Longing: An OpenSpirit Advent Retreat, Meal, and Evening Worship
Sunday, November 29th, 2009; 3 – 8 pm
The Meetinghouse; Andover Newton Theological School
Directions: http://www.ants.edu/ants-difference/map
Please Bring: Potluck Dish, Old Fabric, Poem About Longing
Longing. 
Longing calls us as the theme for our evening gatherings during the coming four Sundays of Advent. It is the deep wellspring of creativity, and yet remains an all too neglected impulse in the busy weeks that precede Christmas.
Longing: not for things, but for connection – the desire that takes shape at the place of our emptiness, our uncertainties, all that calls us toward greater wholeness, at-one-ment.
In a poem entitled “On the Hours in the Night Garden,” the poet Ellen Hinsey speaks of love as “seeking to build, braid, knit together / Two breaths, preciously hewn twin desires. . .” Advent is the season devoted to this brave seeking, this holy longing.
In the church’s ancient reckoning, this season marks the beginning of the year; how else to begin but with longing – which is to say, God’s longing for humanity, and ours for union with the divine. A yearning the poet conceives of as a “braiding” of breath, of ruach or spirit, “preciously hewn twin desires.”
During the coming four weeks of Advent, our OpenSpirit gatherings will explore the depth and shape of longing, and how desire draws us ever more profoundly into the mystery of life.
We’ll sing and pray, breathe and “be” together, wondering what it is that draws us in our depths. Asking together, what is it that our hearts truly desire? Seeking the One who breathes in us, longs for our coming, wonders at the beauty of our being.
Join us, as we live into the stirrings of that ancient hymn, “O come, o come, Emmanuel!”