ADVENT WORD-A-DAY

November 30 – December 25, 2008

Welcome to The Advent Couple’s Journey! Advent is a four-week period of spiritual preparation leading up to the celebration of Jesus’ birth at Christmas. This year it begins on Sunday, November 30. There are many ways to make this season of Advent meaningful. The Advent Couple’s Journey encourages people who live in a significant relationship with another person to go on an intentional Advent journey together.

The season of Advent can be a very busy time for couples. If you choose to come on this journey, then the two of you will make time each day – in the past, couples have found it helpful to set aside the same time each day – for this simple process of reflection and conversation.

Each day, I present a key word followed by a brief reflection and then a suggestion for a conversation. If you are ready to begin, then on November 30 make time for “Beginning.”

November 30

~ BEGINNING ~

In every new beginning that a couple undertakes, there is the echo of that first beginning when they said to one another, “Let’s be a couple.” Regardless of who takes the initiative, who drags their feet, who runs ahead, who has second thoughts, there is a beginning, and in that there is still an affirmation of this two-person partnership.

Being a couple means living ordinary beginnings every day, as well as celebrating the very first beginning that marked the launch of this unique and life-shaping couple journey.

Remember together the moment when you knew for sure that you were to be a couple. When, in the ordinariness of life, are you reminded of that commitment to be together “through thick or thin”?

December 1

~ SURRENDERING ~

These weeks leading up to Christmas hold huge potential for getting into control mode! Much of the time, Control is fed by the demon Anxiety and its close cousin Fear. Most people want to live this pre-Christmas season with less fear and anxiety, and with less sense of having to control outcomes, but they’re not really sure how to achieve that. After all, it’s not easy dealing with the anxiety that the gifts you are busy accumulating for Christmas might not be adequate or appreciated. It’s not easy dealing with the fear that, if you opt out of the buying frenzy of November and December, you will disappoint others and create distance in your relationships.  Organizing the events of the Christmas season and ensuring that everyone’s needs are looked after can generate massive amounts of anxiety. The fact that the world around you has been telling you, since before Halloween, how to have a “successful” Christmas just adds to the pressure to deal with the anxiety by having everything under control.

Surrender is the process of moving away from unhealthy control. It involves gradually letting go of the things that bind you and trusting that something life-affirming and deeply satisfying exists on the other side of fear and anxiety.

Being a couple means knowing that you don’t have to take on fear, anxiety, and control all by yourself.

Talk to one another about your anxieties related to the season. Share a few things that you would be willing to surrender so that you could move closer to the peacefulness promised by this season of light.

December 2

~ REMEMBERING AND RE-MEMBERING ~

By adding a hyphen to the word remembering, we get a sense of another side of its meaning. We are used to associating remembering with memory – an act of recalling events, places, and people that have left an impression.

Re-membering is about bringing together again the parts of an organism or body that have become separated and out of touch. On a journey, in particular, couples will notice the blessing of being “in sync,” or they will notice the absence of it.

Being a couple means carrying a shared memory of a story created together. It also means bringing back into connection and alignment the two persons of the couple relationship who, for any number of reasons including lack of time to remember their shared story, have allowed too much distance to come between them.

Take time to sit together and to remember shared memories that have the power to re-member you.

December 3

~ GATHERING ~

Social activities abound in this season. Gatherings are different. A gathering happens when someone chooses to call together a community of friends who like nothing better than to be in one another’s company. Gatherings can be focused around a particular activity that appeals to the group: things like watching a movie followed by a discussion, making traditional Christmas baked goods, snowshoeing, and carol singing. But in the purest sense of the word, gathering is about being together for no particular purpose other than the pleasure of companionship. Our English word companion derives from the French word for bread pain and the Latin prefix com, meaning together. Companions, therefore, are those who “break bread together.”

Being a couple means being bread-baking and bread-breaking companions for as long as possible.

What about creating or hosting together an Advent gathering of special friends at which you do nothing but share bread and wine? Talk about the best gatherings you, as a couple, have shared in your years together.

December 4

~ HOLDING ~

Letting go is humanly possible when we know what we are holding. What are you holding?

I am holding the love of my family.
I am holding a concern for friends who are not well.
I am holding the assurance of my partner’s love for me.
I am holding alternative ways of celebrating Advent and Christmas.
I am holding the garden that rests and that will welcome my hands in the spring.
I am holding the stories of my family for four generations.
I am holding my deep concern for the global environment.
I am holding my own health and mobility.
I am holding a vision of new community as I move this year.
I am holding the mystery of things.

