Dear Saints in Santa Fe, and other far-off places:

Greetings in the name and spirit of Jesus Christ!

When has the Church ever been out in front?

Right now, actually.  Each year Christianity gets a head start on the new year with Advent, our New Year, beginning at midnight this morning, exactly one month before the world catches up with its own.

So what shall we do with this month grace period?  Work harder, comes to mind.  Get better at being church?  Nice. Do more?  Surely.  Go more places?  Why not?  But honestly, these words don’t feel right and sound exhausting the more I repeat them.  Such a pace may be what the culture does, but no, not us, not right now.

Instead, Advent says this:  Take some time off.  Sing in the minor key.  Don’t rush.  Cherish Kairos time, an opportunity to be present with ourselves and with God, to prepare for something that is yet to come.  Live in liminal space, a threshold in a time of transition, between the present and the future, where we can rest a while.  No need to move through it too fast or else we’re liable to miss something.

Like God breaking into the world.  God has a way of doing this, sometimes when we’re not looking and often when we are too tired to keep our eyes open.

So, my offering to you in this Kairos time, this liminal space of Advent with Thanksgiving just past and Christmas still to come, is a breathing prayer that opens every meeting of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship’s Gun Violence Prevention Working Group.  It’s a long name, I know, but a short prayer:

(breathe in) Come, Holy Spirit
(breathe out) Hold all with compassion 

We say it six times. You are welcome to breathe more than that, of course (how many breaths might it take to hold all with compassion?).  Then I added a few more lines myself this Advent:

Come, Lord Jesus
Bring unity where there is division
Peace where there is conflict
Understanding where there is suspicion

Join me.  It’s good to breathe together.  And feel free to add your own lines.

So, let’s keep breathing.  Since we have a head start this year, I suggest we get out and teach others, right now, to breathe out compassion, unity, peace, and understanding.

It’s what the Church, at its best, has been leading and practicing for 2,000 years.

Grace and peace, and a happy new year,

Harry