It’s advent as I write this. It is a season filled with hope and faith that gets sadly overshadowed by the commercialization of this holiday. The giving inflates and the reasons get moved aside like that last end-piece of the fruitcake at the party. What’s so important about this season is that it’s representative of the word “coming” in two unique ways. One, we are celebrating the first coming of Christ, the excitement and joy that is found in His birth on Christmas. And two, the word “coming” is what engages our faith and hope. We are declaring that we indeed desire His second coming. Though we may say we desire Him, the proof is in the plum pudding, so to speak. We must behave and believe we want Him to return to us. The philokalia project is preparation and improving readiness to fortify this declaration.
It’s advent. Years ago I tried to start this blog and got through 2 posts and paused. Okay, I paused for months and months. I was paralyzed by the thought of these posts not getting to the true meaning and perfect articulation of what I wanted to express about this project. I feared my own irrelevance. I still fear that what I say is inadequate and far from scratches the eloquent truth. But as I live and suffer through this lesson, I’m learning that it is when I embrace my humanness, my very imperfect self that I can invite the Holy Spirit into my life to heal my wounds. It’s also where my imperfect aligns with the reasons Christ became man – his living, being persecuted and crucified would be rather meaningless if he weren’t fully man. I’ll need to tell myself this over and over for days on end and years to come but I’m the only one who thinks I need to be perfect. God for certain knows I’m not. And the ones who love me truly see I’m not. Our imperfections don’t define us, nor do our failures. So in the spirit of Christmas (the hopefulness of Christ’s return) I’m going to blast through the devil’s attempt to hold me up. I’m going to blast through the fear of posting an imperfect post. Even more, I’m going to leave up my previous posts for which this was meant to be yet another draft. (As writers, we should love our imperfect first (and second) drafts.) I’m going to begin this project, as I’ve wanted to do for months now, and struggle through it with prayer, study and my faith.