Being a couple means holding each other in many ways.

Share with each other the lists of what you are holding. Talk about the difference it makes when you share those things with each other.

December 5

~ SAVOURING ~

Savouring anything during the month of December may take a significant act of will. It could well be a frantic 25-day journey leading to the savouring of turkey dressing and plum pudding on Christmas Day.

A practice is something that you choose to do over and over because it is good for you. What if you were to make savouring a practice for this Advent Journey? Sometime during each day, you would savour something: a view, a colour, the movement of an animal, the feel of another’s hand, a glass of water, fresh ground coffee beans, your lover’s eyes, the difference you make. You would stop, take it in, and notice the deep goodness of it.

Being a couple means sharing the familiar routine of life as well as savouring the spice of it all.

Check in with each other at the end of the day and share one thing that you truly savoured this day.

December 6

~ OBEYING ~

Obeying may be a surprising word for this couple’s journey because it has, in the last few decades, not seemed to be the right word to describe what we value in a couple relationship. The traditional marriage ceremony has seen many creative alternatives to having one person promise to obey the other. But it’s still a good word and one that can be reclaimed by couples. “Obey” originates from two Latin words, one meaning “toward,” and the other “hear.” Literally speaking, to obey is to turn and move toward what you hear. In joining together as a couple, two people choose to turn toward one another and to act out of what they hear in their own hearts and in the voices around them that they trust. Read Matthew 1:18–25 and Luke 1:26–38 and note all the ways that Mary and Joseph “obeyed.” They obeyed voices in their dreams, the compassion of their own hearts, the presence of God in their lives, and the practices of their community.

Being a couple means turning toward one another and hearing the other, with or without words.

What are the particular ways that you truly hear one another?

December 7

~ LOVING ~

In Advent we sing, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, a word which means ‘God with us’. We look ahead to the birth of a child whose coming tells us, year after year, that God is here with us, not in some remote corner of the universe to which we hope to go when we die. God’s presence is most clearly known in a creation that is infused with love. When we take into ourselves that quality and act out of love, then we come closest to knowing God’s intention for God’s creation.

Being a couple means providing an enriched environment in which God’s love can flourish and be known by others.

What are all the meanings that the word ‘loving’ has in your life together?

December 8

~ SERVING~

In most communities, there are people who are desperate for even the most basic needs: shelter, food, clothing, and companionship. These needs are accentuated at this time of year, when many of us are able to spend and acquire, and many of us are not. Communities of spirit and faith reach out and serve not because of their abundance, but because they carry a vision of justice and mercy, such as Mary sang about.

God’s blessings flow out to us in wave upon wave —
we can only stand in awe at receiving such holy goodness.
God’s power has gone throughout the Earth:
Evil ones have lost their thrones;
the lowly have been lifted up.
the starving poor have sat down to a banquet;
the uncaring rich have been left out in the cold.

Being a couple means sharing a story that includes times of abundance and times of need. Being a couple means being a partnership called to respond to the cries of others and to the woundedness of God’s creation.

What new resolutions to serve will come from your Advent journey this year?

December 9

~ PLAYING ~

Lighten up!
Come out and play!
Don’t take it all so seriously!
Let’s have some fun!
Laughter is the best medicine!
Put on your dancing shoes!
Tune up the fiddle!

Wherever two or more gather together, sooner or later it will be time to play. Even on the most arduous of journeys, the human spirit shows its resilience in playfulness.

Being a couple means breaking out into spontaneous expressions of unsolicited fun.

Can you come out to play?

December 10

~ CHANGING ~

What amazing organisms we are! Billions of living cells in our bodies die every day, and our bodies generate new ones, every day. What an incredibly evolving universe it is that holds and sustains us. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, and yet we often  behave as if that weren’t the case! There are at least three things we can do with the future: avoid it, adapt to it, or shape it. The attitude that takes the most energy and costs the most heartache in the long run is the first: avoidance of the future and denial that change is a constant.

Being a couple means accompanying each other in this process of human metamorphosis and, occasionally, holding up a mirror to the other so that they can observe the changes.

Talk together about how you are being changed in this season of Advent. Talk together about how transformed you both are, since the first time you met. Talk together about the changing nature of love.

December 11

~ THANKSGIVING ~

A friend said that nothing transformed her life so much as the practice of beginning each day by naming five things for which she was truly grateful. The practice coloured each day with gratitude instead of with other familiar attitudes, such as regret, cynicism, and anxiety. Over time, the practice of gratitude became a habit and she just naturally began to see things through the eyes of thanksgiving.

