An Advent Encounter

Back in 1999 during the Advent season as Christmas was drawing very near, I put fingers to keyboard and recorded an Advent reflection. I hadn’t done any writing for a number of years at that point, so I remember it felt good to publish something again, and I was generally pleased with it at the time. I dug it up and re-published it last year during Advent, but most regular readers of this blog hadn’t really discovered it by that time. So as I said then, each year since 1999 I have pulled out this reflection, read it through, and thought upon it. Despite knowing what’s coming next at each turn, if when I read it I am cautious to slow down and read it reflectively, I find that somehow it still speaks some new insight to me each year. I keep wanting to rewrite it, to change it and update it with new ideas, but I continue to resist the urge. In any event, I represent it now; it has to do with the shepherd’s experience of the nativity — one shepherd in particular, whose name we never learn, but whose account I have titled “We All Heard It.”