Bewildered

 Wednesday of the Second Week of Advent

Turn my eyes from watching what is worthless;
give me life in your ways.
Psalm 119:37

Today I had the word bewildered gifted to me, opened to me in a new way. Bewildered. To be in the wilderness. To be wildernessed (if I can make up my own word, and I think I will). To have the wilderness happen to you. The wilderness is happening to me and all around me. And to everyone I know. And to everyone I don’t know. After all, there is not a single human being in the entire world unaffected by the pandemic.

Advent, too, is a bewildering time, a wild time. After all, the voice of Advent is the voice crying out in the wilderness. This time, this way, can be baffling, disconcerting, incomprehensible. What orients me is the presence of the holy. Knowing it is there. Softening my gaze so that what is harsh is diminished and God’s wonders come astonishingly into focus.

There is life in the wilderness. There is life along this way. Choosing to walk the wild way of Advent is setting one’s face toward the manger, and birth, and new life, and life everlasting.

Note: Thank you to my friend Stuart Hubbard Hoke for the gift of bewildered
Image by mostafa meraji from Pixabay