The Third Sunday in Advent - A time of watching and discernment

There are so many kinds of watching!

1. "Watchman, watchman what of the night? The watchman said 'the morning comes and then the night" Isaiah 21:11" (Prophecy against Edom)
2. "Daddy, Mommy, Watch Me!"
3. "I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay - Watching the tide roll away - Ooo, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay - Wastin' time..." Otis Redding.
4. The San Juan Islands provide one of the best whale watching opportunities anywhere in the world...
5. "You just watch yourself, young man, or you will get more than you bargained for!"
6. "This is the surgeons knot, watch how I do it and then you try".
7. Looking is different from watching because you might miss some of the signs.
8. Do we understand the difference between look up and watch out?
9. The Prophets gave us the signs and the warnings but would not paint a picture.
10. Mary knew watching, not just looking, or they would never had gone to Egypt.
11. Life is more a dance than a race, rhythm is essential and everyone can win.
12. What we learn from watching nature teaches us far more than they learn from us.
13. You better watch out, you better not cry, the signs are there if you just try....
14. The key difference in watching, really watching, is to learn the meaning of what we see, but often do not absorb.
15. Mary knew, not because she understood from what she was told, but because she was willing to live into the promises and prophesies of the history of her people.
16. The goal of watching, of exploring as T.S. Elliott put it, is to connect the dots, that is to understand in all its' fullness:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, unremembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

Quick now, here, now, always—

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire

And the fire and the rose are one