Every year we seem to start sooner. Shops, cafés, pubs and public buildings are already decked out with Christmas decorations, the sound of Christmas tunes carries across their sound systems. And it is not even December.

But in the rush to savour its delights way, way before time, we miss out on something profoundly important – something we need, if only we were wise enough to recognise it.Advent.Advent is not only a time for us to prepare, to await and to ready ourselves for the wonder to come, but also a time of heighten awareness, of participating in the divine nature, the divine reality, into which we also are invited. Of seeing God not as a ‘being’ not even as ‘being’ but as ‘a becoming’.