Deep Waiting in the Circling Practice

It is Advent season once again, with less than a week until Christmas Day. A time of waiting, watching each morning come later and later, each night galloping towards us at greater speed.

It has been called a season of preparation as we await that moment when the Christ is born, when the sun begins to make its slow return to full glory above us (for those in the Northern Hemisphere, of course).

Last year, we took Advent as a call to exquisite practice. This year, in light of the spiritual research going on at The Station (our little slice of heaven), let’s make Advent a time to connect to the practice of deep waiting.

The Gifts of Waiting

In a world that measures financial transactions in nanoseconds, waiting feels so terribly wasteful. It is, almost by definition, a time devoid of gifts.

And if we think of waiting as biding our time until some expected event occurs, maybe that would be true. But Advent reminds us of a different way. It reminds us of deep waiting.

Deep waiting is presence in time. It is attending to and relating through this mysterious flow. And, paradoxically, it is in this deep waiting that we receive time, rather than hurry through it. Those in a rush never have time. Those in deep waiting have oceans of it.

In Advent, we aren’t speeding through the weeks. Instead, we are using the time to prepare. We are deepening our spirituality by observing the changes in light, by practicing gift giving, by recommitting to the practices that nourish us.

Deep waiting calls us to be with the abundance that is already here. And coming into awareness of everything we have here with us in the waiting creates gifts out of thin air—as if they were made my elves and delivered by a jolly red wizard.

Like Mary’s divine pregnancy, every moment has the potential to spontaneously bear fruit. But remember, deep waiting isn’t sticking around until “something good happens.” Instead, deep waiting asks us to simply be with what is and what comes, whatever that might be.

After all, we know that Christmas won’t solve our problems. No matter the gifts we receive, no matter the joy on our children’s faces. There will still be bills to pay and illnesses to bear and check engine lights to tend to. But these are also what arises. We can be with them, too.

And so deep waiting works at many levels. It is a way to engage with the long-term turnings of fortune and strange twists of fate, as well as what is happening right here and now in a Circle.

Practicing Deep Waiting in the Circle

So much wisdom in Circling arrives when we move into deep waiting. Its roots burrow into our trust in the unfolding; a trust strengthened every time we Circle.

Again, it is not that we trust some miracle to happen. We aren’t waiting around for something juicy. It’s more that we trust that whatever needs to happen will happen—precisely when it needs to, not a moment too soon or too late. It is trust that we can be with what happens, rather than scurrying off to rush through this stuff.

Circling, like Advent, gives us the perfect opportunity to intentionally practice deep waiting. And it is in that waiting that each moment unwraps itself into the next. It is in that movement that connection is made, that miracles happen, that pains are suffered, and babies are born.

Gather with us for one last night of Circling this year on the 20th! Check out the details below or go to the official MeetUp page.

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