advent means waiting…but we don’t have to wait.  During Advent we have the invitation to relish the completeness that began on the day of Jesus’ birth.  To fix our eyes on what is unseen instead of what is unresolved in our cocoons. To say yes to the goo phase for as long as it takes for our outsides to match the knowing we have on the inside.

I love the line in this song “If you are not done working, God I’m not done waiting” When you have a minute…let it minister to you.

Advent is an instrument. We get to decide if we play it or not. We get to decide if we dust it off after a year of focusing elsewhere.  We get the invitation to the revel at the Beauty that calls forth transformation out of all this goo.
Mark 7: This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus, the Anointed One, the Liberating King, the Son of God.
2 Isaiah the prophet told us what would happen before He came:
Watch, I will send My messenger in front of You
    to prepare Your way and make it clear and straight.[a]
3 You’ll hear him, a voice crying in the wilderness,
    “Prepare the way of the Eternal One,
    a straight way in the wandering desert, a highway for our God.”…

 7 He preached a message in the wilderness.

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