Friday Nudge: The Cosmic Energy of Waiting - Advent 2
And a note to my friends
Friends, I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted this Advent season. In my case, it is due to being sick for so long. Since the beginning of September, I have been ill with pneumonia, then post-pneumonia pain, and now Covid. Although my self-isolation is almost up, the fatigue and lung impairment are lingering. So, as I shared with my paid subscribers yesterday, I will be taking a rest from various activities so that I can be present to my family and still able to shepherd my congregation through to Epiphany.
To that end, I will continue to share last year’s Advent reflections here in the Friday Nudge, since many of you haven’t seen them (and we are never the same when we encounter material we have seen before). In the weekly paid essay, I will be continuing to migrate old blog posts over here to Substack. I hope that you find all of this meaningful!
Thank you for your understanding and support. I hope that my decision to take some much-needed rest will encourage you to do the same. It is needed now more than ever. Advent blessings to each one of you!
Welcome! I’m Jessica, and this newsletter is about faith and climate action. You can subscribe by clicking here:
Climate Prayer Vigil Begins Next Week
Because I have been sick, I wasn’t able to begin my weekly climate prayer vigil on Parliament Hill this week. My intention is to begin next Thursday, December 14, from noon to 1:00 p.m. Meet me at the Centennial Flame! I will be praying for the Canadian federal government to stop all subsidies and other financial support for the fossil fuel industry.
Please join me, in person or virtually from your location, every Thursday, Noon - 1:00 pm EST.
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Advent Reflection
Advent 2: The Cosmic Energy of Waiting
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.
3 A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
4 Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
5 Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’
9 Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
‘Here is your God!’
10 See, the Lord God comes with might,
and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
and his recompense before him.
11 He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep. (Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11, NRSV)
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky. (Psalm 85:11, NRSV)
During Advent, we are asked to wait. We are asked to wait for new life that is being promised to us. Mary was told that new life would come forth from her, and she was asked to wait. This kind of waiting, this holy waiting, was known to God’s people. Here in the Scripture texts from Isaiah and Psalm 85, God’s people are asked to wait. They are promised that every valley will be lifted up, every mountain laid low, and that the glory of the Lord will be revealed. They are promised that faithfulness and righteousness will be in abundance!
We are promised these things, too. The words in Isaiah and Psalm 85 are spoken directly to us, and the new life promised to Mary is the new life we are waiting to come into the world.
The cosmos knows a lot about waiting, too. The emergent universe, begun in an exquisite moment of time and space 13.8 billion years ago can be perceived as an Advent, a preliminary Advent born out of a waiting that was in God, as God waited to bring existence into being so long, long ago. And since then, the cosmos has waited, again and again; for the development of galaxies, and the birth of the planets, especially Earth. Then the cosmos, and the Earth itself, waited for the birth of life to begin. And then, through evolution, the birth of new and ever more complex forms of life, and ways of life to create and procreate.
Inside all of this waiting, inside the waiting of our faith ancestors, and Mary’s waiting, and our waiting today, is an energy. It is a cosmic energy, literally the same energy that existed within the universe in all of its waiting moments, too. Remember the story in which Mary met with Elizabeth to celebrate their pregnancies, and the baby in Elizabeth’s womb danced when meeting the baby in Mary’s womb? There was an energy building inside both of them, and that energy met and recognized the other. Mary was carrying a holy energy, and it could be felt. This is the energy of stardust, of primal elements dancing and mixing together, of moving forward and out in greater and greater complexity, creativity, and love. This is a holy energy.
This is the holy energy that exists within the cosmos, within the emergent universe. Although Mary wouldn’t know the science in her day (and really, most of us aren’t aware of it now, either), the fact is that the energy that existed inside of Mary, knitting together into the body of Jesus, was this very same energy. The energy that burst forth at the moment of the Big Bang; the energy that gave rise to the Earth and later, to new and ever-evolving life; that is the same energy that Mary was told would be in her, that she could feel and celebrate. That is also the energy that is promised in the Scripture readings, above. It is the energy of stardust, of primal elements, of greater complexity and love.
The birth of Jesus into our world was and is that same cosmic energy; it is the energy of God, manifesting in new, unique, ever-evolving ways of creation and complexity, of love and diversity. We wait, during Advent, with this energy building, yet again. Yet again this Advent, we have the chance to feel, to experience that energy anew, within our own lives, within our own experiences. We, like our faith ancestors, like Mary and Elizabeth, wait, feeling the energy that burst forth 13.8 billion years ago, within our bodies, within our very cells. We wait, feeling the holy energy of stardust, of creativity, of love.
And as we wait, with and inside and as a part of the cosmos itself, we wait for that ultimate time, that time that Jesus has promised, when God’s energy will come again in the fullness of God’s reign, to a time of fullness and completion. That, too, will be a cosmic energy. A holy energy that will be stardust and creation, love and fulfilment, come from those first moments, so long, long ago.
What does the energy of waiting look or feel like for you?
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Jessica, I wish you a speedy recovery from your ailments. Yes, Advent is a special time. Nowadays, we tend to think of waiting as wasted time, but it can also be a time of reflection, of readying oneself, and of having a special joy.