In The Quiet Places

I sit here as the fourth week of Advent begins, the waiting has changed.

It is no longer restless.

It is no longer searching.

It has softened into something like readiness.

Not readiness as certainty, but readiness as openness.

I notice this shift in my own interior life right now. The striving has quietened. The questions have loosened their grip. In their place, there is a gentle attentiveness , as if my soul has learned how to listen without needing to interrupt.

This is how I imagine the stable felt.

Not dramatic. Not polished. Not prepared in the ways we would expect. Just open. Just willing. Just present enough to receive what arrived quietly in the night.

We often speak of Christmas as something that happened once ~ long ago, far away. But the longer I walk the interior path, the more I understand Christmas as something that still happens. Again and again. In the hidden places. In the unremarkable corners. In the spaces we did not think were worthy of arrival.

Christ is not born where everything is resolved.

He is born where there is room.

This Advent, I have been learning that the quiet places within me, the places of unknowing, unfinishedness, and gentle surrender are not obstacles to grace. They are the very ground where grace chooses to arrive.

In the studio, my work reflects this same truth. The pieces that feel most alive right now are not the ones I planned. They are the ones that emerged slowly, formed by listening rather than insistence. They carry the marks of waiting. They hold space rather than statement.

Perhaps this is the invitation of Christmas week.

Not to present God with perfection.

But to offer presence.

Not to fill the silence.

But to welcome it.

If you are approaching Christmas carrying tenderness, as if parts of your life feel unresolved, quiet, or fragile, know this: these are not places of absence. These are places of possibility.

Christ is still being born in the quiet places.

And if you make room, even there,

He will come gently.