Advent 1

I am waiting for something to arrive, a book.


I know that the book exists, that it has already been published, and that it is currently somewhere between the printers and my hands.


I know just what the book will look like, for I have closely studied two-dimensional virtual representations of every page (indeed, I made this book). But I don’t know just what the book will be like – its three-dimensional dimensions, its weight, the texture of the paper, the clarity of the photographs, the experience of holding it in my hands and sharing it with other people: these things are beyond my imagining.


My natural inclination is to impatience. I want the book now.


Worse than that: if no-one is at home when the book is delivered, I suspect that it will be taken to some depot and we will have to find time to go and collect it. Then my natural inclination will be to frustration. How unreasonable of them to come when no-one was in. How unreasonable of my wife to have left the house to shop for groceries.



That is why I need Advent.