Welcome to our December 2021 Series: Make Room

Despite bustling shops and long lines at restaurants, our lives and choices remain constrained by the pandemic. A sense of danger and fretting over what’s worth the risk are now a part of our daily routine. The news moves at a pace and volume we were never meant to process, yet we feel we must try to keep up. The world is overwhelming, and we feel caught in cynicism or confusion. Anxiety, anger, and grief spill over in parking lots and playgrounds, and our patience is wearing thin as we wait for something – anything – to shift.  
 
In these days, we need the old stories of advent and yuletide. We need stories of waiting, preparing, and making room – stories of hope born in the most unexpected places. Because like the inns we tell about in the Christmas story, we too can start to feel like there just isn’t enough room in our lives. Room for friendship and connection. Room for generosity and comfort. Room for mystery and creativity. Room to learn something new and to wonder.
 
It can feel like we already know how things will turn out because we’ve been stuck for so long and the challenges haven’t faded. It can feel like survival is our only mode.
 
We can forget that all new life begins with invitation and welcome – the softening of the heart to the unexpected and the vulnerable. 
 
Which is why this December, we are inviting everyone to Make Room.
 
Together we’ll practice releasing and holding space. Preparing for the world we long for, the world trying to be born.  
 
We need to slow down and feel the fullness of time. Rather than resenting our waiting, we need to embrace it as a deep spiritual practice of bearing witness to life in its wholeness.  
 
We need to practice trusting that what we need will come. That we will be seen. That we belong. That hope and love will arrive. Maybe not in the ways we expected or in the ways we would’ve chosen, but persistently and faithfully – if we can just open our arms and our hearts and make room.  
 
In partnership,
 
Rev. Gretchen