Jacarandas

One of my favourite places to walk is the campus of my alma mater, the University of Queensland. This is particularly so in the spring when the jacarandas are blooming. I park on William McGregor Drive, walk along the river bank, marvel at the beauty of the ghost gums, watch a City Cat ferry as it unloads its cargo of students  and then my steps turn towards the lakes and College Road. This is my destination, College Road lined with  jacaranda trees loaded with blossoms.

It is said that wherever we are with God, we are on holy ground and for me, it is during spring that holy ground is especially recognisable.   The late John O’Donohue, wrote eloquently out of the depths of his celtic spirituality, that ‘nature is the theatre of divine presence.’ So from the moment that I see my first jacaranda tree in bloom, I know that it is time to go out to the university and walk beneath them, and through the carpet they lay on the ground below them. When I do this, I feel that I am indeed in  the ‘theatre of divine presence.’

The first sighting of jacarandas has long been a signal that exam time is about to begin, but for me, it also heralds the arrival of the beautiful season of Advent.

In Good Samaritan Sister Verna Holyhead’s beautiful Advent poem Jacaranda,  she wrote:

Advent bursts violet and beautiful

like the jacaranda tree on the very brink

of an Australian summer.

It is a tree of contradictions,

like this southern season of the Church’s year:

green leafed in winter, autumn gold in spring,

blossoming from bare trunk to welcome in November.

A myriad trumpets cluster for short fanfares

before it lays its purple carpet to greet its king

who is not yet – but coming.

Advent, our new year, is a good place and a good time to set a new course for our lives, our parishes, our communities and our families. What if we approach this Advent as a new opportunity to do it differently? The richness of our liturgical year and cycles can shape it if we are willing to take the steps to change, if we imagine how many possibilities might emerge.

So as I wait for this beautiful season to emerge in the midst of our troubled world, I offer this Advent prayer:

Lord, it happens every year. I think that this will be the year that I have a reflective Advent.

I look forward to Sunday and this new season.

But all around me are the signs rushing me to Christmas and some kind of celebration that equates spending with love.

I need your help, Lord. I want to slow my world down. This year, more than ever, I need Advent, these weeks of reflection and longing for hope in the darkness.

This year, help me to have that longing. Help me to feel it in my heart and be aware of the hunger and thirst in my own soul. Deep down, I know there is something missing in my life, but I can’t quite reach for it. I can’t get what is missing.

I know it is about you, Lord. You are not missing from my life, but I might be missing the awareness of all of the places you are present there.

Be with me. Guide me in these weeks to what you want to show me this Advent. Help me to be vulnerable enough to ask you to lead me to the place of my own weakness, the very place where I will find you the most deeply embedded in my heart, loving me without limits.