Advent, adventure, words with a common etymological root yet often poles apart.

Advent, the time when we anticipate Christmas, when we anticipate the eschaton, when we prepare to celebrate the incarnation, when we race around like headless chickens preparing to celebrate tinselmas.

Adventure, an exciting journey to new or exotic places, a chosen or unchosen diversion from the familiar, something that challenges, inspires or informs the participants.

Yet there is something that connects the two, at least where they are chosen... the moment just before it begins when, with the advance preparation done you must take the first step.

I love long distance walks, I love the planning and preparing, the anticipating and I love the experience of doing them, but there is always a moment, just a fleeting one between ending the preparation and starting the walking when a little voice says 'do you really want to do this?'

Do I really want this adventure, which will demand much of me in return for the unpredictable rewards?

Do I really want this Advent, which should demand much of me with no certainty of reward?

24 days, give or take, depending how the year falls, which to tread carefully a path that I think I know well but actually have never yet seen.  24 days to travel inwards and upwards and outwards towards a moment which only might prove meaningful.  Yet not to make the journey would preclude the possibility of finding that moment.

Advent 1, I step out on the path in search of... adventure!