First week in Advent: Anticipating

This year our theme for Advent is A Journey through wonder towards Wisdom.  Inspired by the Socrates quote ‘wisdom begins in wonder’, we have taken four aspects of wonder and made them the theme for each of the weeks in Advent: Anticipating, Beholding, Nurturing and Responding.  So this week was anticipating.

We used the four small and one large candle that we most typically use, and added four gold candles, to light one each week in Advent and a large white candle, to light at Christmas.

CANDLE LIGHTING LITURGY

It is almost summer, the Spring roses have finished.
Baby birds have left their nests.

Out in the country, cereal crops are being harvested.
Students are celebrating;

The year is ending
but the new one still feels a long way off

Today we begin an Advent journey.
Like medieval pilgrims seeking the well
at the World’s end,

We come seeking Sophia’s spring
and wisdom
for our lives and for our world.

As we begin this journey
there are signs to help us.

Purple flowers remind us it is the time.
Stars in the depths of the night
reassure us that we can find our way.

They stun us with their beauty and draw us into wonder.
And the stars are also in us;
from their dust, we are made.

We light the four purple flowers to remind us that there is more to come;
more light and truth and beauty to break forth into our lives and into our world. Even in endings and emptiness, there are beginnings and wonders to anticipate.

 Holy Sophia,  journey with us

(the purple flower candles are lit)

Sophia Christ is always present
in our lives, in our world.

May this first week of Advent
be a time when we allow emptiness, stillness,
in anticipation of that presence.
Sophia comes to us through wonder.

We light the first Advent candle as a reminder that Sophia Wisdom comes to us as anticipating.

(the first Advent candle is lit)

The reflection was about adopting a hermeneutic of wonder.  Painting was done by Jan especially for this week’s theme.