Second week of advent - Wednesday

We live in a society which is based on the dynamic of "give to get." We are looking for a bargain, a good deal, and when we get one we feel superior and triumphant for about 5 minutes until we start looking for the next great deal. Searching for deals is addictive.

Isn't it odd that "Black Friday" has become the societal ritual that opens the Christmas season? Black Friday isn't about beauty, peace, joy, and fellowship; it is about getting deals and the passion flares so high that people have been killed in stampedes so that stores have learned to provide special security measures to keep people from killing each other in their frenzy of materialism which marks the beginning of the Christmas season.

Advent asks us to pause, and reflect in the search for beauty, truth, and goodness especially during this season of the year because there is something far more valuable than material things that is among us if only we look inward and notice.

The true spirit of Christmas, advent reminds us, is about beauty. Beauty is to be found in enjoying the divine spark which is within each one of us. Unitarian Universalists call it the "inherent worth and dignity in every person." We miss it when we engage in the pursuits of deals which materialism demands. Forget about the search for deals and focus on the riches within. These riches are more easily seen in the innocence of a new born babe.

Question of the day

If some of your best hopes came true, what differences would they make?

Second week of advent - Tuesday

Busy, busy, busy. We all are so busy.

Talk, talk talk, we all like to argue, voice our opinions and beliefs as if they ultimately matter in the slightest.

And at Christmas we remember there is joy and peace in the world beyond all the business and talk and imaginary truths with which we sometimes passionately identify as if, after we die, they would make any difference to us then.

Be at peace and eschew the business and the talk. They only are distracting and cloud our awareness of Love in the Universe. We sing Joy To The World as we remember the divine, our natural inheritance.

 

Question of the day

What are your best hopes?

Second week of advent - Monday

We live in a culture that tells us that external things will make us happy. We are to acquire more, travel more, look for people to love us and yet after the initial novelty wears off we are tired, exhausted, enervated and think there must be something else we have missed that will make us happy because after the anticipation we are not as happy as it was promised we would be.

Those who have studied the effects of smartphones and social media tell us about a new disorder which is making us more depressed and anxious. This disorder's acronym is FOMO which stands for "fear of missing out." There is a fear that there could be something more, something else which will do the trick giving us the peace and joy we deeply desire.

The true spirit of Christmas, remembering the divine presence incarnated in the world, points us in directly the opposite direction as society. The Christmas spirit is to be found within not without. Christmas is a time of peace, reflection, and tuning into a transcendent frequency which hums within us all year around but which we are usually too distracted and stressed to notice. Christmas which comes at the height of the darkness of winter is a time of rest and reflection.

A blessed Christmas season requires time and leisure for rest and recharging our batteries. We can't give what we don't have, we can't share what we are lacking ourselves.

Advent is a time to rest, to reflect, to look within to the divine presence which indwells all year long and which we hardly take the time to notice. Advent is about noticing.

What do you think of the idea that happiness is not so much getting what you want as giving what you have to share?

Question of the day

What are the factors that contribute to the U.S. being a society where more people with serious psychiatric illnesses are in prisons than in psychiatric facilities? What kind of a society have we created? What are our deeper held values? What matters most to Americans?

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