Followers of Jesus are observing Advent—that ancient lament season of waiting, watching, and longing. It is a time intentionally carved out of the calendar to dwell in the space between: between past promise and future fulfillment, between the world as it is and the world as it might be. Advent asks us to sit with uncertainty, to hold vigil in the darkness, and to trust that something new is being born even when we cannot yet see its form.
The above video, speaks to the liminality of this moment that growing masses of people around the globe are feeling. Anthropologists sometimes use the word “liminal” to describe threshold states—those disorienting passages when we’ve left one world behind but haven’t yet arrived in the next. The old structures no longer hold us, but new ones haven’t fully formed. We are suspended, uncertain, between stories.
Advent has always been a season that acknowledges this darkness. The ancient prayers speak of longing, of crying out from the depths, of waiting in a world that groans for redemption. But Advent is not only about darkness. It is about the darkness that comes just before dawn.
The PDF below is articulating principles and values which can serve as guides in this time between worlds, drawing on the deepest wellsprings of human knowing while remaining radically open to what wants to emerge. The forty-two propositions articulated are not a rigid blueprint but something more like a philosophical compass for navigating uncertainty. They invite us to remember the future—to recognize that encoded in our traditions, in our yearnings, in the very structure of reality itself, are patterns and principles that can guide us toward a more beautiful, just, and integrated world.
Peace, dwight
