Posts

Showing posts from December 27, 2020

Longing

Image
I learned to value and appreciate the liturgical year when I first entered the convent.     Those early days of training focused a lot on the liturgical seasons. We steeped ourselves in the Scriptural readings of the day   and seasonal music.     It was there I identified the grace of longing.     Ahh, I thought. I am an Advent woman.     Longing and waiting have been a key faith identifier within me to this day. Whatever does that have to do with this Christmastide?  Again, in the Novitiate years, I came across a great spiritual writer:  Rainer Maria Rilke and his ‘Letter to a Young Man.’  I have leaned into this quote of his for decades now.   “. .   celebrate Christmas  in this  devout  feeling, that perhaps God  needs  this very anguish of yours in order to begin, . . .  It has not always been ‘anguish’.  Though this year there has been plenty of that in the world.  I often substitute the word ‘longing’ in there.  Each day as I set out anew, I ponder how am I longing, what am I lon