The Thanksgiving holiday in the secular calendar coincides each year with the beginning of Advent in the Christian calendar. It begins for me several weeks of reflection, turning inward, assessing and reassessing priorities, looking at possibilities.
If you wander down a certain path at Primehook you come across the Morris family graveyard. It's a small piece of land, guarded by a fence with an information board telling you that here abouts stood the Morris family home. All that remains are the graves of John and Mary Morris and several of their children. The gravestones still readable date from 1818-1864. The Morris's had settled on the rich land of the Delaware shore to build a life. According to the dates on the gravestones two of their boys died as teenagers. Life must have been hard in the early nineteenth century. I wondered what Advent reflections Mary and John had in 1820; what assessment of life did they make? What were their hopes and dreams for the future?
I'm always glad to spend a few moments at the graves of the Morris's. It lends a poignancy beyond words. I always come away from the graveside wanting to be a better person, in Confucian terms a junzi.
When we returned to our rental home I continued to ponder. One of the tools I use to reflect on life is the Yijing (I Ching), the ancient Chinese book of wisdom. My reading raised five questions to ponder:
1. What must change?
2. What will continue?
3. If nothing could bind you, where would you go?
4. Do you ‘have to’? Who says?
5. Which path leads to where you want to be?
I journaled for a while. I shared a couple of the questions with Jane and we pondered aloud as we later walked the pugs. I'll not share my tentative answers. Those answers likely would not make much sense to anyone else. But the exercise itself was a good one, and the questions were meaningful.
Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is a time of reflection. No doubt, you will have your own questions to ponder. If you don't the five that emerged for me from the ancient wisdom might serve you well.
A meaningful Advent to all,
+Ab. Andy