Being a couple means placing your partner at the top of your gratitude list, over and over again.

Take time to express gratitude to each other, for the particular gifts and qualities you have brought into each other’s lives.

December 12

~ WITNESSING ~

In the drama of Jesus’ coming into the world, Mary is the dominant figure. Joseph is always present, but more as an active witness than as a key player. We often use the word witness in a legalistic way, to refer to a person who observed what was done and must now bear witness in some kind of judicial proceeding. Joseph’s witnessing of Mary brings a softer definition to the word, as a person who is present to another in such a way that the essence of who they are is deeply affirmed.

Being a couple means living with the certainty that there is at least one person in the world who bears witness to the sacredness of your life, even in the times when it is hard for you to feel the wonder of it yourself.

When have you been aware of your partner as an affirming witness in your life?

December 13

~ ACKNOWLEDGING~

Is there anything so powerful as the act of acknowledging another person? We know at a very deep level the difference between being acknowledged and being ignored. When human beings are not acknowledged, they die, no matter how much sunshine and nourishment they have. When human beings live in a relationship of mutual care and loving support, they thrive, even in the face of arduous journeys and physical threat. Can we know, like Mary and Joseph, God’s acknowledgement of us?

Being a couple means knowing God’s acknowledgement of us through the loving attentiveness of another human being.

What are your partner’s simple acts of acknowledgement that sustain you each day?

December 14

~ LISTENING ~

At the heart of the journey to peace is deep listening.
The kind of listening that is more than hearing words.
The kind of listening that is connected to heart more than head.
The kind of listening that hears beyond the interference of one’s own biases and prejudices.
The kind of listening born of a belief that God expresses love through each one of us.
The kind of listening we would accord to Mary and Joseph, frightened refugees on an ancient and rocky Palestinian road.

Being a couple means stepping aside from the familiar habits of living in order to find time and grace to develop this practice of deep listening.

Just before you go to sleep and you can still feel the presence of your partner beside you, what do you hear in your heart?

December 15

~ RELEASING ~

Being on a journey leads us to think about packing as well as its opposite, releasing. Have you ever been on a journey in the course of which you kept lightening your load by letting go of “stuff” you didn’t need? The first step to travelling light is releasing. Beyond the useless physical stuff stored away in closets and basements are burdens of emotion and spirit.

Being a couple means knowing that it’s possible to accumulate a lot of useless stuff in the garage of the heart. Being a couple means having a shared practice of release.

Go together to the end of a dock or to the edge of a cliff or to some other place and let go of something you don’t want or need to pack around any longer.

December 16

~ TOUCHING ~

Artists over the Christian centuries have often portrayed Mary and Joseph as travelers and refugees making their way on a lonely road compelled by forces beyond themselves. In many of those images there is a physical contact between the two: expressions of support, assurance, compassion, respect, fearfulness, tenderness, gratitude. Those artists knew, as we do, that touch is a language beyond words. Touch is a kind of sustenance without which a body will starve. Touch is a meeting place of risk and vulnerability. Touch is sacred.

Being a couple means creating together a vocabulary of touch.

Notice how many ways touch is part of your daily relating to one another.

December 17

~ LAUGHING ~

This kind of laughing is that mirthful abandonment that is at the very end of the continuum that begins with smiling. It’s out there with ‘uncontrollable’. We don’t need medical experts to tell us how healthy laughter is for our bodies; we just know how much better we feel after we have immersed ourselves in the healing waters of laughter. In a season when we live in the light of the candle of joy would you be willing to take on the spiritual practice of laughter?

Being a couple means sharing the intimacy and vulnerability of laughter even at times when it seems like the most inappropriate of human expressions.

Need a good laugh? How can you offer that to one another?

December 18

~ HEALING ~

To be healthy is to be whole; in fact, our word health comes from the Old English word hal meaning whole. Healing is always about being made whole again.

Being a couple means knowing when you, as a couple, are less than whole, when there is something in the relationship that needs restoration to health. Being a couple means developing some fine detectors for that state of “un-health,” and some practices for going on the journey back to wholeness.

What practices have you created over your years together that enable you to heal, to return to the wholeness of being a couple?

December 19

~ IMAGINING ~

When we imagine, we create in our minds, in our words, and sometimes in real images, something that does not yet exist, but that might exist. What a place imagination has in this season!

