For those keeping count, today we are as near as makes very little odds half way through Advent.  December 12th - twelve 'windows' opened on the Advent Calendar, half the daily graduations burned down on the single candle, and so on.

And of course it's one of those dates that people get excited about... 12/12/12.  At twelve minutes past twelve (or as near as I can manage) I will be meeting up with folk from our Coffee Club for our annual Christmas meal.  The official meet time is 12:15 but some of us kind of fancied 12:12...

What is it about this kind of calendar coincidence that captures our attention?  I recall the so-called auspicious date of 8/8/88 on which Princess Beatrice was born.  I recall the wibbly feeling around the end of the twentieth century and the so-called millennium bug... was had to test all our software to make sure it would not keel over at or after 9/9/99 (for those old enough to remember things like FORTRAN, 99 and 999 were popular line numbers for coding complex routines;) and then of course the 00:00 01/01/00 and would all the planes fall out of the sky or some other preventable catastrophe...

Some people are saying this is the last such date we will ever see (on the grounds that by 1st January 2101 we'll all be dead) others are saying the next one is next week as we reach 20/12/2012.

Well, whatever we may think, and however amusing or intriguing it all is (I recall signing off about fifty documents on 9/9/99) basically it is just another day, and the numbers an almost arbitrary system for recording things we judge significant.

There is nothing new in observing that the first Advent went unmarked, that even for the first four hundred years or so Advent did not exist.  Perhaps it is good to be reminded of that today, half way to Bethlehem. To recall that for all our systems and superstitions, we cannot predict or restrict God's potential to burst into our experiences afresh.

Advent is helpful, otherwise why would I be writing all this stuff, but we need to be careful lest it becomes either one more box-ticking exercise or inappropriately overlaid with folk-religion.

Timeless God

Beyond counting or containing

Who breathed order into disorder

And gave form to creation

Help us both to delight in the patterns and rhythms of the natural world

And to recognised our propensity to make more of them than they really are

As we journey onwards

In the ordinary everyday stuff of life

Alert us to hints of the extraordinary

That will surprise and delight us afresh

Amen.

After yesterday's frenetic activity, today has been much more gentle in pace - maybe my prayer was answered and I did, to an extent, 'cease' (and yes, Jane, be reminded that I am not God!).  A lovely time with my house guests, who treated me to dinner out last night, and who have now continued further north to see other of their friends who live in Scotland.

An expensive day - £58 for stamps to send the cards that have too far to travel for me to hand deliver them, £18 to send three parcels, and quite a bit on organising delivery of other gifts via internet sites.  But that's more of less it done now.  The commercial, expensive (very) can be ticked off, and I can centre more fully on the 'reason for the season'

A beautiful day - clear blue sky and crisp frost on grass and trees.  Winter can be such a gift, if we have the will to indulge ourselves and enjoy it, whether it is delighting in the cold air or snuggling in the warmth of home.

Thank you God for this day:

For the clear blue sky and sparkling white frost

For the taste of apricot jam on warm croissants

For shared conversations and the making of memories

For the ability to pay for stamps to send greetings to farway places

For colourful wrapping paper and sturdy carboard boxes

For spaces and places to enjoy your good creation

Thank you God,

That whilst we are preoccupied

With packing and posting

And buying and writing

And endless other preparations,

You simply carry on

Creating

Redeeming

Sustaining

And declaring your work

To be good

Amen.

Today has been bitty - lots of odds and ends to do, but nothing very concrete.  Now it's late afternoon, time is not on my side and I feel I ought to say something...

Isn't this the trap we all fall into now and then, the 'need to say something' or to 'do something', that our self-imposed expectations control us, rather than us them.  Somehow creating Christmas swamps what Christmas creates...   Into this self-imposed overload, God says simply this: "cease!"

Busy, busy believers, trying to create Christmas: cease!

Overstretched, overwhelmed carers: cease!

Overexcited, overindulged receivers: cease!

Be still

I AM

God

Cease

You Are

Mine

I

for

You

I

in

You

I

with

You

~

Emmanuel: God with Us

Amen.

OK so today I did some protoypes for craft activities for church...

Two jam-jar lanterns:

Two tree decorations/sun catchers (plastic things that came with the glass paint)

It does seem a little odd not to be leading worship today.. I usually try to get a free weekend just before Advent so that I am fresh and ready for the hurly-burly run up to Christmas.  This year it just didn't work out that way - I had the Sunday off but was needing to take at least one a month  to get my quota in!!

Advent 2 carries with it the themes of The Prophets and, in some older schemes, Bible Sunday.  A lot of people who read this stuff will remember that for me it is also "Calling Sunday"... for it was on the second Sunday of Advent 1997 that I heard very clearly God's call, in the night, to ordained ministry and had the weirdest most disturbed Christmas ever as I wrestled with what to do about it.  Golly, that's a long time ago now, yet it is still important, the sign-post to which I return when the going gets tough, my clay feet crumble to dust, and my spirituality is as parched as Sahara sand.  Fifteen years (plus a few days) since that 'epiphany' (in its proper sense not its contemporary one); fifteen years of working out what it all means day by day, day-to-day.

I suppose the prophets of ancient times would have understood some of this - the sense of "here I am, I can do no other." The sense of "who? me!"  The reality of "me? oh dear..."

I could not have begun to imagine, fifteen years ago, where the path would lead.  Could not have coped if I had known, I'm sure.  Prophets aren't sooth-sayers, aren't necessarily mystics who see visions, aren't always those who denounce the status quo... they are people who are alert to the hints and glimspes of what God is saying in and through the ordinary stuff of life.

To be clear, I am not styling myself as a prophet or even as having prophetic gifts (and certianly neither as understood in some more conservative Christian circles) but it must have some significance that the liturgical anniversary of my call to ordained ministry, and indeed my ordination some six years later, fell on the second weekend of Advent.

God of Jeremiah, Micah, Amos, John

(and men both minor and major)

God of Deborah, Miriam, Huldah, Anna

(and the daughters of Philip)

God of wise ones, strange ones

God of scary ones, gentle ones

God of those who gave themselves

To watching and waiting

To seeing and hearing

To weeping and raging

To enacting and expounding

God of those who live for you

Because they could do no other

Show me - show us -

How to see and hear

To listen and discover

Your words, your signs, your decrees

Spoken through each other

This day

Amen