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Active Waiting, part 2

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  Throughout Advent, our congregation is studying the concept of Active Waiting. Specifically, we’re consciously attempting to practice Lee Raffel’s Active Waiting Guidelines found here: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Raffel1.html. I’m using Intersect to work through my own processes, an online spiritual diary of sorts. I’m also writing with as little editing as possible. When I was seven-ish years old, we lived in a little white house surrounded by a little white picket fence in the not-so-little town of DeKalb, Illinois. DeKalb had two (TWO!) claims to fame: A hybrid corn made famous by its deliciousness and “flying ear of corn” logo, and Northern Illinois University, home of the underwhelming Huskies. Yes, my early, formative years were lived in a Midwestern cliché. Memories of that era play on my mind’s eye through cloudy puffs of nostalgia. In the winter, sunlight danced on a glistening white carpet of snow. Snow makes the world seem more magical, don’t you think? Perhap

Active Waiting, part 1

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Throughout Advent, our congregation is studying the concept of Active Waiting. Specifically, we’re consciously attempting to practice Lee Raffel’s Active Waiting Guidelines found here: http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Raffel1.html. I’m going to use Intersect to work through my own processes, an online spiritual diary of sorts. I’m also going to attempt to write with as little editing as possible. Therefore, my thoughts may seem scattered. I suspect most of us think this way as we begin to formulate an opinion or belief. That is the unfiltered process at work, and that is the essence of Raffel’s first guideline about process. I’ve been meditating on Raffel’s suggestion to “ Hold to your vision and accept that your life is in process.”   I love the idea of process, but I’m impatient. This whole waiting until Christmas thing to give and receive gifts is killing me. But it’s not that I’m just waiting for the Christmas party. We spend so much time building up to this one day and, fo