Advent

 I'm reading Diana Athill's evocation of her privileged childhood in Norfolk. ( She knew many of the great writers of the 20th century from her long career as literary editor at the publishers Andre Deutsch.)  She writes at one point of how she saw her grandparents' faith- ' .....much more like the conduct of people moved by common sense combined with an ideal of gentlemanly behaviour  than it did like the conduct of people  seeking communion with God .'

This came shortly after my morning devotions, and the thought the what we long for in Advent is the coming of the One who will enable us to be gloriously and fully human. As Irenaeus wrote- 'The glory of God is man fully alive;.'

The two viewpoints stand in stark contrast. One, which seems oh, so dated, so class-bound, so English, and the other so freeing, so universal, so adventuresome. 

I recognise that my own crabbed existence is not the same as that Athill describes, but it does direct my prayers to something wider, bigger, deeper, summed up in the Advent longing 'Come, Lord Jesus;.