• Imagining the pleasure of a friend who receives a greeting card you have chosen with special care.
• Imagining family and friends gathered at home or away to celebrate with familiar rituals and traditions.
• Imagining people going about the commonplace and the extraordinary business of their lives always ready for a miracle.
• Imagining a couple making their way on a dangerous road, fearful in spite of holy assurances in dreams.
• Imagining all the ways that God might surprise us with the assurance of the holy in our lives and in the creation that sustains us.

Being a couple means going together to the world of possibility as well as to the world of reality. Being a couple means having a shared vocabulary of the imagination in things like stories, music, film, and images.

What places of the imagination do you like to visit together in this season?

December 20

~ RECEIVING ~

We frequently speak of Advent and Christmas as seasons of giving. We love to give, to see the pleasure we can bring to another through a well-chosen and deeply appreciated gift. Although attention is so often focused on the giving, have you noticed the quality of people in their receiving of gifts? No act of giving can touch the grace of a gift well-received. Imagine how Mary might receive the baby Jesus from Joseph after he has wiped him and wrapped him in cloths.

Being a couple means receiving, as sacred, all the gifts that person brings to your life each day you are together.

Talk together about what you appreciate in the way your partner receives the gifts that you offer each day.

December 21

~ CELEBRATING ~

On this day when we light the Advent candle of Joy, we are practising a ritual of the Advent season that has taken place in Christian communities for many years. Rituals of celebration are passed down generation to generation, evolving as they are taught from memory, and as they are revised to fit particular situations. Rituals of celebration are also created out of significant events in family life.

Being a couple means bringing together elements of celebration from each person’s family of origin. It also means creating new celebrations out of the unfolding story of your life together.

What rituals of celebration still carry meaning for you? Which ones are you ready to let go of? What needs a celebration of its own?

December 22

~ WALKING ~

Pilgrims have nearly always been walkers: walking to Canterbury, walking to Jerusalem, walking to Lourdes, walking across India, walking across northern Spain on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. Yes, the Camino is the most popular pilgrim path in the world today, with thousands from around the world joining the tradition of holy pilgrims.

Oppressed peoples have often been walkers: walking out of Iraq, walking out of Burma, walking out of Sierra Leone, walking out of Palestine, walking out of Chile. Mary and Joseph weren’t pilgrims; they were people oppressed by military occupation, and they were refugees. They fled, like millions today, for their lives and for their children.

Being a couple means walking together sometimes as pilgrims and sometimes as refugees. But always together.

Recall the journeys you have taken together. When have you felt like pilgrims going toward a holy site? Where are there refugees in the world today with whom you could walk the walk of accompaniment and support? How would you, as a couple, do that?

December 23

~ BLESSING ~

We know so well how the Advent journey leads us to a place of birth, but not a familiar and convenient one. Was there a midwife in Bethlehem to attend Mary? Did Mary go away by herself, as women do in many parts of the world, to a solitary labour? Did Joseph assist her in bringing Jesus into the world, bloodying his carpenter hands, seeing the miracle of birth, holding the blessing of a new human life, blessing their child? The word bless comes from the Old English word for blood, because a blessing was originally a consecration with blood.

Being a couple means having a shared history of blood and blessing.
Being a couple means knowing one another’s hands bloodied and blessed.

Notice as you go through this day how your life is not only enriched by the other, but also blessed.

December 24

~ WATCHING ~

While shepherds…

watched their flocks by night
watched a star shining more brightly than they could ever recall
watched for danger in the dark
watched the little town changing
watched people risking comfort in favour of happiness
watched a partner’s face mature with the years
watched children grow and become independent
watched a growing practice of faith…

Being a couple means watching like shepherds on a hillside tending sheep, alert to problems, noticing the change of weather, filling the time with storytelling and an occasional song.

What special ‘watching’ times do you recall spending with one another.

December 25

~ ARRIVING ~

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot: Little Gidding

Did we know where we were going when we set out on this journey? Did we know who we were when we set out? We thought that we were just going to follow a star and see a baby and his mother and father. But on this journey of exploration we have come to the end and discovered that it was not what we anticipated. We have seen so much that we don’t even recognize the starting point any more. We could begin all over again and have a completely different journey even if we followed the same path. That’s for next Advent…

Being a couple means going on even though you are never the same people you were when you began this journey together.

As you kneel together in the presence of the baby say “Amen” for who you have been together, “Thanks” for who you are, and “Yes” for who you are becoming.