Advent: Radically Reorienting Life. A beginning.

The priest started with a definition of conversion: A radical reorientation of our whole life... I didn't hear anything else for a while. Those words: radical reorientation of our whole life, made their imprint in my brain and send the wheels turning. Maybe that is what I need: a radical change, a turn around.
The image came to my mind, slowly taking form:  there I was at what seem the end of a road, a wrong road. What person that realizes she is walking along the wrong road doesn't turn around and start anew? Who would continue down the road that she knows is not getting her where she wants to go? Only an idiot!

The priest's voice crept into my thoughts again. He was talking about the reading from Isaiah:

A voice cries out:
In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!
Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!
Every valley shall be filled in,
every mountain and hill shall be made low;
the rugged land shall be made a plain,
the rough country, a broad valley.

Prepare the way of the lord, make the road wider, smooth the rough spots, remove the the obstacles. Advent calls us to repentance, to change,  to being again. The calendar year is drawing to a close but, the Church year has already begun. It starts with Advent's call to conversion, to radically reorient our lives. The Church in her wisdom knows that after the weeks of Ordinary Time we are ready for some change. The spiritual inroads of Lent and Easter have grown stale. Our old demons are back and our soul feels fatigued and disillusioned. We are struggling again. But the Church reminds us, reminds me:

Here is your God!
Here comes with power
the Lord GOD...

 I need a change. I want a change. And this is a good time to start. For me, this message of change and conversion issued during Advent, is often lost in the fray of Christmas shopping. I don't hear the voice of John the Baptist inviting me to repent. I don't hear the invitation to conversion. All I hear is the voices in my brain reminding me that the house needs to be decorated, that the cookies need to be baked and the presents bought. A thousand and one voices, getting louder and louder, and crowding out the voice I need to be hearing.

I am glad for the time of quiet at mass when the words of the priest worked themselves through the funk, and made me hear and think. It is time for me to clean house, to de-clutter my brain, to focus on what is important. It seems that Advent should be the time of new resolutions.

It seems that I am setting myself up for failure. How can I de-clutter my brain at a time like this. Haven't you heard that there is a Christmas show to put on? Radical reorientation... Radical means from the root. And anything with the word radical in it can't be easy.

No matter. Just in case, I'll start small.

Today, on this Second Sunday in Advent, and because it is never too late, I want to make a new resolution: for the next couple of weeks, it doesn't matter how busy my schedule, how long my to do list, I am going to carve out a pocket of time to be with the Lord. The renewal of relationships begins with time spent together in conversation.

One of my favorite prayers from the Morning Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours is this portion of the Canticle of Zechariah taken from the Gospel of Luke:

“In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace"

This Christmas I want to experience the dawn from on high. And I don't want to miss it because my eyes are  looking somewhere else.