I read a lot.  Embedded in the wisdom of many books is this bit of advice:  don’t expect things.  Expectations lead to clutching wanting grasping disappointment.  So just quit it, the expecting and the wanting.

It’s the last day of 2009.  As I think about the year to come, I don’t know how to fashion an image sans expectancy.  I understand the bruises and soul-clunks of disappointment.  They dance in my being.  I could live their sour drag less, I suppose, if I trained myself to be fully present in the now and dispensed with all the vulnerability that is expectancy.

But how can I jettison expectancy?  It seems impossible that a follower of Jesus would disdain the yet-to-be-realized.  How can I not want peace on earth?  How can I still the stir of expectation that wakens me to each day of life?  If I expect less, have I cashed in some of the unique fizz that is Spirit gift?

I’m pondering this in my soul, as Mary pondered the angel song and its proclamation that she has a magnification-worthy being.  She said yes to living expectancy, did Mary, and the Christ was made flesh.

I want.  In the year to come I want my loves to grow and flourish, I want my community in Christ to know its beauty and power, I want some quiet time alone to unwrap what the Spirit would have me know about life, I want less finger-pointing and more cooperation in our civic life, I want creation to know the power of our connection, I want clean air and compassionate eyes and hearts.  I want a reverence for differences and a delight in the crazy and often clumsy thing that is living into truth.

Do I expect these things to be worthy of expectation?  As a follower of Jesus, I have to say “yes” because through partnership with the Holy all things are possible and we have not even begun to live the way of Jesus.  We never have. 

But I expect that we will try.

Happy New Year!