Advent Week One: Hope

Hope was not Ernest Holmes’ favorite word. He writes, “Hope is good; it is better than despair, but it is a subtle illusion and an unconscious compromise…” (p. 49) Yet he also refers to “the Divine hope in us.” (p. 274) When he is moving us from hope it is to faith, to a deep certainty in our work in consciousness.

But hope is better than despair and, sometimes is the life raft to which we cling in order to get through dark times. It is also the first spark, the first glimpse of the light of possibility of something new and better. This is the first step in our journey – that we have hope in experiencing our true divine nature more fully than ever before.

Often, we are caught up in the gray fog of “things as they are” and can’t see a more distant shore. But we are so much more than we have been conditioned and domesticated to believe we are. This first week is about lifting up our gaze from the “what is” to the “what can be.” It is the willingness to begin – or keep going – in our journey of awakening to our true spiritual magnificence.

In the birth myth found in Matthew 3:3, John the Baptist, who represents that part of us that is calling us to a higher place, says, “Prepare the way of the Lord, and straighten his highways.” (Lamsa translation) This time is, for us, a time to open up, to straighten our inner pathways and highways, for us to know the Christ within.

Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic in Germany (1260 – 1328) said, “God expects one thing of you and that is that you should come out of yourself…and let God be God in you.” This week’s practice is to entertain the possibility, the hope, of the Light within you, whether you see it or not. To commit to beginning a journey that will take making a little more time daily to sit with that Spirit, that Light within, and let it fill you. It’s time to conceive and get pregnant with the possibility of the greater You.