Inner Writing
Advent Meditation 2
Waiting
You will need
some privacy, some anointing cream (Aqueous Cream or hand cream is safe and good – but if you don’t have these don’t worry), but you do need enough time not to worry about time.
Reading
But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home
2 Peter 3: 13
Anointing
Sitting or lying down take the anointing cream and gently massage each foot in turn.
Take time with each foot, don’t rush, rub the cream into all the foot including between the toes and the heel. If after rubbing each foot you feel sleepy – take a knap.
As you rub your feet whisper…………. “I will prepare myself to welcome the joy of your righteousness in the home of my body.”
Pondering
This is the only translation found which uses the word “home”. Others use “dwell”. But “home” brings more to the passage. Home is where we are settled, rested-in and secure. Everything is balanced and deeply familiar at home. Already this is bringing freshness to the word ‘righteousness’, which, for far too long, has been associated with good behaviour and a moral or virtuous life. In the Jewish Scriptures righteousness best describes God’s dynamic presence, God’s involvement or connection in the world. Rather than morality, righteousness is about God being totally alive in the world.
So often the promise of a new heaven and earth is seen as a green light to trash this present earth. It doesn’t matter if we pollute and strip bare this earth because we are going to get a new one. This is not so. Peter is not talking about a replacement to this earth in the physical sense. He speaks of the ‘heavens’ and earth. He is not talking about a new physical sky and earth but rather he is speaking metaphorically to describe a balanced and abundant ‘ultimate environment’.
Rather than trashing the earth, in Advent we make present in prayer and waiting the balanced aliveness and abundance of God in which we will be at home. I feel a longing for that aliveness of God in my heart and in the world around us. I yearn to be at home in that abundance.
Posture
This posture can be held sitting or lying down or standing. If standing keep knees slightly bend (not locked).
Place the right arm under left arm pit with the hand flat on your side or back. The left arm passes over the right arm and holds the right shoulder. It is as if you were giving yourself a hug.
This is a great posture for us to calm the body after we have been triggered. Hold this for a while and as you do so whisper…………
