waiting season
an advent invitation
This is the newsletter version of Sara by the Season, where I explore what is piquing my curiosity as I try to lean into nature’s wisdom and rhythms. I’m skipping the podcast version this week because I’m lazy and tired and it’s December.
If you know someone who would like this sort of thing, I’d be so grateful if you would share it.
In the Christian calendar, Advent is the start of the year. I don’t really understand why Christians don’t have a new year’s day like most other traditions, but the liturgical calendar that many Christians follow do consider the beginning of Advent as the start of the Church’s new year. It is this waiting time before Christmas. Advent comes from the Latin adventus, which literally means “coming.” It is supposed to be quiet and still and preparatory, like something we’re collectively building toward.
Unfortunately, for most of us, the weeks leading up to Christmas are anything but quiet and still. This year, I feel like a lot of us are collectively holding our breath for what is coming with another Trump administration. Some of us are just now beginning to pay attention to what Trump has been saying he would do all election cycle. And some are holding their breath in excitement of what Trump and his billionaire cronies might do.
So in this Advent season of waiting, all of us are waiting. We’re in this in between time. Waiting for Christmas and waiting for the inauguration when we’ll find out more clearly what Trump’s second term might look like. This waiting is certainly more fraught for some of us versus others.
I find it intriguing that the Christian tradition begins its year with waiting. Four weeks centered around preparing for the birth of Christ. Whatever you think of Advent (or Christianity for that matter), I find this beginning the year with waiting and preparation intriguing. I wonder if there is something in it for all of us, no matter our spiritual tradition.
We so rarely have to wait for things these days - or at least not substantially. Run out of toilet paper? Order some more on your super computer in your pocket. Two people in front of you at the grocery store? Get out that super computer and check the news. Or why even go to the grocery store when you can pay someone else to gather your items for you?
I’m wondering what it is doing to us at a spiritual level to be so not just uncomfortable with waiting, but largely unaccustomed to having to do it much at all these days. I was the kid who brought a book around everywhere with me, so I’m honestly not sure that I’ve ever been that great at waiting. But the phones undeniably make it so much easier to divert and numb ourselves from our waiting. They offer endless distraction, but take away our opportunity for boredom and daydreaming, for random conversations with a stranger, and likely so many more serendipities that we miss.
I want to be wise with my waiting this year. In the first days after the election, I felt almost preemptively exhausted. It was like my body remembered, quite quickly, how relentless the previous Trump presidency was. If you were paying attention, there was something every day to protest about, some days more concerning than others obviously. After a few weeks of sitting with that feeling, I realized that I didn’t want to relive 2016-2020 again.
In 2017, I jumped into and craved action - participating in protests, joining organizations, getting on a first-name basis with the staff that worked in my local representatives’ offices. I was not patient. I did not wait or plan much at all. And honestly? I don’t have a ton to show for it. I was scattershot with my approach - a mile wide and an inch deep, as they say.
In 2024, I’m tired. I’m in a much more demanding season of parenting. I’m older. I’m probably a little more cynical if I’m being honest with myself. I’m less ragey most days and more sad. I don’t know what I want the next four1 years to look like, but I know I want to be more mindful than I was the last time around. I know what I don’t want, even if I haven’t figured out all of what I do want.
I’m trying to be okay with my waiting and the unknowns. I’m trying to find the wisdom in patience, maybe even a little boredom. I’m also noticing how it is my own narcissism showing up thinking that what I do or don’t do will have a tremendous outcome on the situation outside of our place.
Perhaps this Advent season could help teach us to find some wisdom in the waiting. Every week, I practice and teach yin yoga. At the end of every class I teach, I ask the students (and myself) to thank ourselves for giving ourselves the gifts of stillness, quiet, and being for an hour rather than doing. I wonder if that kind of quiet, stillness, and being that yin provides is what we collectively need right now? Advent, to me, feels like a good yin practice: it’s dark, it’s quiet, it’s present, even in its looking ahead. I wonder if we could set aside some time for patience and waiting this December, for being rather than doing, for presence and listening.
Whatever is coming, we will be far sturdier in whatever we find is ours to do, if we approach it carefully, mindfully, trusting the wisdom of people and communities who have been in this work far longer than us.
Scattering Seeds
I usually have stuff that I want to share that doesn’t fit in the main post + I’m always finding stuff that supports the thesis of the book I’m writing on the benefits of leaning into nature’s wisdom, so I thought I could start sharing those links and things here with all of you in hopes of some of the seeds I share germinating into something beautiful at your place.
On what comes next. As frequently happens,
helped articulate better than I could something I’ve been wrestling with during this waiting season: “Social media just isn’t built for that kind of thing, it’s built to sell product – either product to buy or the products we make of ourselves for our followers to consume – and I don’t want to be one.” Read the whole thing.On being “pre-exhausted” already and some good questions for waiting season: “We have lives to live, families to nurture, movements to build. We know what exhausts us. But what gives us energy? What makes us hopeful instead of cynical? What makes us curious about the world and other people, instead of bored or contemptuous? What if we exhausted ourselves with each other’s burdens instead of our own dread? Things won’t necessarily get better. But they might.”
Advent, historically. I was trying to research if other traditions had a waiting season like Advent, which turned into a fun and educational rabbit hole. I came across this historian’s research into Christmas’ supposed pagan roots, this Vox explainer on Advent, and this historical background of Advent.
On practicing waiting. I’m re-reading Pema’s Practing Peace in Times of War, which seemed appropriate (which, for the record, great decision). She talks about practicing waiting with ourselves. That seems like a necessary muscle to build for whatever comes next:
When you’re like a keg of dynamite about to go off, patience means just slowing down at that point—just pausing—instead of immediately acting on your usual, habitual response. You refrain from acting, you stop talking to yourself, and then you connect with the soft spot. But at the same time you are completely and totally honest with yourself about what you are feeling. You’re not suppressing anything; patience has nothing to do with suppression. In fact, it has everything to do with a gentle, honest relationship with yourself.
Here’s to waiting and being in the season ahead,
Sara