Advent Day 1: December 2nd
Learning How to Wait

I sit alone on my deck watching the deer. It has taken nine months for them not to run away when I'm here. I turn the pages of my journal softly, straining not to make a sound. Still, they hear me. A head looks up, watches me, then bends again to eat the corn I've scattered. We're learning to be together. They're teaching me how to wait. How to let things be.

I marvel at their beauty. The tender lines of their legs, the loud sound of their chewing. The heaving chestnut flanks. The wind gently rocks my wooden swing and I sway back and forth, trailing my foot across the deck boards. They are no longer frightened by the motion of the swing or the soft scrape of my slippers on the wood. I keep speaking to them from within. It's a conversation that goes on all day long.

Now the sun begins to set, and I watch the horizon surrender itself into lavender. I sit there until the lavender grows dim. Finally, the deer begin walking back to the nearby grove of cedar, finding the path their hooves have cut through the trees. As they disappear in a long line, I rest my head on the arm of the swing and let darkness be my cover.

I wonder if it is this way, or could be this way, when God and an individual soul approach one another, each of them moving just as tentatively, yet respectfully. Maybe they circle one another with no intention on the part of God to alter anything, only a will to bring something into being -- to awaken the hidden core of life. And what might it be for the soul if she took the time to approach slowly, aware that this solitary approach was the very thing she came to do? What if the soul approached with no demands? No fists raised against unanswered prayer. No expectations. Just walking toward something with the intention of knowing it, abandoning herself to it, as well as she could.

I think it makes a difference. I think how you walk toward something determines what you are able to see. I consider these days of Advent to be days of impending birth. What if I made a resolve to approach them as carefully as I approach the deer, alert to their power to direct me?


by Paula D'Arcy, Redbird Foundation
from the book: Daybreaks