Advent ritual: Day 1

As part of this exercise in choosing to live more intentionally, I'm trying to make sure we do some sort of evening ritual each day during Advent. We did something like this for the first time last year, but I'm still figuring this thing out. Son in Ohio is very vocal about being an unbeliever, and frequents a web site called "God Is Imaginary". So I'm trying to find readings that aren't necessarily religious--or not exclusively Christian, at any rate. Mostly, I want to make sure we're taking time to "ponder", to reconnect, to step back from the frantic December pace.

We were planning to start lighting Advent candles on Sunday night, but Daughter ended up having more homework than we thought, and Son was asleep early. Last night I was giving final exams. So tonight was the first night we actually did this thing, which, in case I wasn't entirely clear on this, I'm kind of making up as I go. But I've come up with something of a loose structure: light candle, do some sort of reading, and play a piece of music. And then one of the kids blows out the candle.

Son in Ohio mentioned something about Moses and the burning bush earlier today, and that inspired me to look up something I'd read several years ago by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner. I used it for tonight's reading:

Creation is the process of waking up. Take the story of Moses and the burning bush. Most people were taught that this story is about God performing a miracle to get Moses' attention. Now if you were God, how would you get someone's attention? Maybe split the Red Sea, maybe set up a pillar of fire--big time stuff. But why make a bush catch fire and not get burned up? Why would God do that?

I was once sitting at home in Boston in front of the fire, and I made this discovery. Do you know how long you have to watch wood burn before you know whether or not it's being consumed? Five minutes, which means there could be a miracle going on in your fireplace but you wouldn't know it unless you watched for five minutes.

The burning bush was not a miracle, it was a test. God wanted to see if God was dealing with somebody who would pay attention for five minutes. So creation begins with opening your eyes and paying attention. And when we pay attention, we discover the world, and when we discover the world, we discover that everything is connected--or at least a lot more things are connected than we had previously thought. We get a sense that there's something else going on.

God didn't create the world once and for all; God continuously creates the world. The process goes on all the time, and we try to be aware of it.

And the music was I played was Bach's Air from Suite No. 3 in D Major. When I looked through our music, it was what I could find that seemed to fit the bill: peaceful, but not dreary, and not overly long. I have no idea what music I'll be using tomorrow, so I'm open to suggestions.