Longing for Peace: An OpenSpirit Advent Evening
Sunday, December 13, 2009; 7 – 8pm
Performing Arts Center of MetroWest; Framingham, MA
Longing. Each week during this Advent season, our OpenSpirit gatherings open us into the deepening dimensions of our longings. This week, we offer ourselves to the gift and calling of peace – not as the absence of violence but as the positive energy that gathers us together into community. 
On this night, our praise and prayer will find its shape in poets’ and prophets’ yearning for peace, from Isaiah writing as an exile from his beloved Israel to the longings of contemporary prophets.
Our music, as always, will open us through an eclectic blend of sounds both ancient and new. In this gathering, we’ll join the medieval tradition in voicing the great “O antiphons” found in the carol, “O Come, O come, Emmanuel.” 
Join us, at 7 p.m. in the Metro-West Performing Arts Center as we mark the third Sunday of Advent.
The light is growing. The gift of peace is calling to all in our time. Will you, too, hear her voice, and come?
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.
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.
Children do it naturally, reminding us how good it feels. Scientists tell us that laughter reduces the levels of our stress hormones, increasing health-enhancing hormones like endorphins; they remind us that it enhances our immune system and reduces the physical effects of stress.
Now, whatever happened to laughter in church? Come find out this Sunday evening, as we celebrate laughter as a measure of grace among us.
