On-Line Advent Calendar

          Advent begins this Sunday, December 1st. This year at Central we are going to spend the Advent Season trying to look at everything through the lens of the sacred. Where is the sacred in your life, in your world? Can we look at this too often over-commercialized season with holy eyes -- like looking at the world through a kaleidoscope -- so that it again is something beautiful, sacred?
          One way to mark this season as sacred is the practice of opening an Advent calendar. One little door for each day from December 1st until Christmas. Each day something different is revealed. Each day a surprise. So again this year, we will offer an on-line Advent calendar here. But we are inviting you to join us not only in reading it, but in building it.
          Each week we will offer a different prompt, and invite any of you who feel called to submit a response. That could be a brief written thought, a poem, a photograph -- however the Spirit prompts you to respond. Feel free to submit more than one. Submit it to our church office at ccchurchdallas@aol.com. We will post what we receive, every day, beginning this Sunday. If no one submits, I and our staff will continue to contribute, but we are hoping you will share your thoughts as well -- as you connect with the sacred in your life this Advent season.
          Here is the prompt for this week, with the theme of "Sacred Time":

“There is no less holiness at this time- as you are reading this- than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha’s bo tree…. In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees.”  ― Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

          What are the times in your life you identify or think of as sacred -- as touched by the holy, by God? How do you describe those moments? Why or how do you recognize them as sacred? How do you make time for the sacred, or to experience the sacred in your life?