Advent begins. And together we wait.
Which sounds a bit tedious and pious, and anyways, it doesn’t always feel like waiting, does it? It can feel like the mad dash through an overly-full season ending with the too much of everything experience of Christmas.
But, in church, we try to slow it down a bit. Make Christmas something we can wait for. It makes sense to wait for a birthing story. Usually, that’s how these stories are lived.
Yesterday was Stir Up Sunday. Also known around Presbyterian circles as goodness-is-Advent-really-next-week-Sunday. But for our Anglican neighbours, it’s about pudding.
More or less.
I expected to open the typical virgin birth kettle of worms, but no one mention it. So I pushed a little bit, wondering aloud if maybe the non-parallel nativity accounts were at all feather-ruffling. But the group was nonchalant. No specific Yuletide troubles to be reported.