I once heard a story about a family that had suffered a loss through death or divorce, who devised their own way of coping with the holidays. Unable to face the thought of dining together, with that empty chair at the table; but unwilling to give up their family celebrations altogether, they cooked their entire holiday meal as they had always done (you know, complete with the candied sweet potatoes and creamed onions, turkey and all). Then they packed it away. Every dish was covered in tin foil or burped in tupperware and stored deep in the 'fridge. At the appropriate time on the appointed evening, overcome by visions of turkey sandwiches and pecan pie, the family gathered in the kitchen and enjoyed their "leftover" feast, buffet-style, on the countertops. A wonderful time was had by all. At the end of the night they shared out the food that remained. Most everyone went home with a bowl or a package of morsels for another reheating. Just like always.

Now there are a bunch of way to take this story. We all need to be reminded that the holiday expectations of Norman Rockwell or Martha Stuart don't have anything to do with the real people we know, or the lives they carry around with them. Sometimes, anything you have to do to get through is OK. For a while. The danger is that the ways we devise to be together sometimes keep us apart. Do you think that the folks at the leftover buffet miss the missing member of the family, or ask one another for comfort? Not during the meal. During the weeks leading up to Christmas we are pressed into high states of activity and anxiety. Notice how even in church we are busy falling into a holiday routine. Is this way of being together just getting us through? The preparations we make, the dishes we bake, the pageants we perform, the gifts we buy only point to the gifts we already are to each other -- to our relationships. How do those gifts, those gifts of the spirit, shape our life as a congregation?

In the face of this hustle and bustle, Nature wants us to wait. Wait as the dark and the cold increase. Wait for starlight in the indigo sky behind dark trees. Wait in the quiet, sheltered places of your life. Our relationships are all we are to each other. Give one another comfort and shelter from the cold. Tend to the bright hearth of yourself. In the depths of winter we know new life is coming. How will we be together in a new life, a new year? Just like always or more deeply together?

Advent, these weeks before Christmas, this holiday season, is cherished as a period of preparation for new life, and for waiting - waiting the way parents and siblings wait in those last days and weeks before the birth of a child. "Let every heart prepare him room. Let heaven and nature sing."

"Prepare room for whom," you may ask. Prepare room in your hearts for each other, for anybody, for the Messiah. It doesn't matter. New life is coming: be ready. That's the good news. Let Heaven and Nature sing!

G*d bless you one and all.

See you in church.