It has become something of a personal tradition to take as one my leave Sundays the final one before Advent.  Sometimes I have taken the opportunity to go on retreat, sometimes I have done some reading, sometimes I've just taken a break to relax.  This year it will involve lots of sitting on coaches as I travel to visit my mother for a couple of days.

Unusually, I have done the majority of my Christmas shopping, have ordered or bought most of my cards - and yesterday even received the first of the season!  Advent is a busy kind of waiting and, in the northern, hemisphere at a dark, damp and weary time of the year.

My first Advent sermon (yet to be pondered let alone written) has the working title 'Waiting, waiting, waiting...' and will, I hope, enable me explore some of the tensions that this season, and indeed any experience of waiting, can hold for us.

But first - a pause, a few days of deliberate blog-silence, and a few with zero internet connecting simply to be.