Every year for the past few years I’ve hosted a series of Advent reflections through the rather quotidian medium of WhatsApp.
The idea is simple: a short reflection is posted to the group each morning during Advent… but with the added feature that there’s no responses allowed. All signal, no noise. Read, digest. That’s it.
It’s been a lovely space with a diverse group of people – not all of whom I know – from all faiths and none, posting everything from poems to photographs to some very funny videos. Serious stuff, not taken seriously.
We all need a stir-up. We need some starlight, some echo of celestial song, a whisper of new life being born far from riches, from White Houses.
With temperatures schedule to drop it’s beginning to feel a lot like… well. Christmas? Which, in truth, is a turkey with some quite complex fillings. Occupation. Tyrannical rulers. Mysticism. Migration. Precarious work. Teenage pregnancy.
When Oscar Wilde said in Lady Windemere’s Fan that “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” he could have been talking about this very season, which has everything from the stench of cattle to the glint of the heavens.
If you’d like to follow along, you can do so via this link.
Leave a Reply