11 December 2009 No Comment

Advent is Waiting.

Action.

(hmm…think I may have gone overboard on the action man/muscular Christianity thing…)

Of course I would say that: I’m a Methodist Minister- we are known as activists. ‘No time to stop, no time to pray, I’m late I’m late I’m late’.

Still struck by what I posted on the 7th (you’ll have to scroll back- you know that you want to) and the graceful remark that the Buddhist monk made along the lines of ‘There are too many Buddhists who are spiritual in their front rooms- we need to learn from Christianity that spirituality is worked out in action’.

Advent can be a place of action- not necessarily overt: ‘Look at me- look what I’m doing- I’m suffering for Jesus’, but covert, ordinary, insiduous. I’m sure that the mark of faith that will cut it now and in the future is ordinary, subversive, guerilla action. We have another word for that in the Christian tradition: it is called ’serving’. I have a load of time for practical actions that bless and are undertaken with no thought of the benefit coming back.

I tried creating a ‘living advent calendar’ during a school assembly a week or so ago. I’m going to try this Sunday to do something similar; small scale actions, ordinary actions that we can do during advent as we believe the kingdom is close (still puzzling how often ‘doing something for God’ in christendom is equated solely in terms of ‘doing something in church’).

Kathryn http://goodinparts.blogspot.com/ writes warmly of people and places and sees God alive in ordinary stuff. She writes of how she tried this with a key stage 1 group in a school (ages 4-7) and they came up with the following:-

“If we are smiley and cheerful, not whiney”

…I think they would be pretty cool advent actions for anyone: translate into City Bonuses or the crazy search among parents for the latest toy or (fill in the blanks)….

 

Part of an occasional series through what remains of Advent….