Advent Word - December 1 - #unexpected - “Look at the chimneys.”

The "Advent Word" practice is a daily meditation on a given word and an opportunity to share that reflection on social media with others who are keeping this practice. It's akin to an Advent calendar, but with many boxes to open on a given day. Sometimes the reflections are sincere, and sometimes they're a little silly, but at the end of the day, it's a practice set aside to help us observe the season of Advent in the midst of the world's busyness. With all of that in mind, this is going to be my attempt to observe the Advent Word practice. I wish I could promise a reflection every day, and we'll see where this goes together.

As I sit here this morning, my body is recovering from our family's trip to London for Thanksgiving, and I am becoming re-acclimated to this time zone. I don't know how long it'll take me, but if it gives me some quiet mornings to get up as I readjust, I'll take that as an extended gift from our travels. As I was trying to go back to sleep earlier, I kept thinking back to our trip, and I continued to think of today's word "unexpected." I don't know what I expected when we went over there, and I'm sure the days ahead will give me more to contemplate, and I imagine that there will also be a few more reflections that lean on that experience.

What I'm going with this morning, though, is tied into a phrase I learned a while ago.

"Look at the chimneys."

The idea behind this phrase it two-fold. First of all, there don't have to be actual chimneys around; the point is to simply look up to take in the surroundings around us. The second part, of course, is that the looking up causes us to open up our chests, breathing in fresh air and oxygen, which is a pretty good thing for all of us to partake in.

This phrase stayed in my mind as we explored the city because otherwise it was so easy to look down and try not to trip on a raised sidewalk or step on a pigeon or fall into the gap on the Underground. I had to remind myself, and I had to remind my kids, to look up. In the midst of being around the paintings and portraits that we've studied and read about or walking through Westminster Abbey surrounded by the tombs and remains of so many people who have been so important to our history and culture (I got to see where Geoffrey Chaucer was buried which made me remember my high school English teacher who had us memorize the prologue to his work!), it was so easy to forget to look up to see the incredible molding in the National Gallery or the vaulted ceilings in Westminster Abbey or even the various kinds of architecture that exist in a city as old as London.

Something happens when we look up, when we look at the chimneys. We see the beauty of the world, and we see how unexpected that beauty can be. Whether it's part of the naturally created order or created by the hands of humanity, beauty and wonder exists all around us. As we wait with expectant hearts during this season of Advent, look up, and see what unexpected beauty can be seen.