Advent Pilgrimage--I am ever coming to you, draw nigh to Me, as I draw nigh to you... a "slow-brew, quiet-starting, painful adventure with a big kick!" (WALKING WAY--NEW MOVEMENT/MOTIVE POWER. Tryptophan? THESE BONES MADE FOR WALKING The real turkey trot- advent pilgrimage: stir one another up for this great movement of the Holy Spirit The New Life He is Birthing We are being born again, and renewed again, from above! Old things are passing; new things are coming. Trust, pray, go, expect glory!)

Want to walk??? “All joy, as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement, emphasizes our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.” -C.S. Lewis

Something about God and humanity is especially relevant in the wanderings that hit a limit. It becomes an occasion of liminal new-birthing. We long for this.

Life is indicated by this movement towards more, towards more life, more truth, more beauty. LET THE MORE BE BORN IN HOPE WITHIN. WINTER BEGETS A FRUITFUL WANTING IN THE SPIRIT.

God is an ever-moving stability because of this joy-longing-joy dance.

We are taken up into that like a helixical pilgrimage. It is the prochoral dance.

CAN BE INTENSE/DISMAYING: It is the mountains being thrown into the water to make a new Temple Mount in Spirit and in Truth. It is intense, it can cause dismay, but it contains within it the secret of life, the joy of all joys. We experience this intensity, in a way, every winter.

The old is gone, the new is coming BUT IT HAS YET TO APPEAR!

THEREFORE, LEAN INTO THIS WALKING PRAYER: Come Lord Jesus! Maranatha! Show us your Kingdom!

BEGINNING BOOKEND: PERSPECTIVE OF PROMISE>Adopt a Perspective of Promise—the Pattern of New-Making in Winter, At Night! LOC is a Vespers Church!

-God is Building—Tekton hidden in “tectonic movement”!

-Travel, being on the way, can feel like Travail. It is worth the new-birthing that it is bringing, in hidden, if turbulent ways.

“What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” -T.S. Eliot

Do not despise the day of small beginnings! (c.f. Zech 4:10) And, He will complete the work that He has begun.

PRACTICE OF PRESENCE--Practice Joy Presence

“All the way to heaven is heaven” -Catherine of Sienna

“If you do not travel with the King whom you seek, you will not find him at the end of your journey.”

Recognizing God’s grace and presence with the four focal affirmations:

There is no place I would rather be

There is nothing I would rather do

There is no one I’d rather be with

This I will remember well

Practice Meeting together! A Cenacle Church: Gather in prayer. 2 or 3 is powerful. Transfiguring.

Speak of your exodus, your cross, your vocation, and see how God renews it in hope, promise, power, glory.

There are to be many candles! Many mini-manifestations of the morning star rising in hearts. Our souls, our viscera, are the candle of the Lord. Keep the oil flowing.

Stir one another up in love to keep the oil flowing, and go out together to meet Him who is coming to meet with us. He has come, is ever coming, and will come again.

He is coming to us to send us out in His glory-presence to others, to touch the hearts of those whose lamps need to be lit...

Practice being present and enjoying God and one another.

Using your senses in prayer—for joy and for the re-visualization of the turbulence as a building project of God.

Straighten up your heads and “behold, He is making all things new.”

He is taking away the sins of the world and building a mountain temple in Spirit and in Truth.

PRACTICE OF PRAYER THROUGH PAIN--Pining Via Patient & Pensive Prayer

“Let nothing disturb you, nothing dismay you. All things are passing. God never changes. Patient endurance attains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing, God alone suffices.” -Teresa of Avila

The resistance you experience is part of the building gift. It is the strengthening of the root system, the building of strong wings for heaven flight.

Being in the Spirit—the one who is building/growing, mysteriously-- results in continence (sexual ethics) affection for all (enemy loving and sharing so none have need), patience (freedom from anger, retribution, condemnation, vendetta, revenge, etc.), and speaking the truth (not lying), per Justin in his Apology.

“By our patience (hupomones) and meekness [Christians will] draw all men from shame and evil desires.”

Antidote to acedia; an invigorating slowing way. It will have quiet and sabbath. It will have the lonely place, the still small voice of revelation. Advent and winter specialize in this. Fireplace fellowship reminds us of it.

The pilgrimage of quiet, pensive, wondrous prayer:

“Pilgrimage [also] happens when you’re not moving. You learn when you’re unlearning. Revelation comes in gulps that leave you gasping, but sometimes it seems to come in the slow accumulation of small insights that you hardly know have happened, in chance encounters and odd surprises, in little glimpses of what you did not go to see and did not know was there.” -Paul Chandler

A Practical way to participate in the building work of His presence through pain transformed: Neurocycle.

ENDING BOOKEND: PERSPECTIVE OF PURPOSEFUL PURSUIT: Purposive Pursuit of Revelation of Christ and His Kingdom: Epiphany & the “final cause”of Eschaton

MEANING—the purposive pursuit of value. The weight of glory. The only real tragedy is to not be a saint, to not see God. (Bloy quoted combined with beatific vision as End—the glory of God is man fully alive, the glory of man is the vision of God).

The real heart’s desire is the beauty of God, the beauty of holiness, the temple not made with human hands. The permanent place of meeting with God and of always being with Him, centered in Him, sent-forth in Him and by Him. YOU BECOME EARTHLY GOOD BY BEING HEAVENLY MINDED!

Beholding Him in glory transfigures us—births, grows, reforms, glorifies our existence. It endues it with meaning and possibility and motivation and power and purpose.

We desire a better country, that is a heavenly one, so God is not ashamed to be called our God, for He has prepared a city for us. (Heb 11:16 personalized and paraphrased)

It’s prayer intention is for His Kingdom, His will, to be manifest in us. It starts within us. We are the stone that first has to be imprinted with His truth and filled with and surrounded by His attaching love.

It is the Maranatha prayer that makes of us to be clothed in white, to become the living stone. There is a proleptic, growing from glory to glory gifting. The Holy Spirit is growing us… do you not see it?

It pulls us in active hope and prayer. It keeps us moving like the pillar of fire of old. It is anchored in our Risen Lord, and He is pulling us from within and from above, grace upon grace, beauty upon beauty.

PINCER-LIKE MOVEMENT OF HS: It is about the birthing from above, the empowering from above, and also the welling up from within. It is the better good thing of His Spirit coming that He has in mind. Image: HS hovering, descending from above, but quickening new life within… Will we look up, will we perceive within?

It begins in the invisible realm of our hearts, our inner sanctum within, and the invisible realm above, where He is in glory, pouring out His Spirit from above.

Expectancy: There is always a revelation and an instantiation of the Kingdom to come, in the lives of His followers.

BACH—GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

There is a “mysterious, bubbling life force...” that is the work of His patient ferment, and then sometimes it emerges, spontaneously, in revelatory and powerful manner. Other times, in quite, childlike manner.

It is not by might, nor by power, but by His Spirit that this happens.

Behold I am making all things new. Do you not perceive it?

ADVENTURE QUEST QUESTIONS Heading to 15 Year Celebration:

1. How is Jesus with you? How will you be with Him together during Advent?

2. How is He changing your perspective on the difficult things—how is it true that He is building something new in the midst of the ending of something old?

3. How is the resistance you feel being used by God for a strengthening in the Spirit?

4. What is the new thing that you are perceiving in Spirit and in Truth, in the calling and cross that He is giving to you; to us?

Isaiah 43:18-21