Welcome, friends…
to Still Point 12:10 — where we Breathe. Reset. Rise.
This is your pause in the middle of the week — a moment to step out of the noise and into stillness, where something ancient and holy begins to stir.
I’m Sharon Campbell Rayment, and today we begin our Advent journey — a season not only of waiting for the Christ child, but of awakening to the light being born within us.
In this first week of Advent, we walk with Meister Eckhart, the great 13th-century mystic who spoke of the birth of God in the soul. He believed that what happened in Bethlehem is happening still — that the Eternal Word seeks to be born in each of us, in this moment, in this very breath.
Eckhart said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. For God is always needing to be born.”
This is the essence of Advent Hope — not optimism or wishful thinking, but a quiet trust that light is rising even when the world feels dark. Hope is the pulse of divine life already moving within us, asking for room to grow.
So today, we will enter that sacred space — the womb of silence where God is always being born.
🌿 1. Ready
Let’s begin by readying ourselves.
Find a comfortable seat.
Place your feet gently on the floor.
Let your hands rest loosely in your lap.
Allow your shoulders to soften, your spine to lengthen, your jaw to unclench.
Take a moment to feel the steadiness beneath you — the earth holding you.
This same earth once cradled Mary as she waited in the quiet glow of expectancy.
It holds you now with that same tenderness.
You don’t need to force calm; just arrive.
Let the outer world keep spinning; you are entering sacred ground.
Feel the slow rhythm of your breath.
Inhale softly — as if drawing in morning light.
Exhale — as if releasing night into dawn.
Whisper inwardly, Here I am. Let it be.
That simple prayer — Let it be — was Mary’s doorway, and it can be ours.
Let your body settle into readiness, not as effort but as consent — the quiet consent that allows divine life to awaken.
🌊 2. Release
Now, gently begin to let go.
Advent is a season of emptiness — not barren emptiness, but holy space-making.
It is the clearing of the room before the guest arrives.
Notice what you have been holding tightly.
The expectations, the worries, the relentless doing.
Place them softly at your feet.
Let go of the need to understand everything.
Let go of the timeline of how you think things should unfold.
Let go of the voice that says, I must do more to be worthy of light.
Eckhart wrote, “To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God.”
Emptying is not loss. It is preparation.
Picture a dark winter field after harvest — silent, bare, yet teeming with unseen potential.
The seeds rest under the soil, waiting for the warmth that will wake them.
This is what your soul feels like in this season.
Resting. Readying. Waiting for the warmth of God’s newness.
Release.
Not into nothingness, but into trust.
🌤 3. Receive / Reflect
Now, in the spaciousness that remains, let yourself receive.
Imagine the first light of dawn — pale gold spilling across the horizon.
You don’t rush it. You don’t create it. You simply watch as night softens into day.
That is what divine birth looks like inside the soul.
Light quietly unfolding in the dark, almost unnoticed, until suddenly you realize it has filled the room.
Eckhart wrote that the same Word which was spoken into Mary is spoken into every soul.
Creation was not a one-time event; it is happening still.
The divine desire that said “Let there be light” is still speaking those words — in you.
Hope, then, is not waiting for what we do not have.
It is awakening to what is already being born.
You may feel that your inner world is still shadowed.
That is all right.
Eckhart reminds us, “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”
Let the light find you.
Let it move through the cracks and soften what has been rigid.
Let it warm the places within you that have grown cold.
(Pause — 1 minute)
Now imagine that light as something alive, pulsing within your heart —
small, tender, luminous, like the flicker of a candle in a cave.
That flame is Christ forming within you.
Not an idea or memory, but presence — the living Word becoming flesh again through your very being.
Breathe with that awareness for a few moments.
Each inhale a whisper of Come, Lord Jesus.
Each exhale a surrender — Let it be.
🌾 4. Return
Slowly begin to return to your surroundings.
Notice the air around you.
The ground beneath your feet.
The sounds beyond this quiet.
You are returning, but not the same.
Something subtle has shifted — a small dawn has begun within you.
The early Church fathers called this theosis — divine becoming, the soul’s slow awakening to its own light.
Eckhart called it the birth of the Word in the soul.
We might simply call it Hope.
This hope does not depend on circumstance.
It rises like morning no matter how long the night has been.
It is the presence of God breathing through all things, renewing the world from within.
Carry this awareness gently.
You are walking now as one who bears the light.
📖 Reflective Reading — Meister Eckhart
“The Birth of God in the Soul: Hope as the Inner Bethlehem”
Advent begins in the dark.
The candles are not yet lit, the sky is still heavy with waiting.
And yet, within that darkness, something is already moving — slow, steady, invisible — like a heartbeat beneath layers of quiet.
That movement is Hope.
The mystic Meister Eckhart called this movement the birth of God in the soul.
He said that what once happened in Bethlehem happens again and again, in every person who consents to love.
The eternal Word, the creative light, seeks not only a manger of straw, but the inner room of your being — a space cleared of noise where the Divine may be born anew.
Eckhart lived in the late 1200s, a world of cathedrals and conflict, of faith and fear.
He knew darkness intimately: political upheaval, the plague of poverty, the narrowness of religion that made God distant and the human spirit small.
And yet, from within that darkness, he dared to speak of God as Presence, as Now, as Birth.
He said, “There is no creature so small that it does not reveal the face of God.”
He believed that God is not out there to be found, but in here to be realized.
When Eckhart preached during Advent, he did not tell people to look outward to the distant star of Bethlehem.
He told them to turn inward, to listen for the same angelic whisper Mary heard: “The Lord is with you.”
He said, “We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the Divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not take place within myself?”
For him, Hope was not a feeling of positivity; it was the certainty that God’s creative act is still happening, still unfolding in us and through us.
Hope was participation in that birth — the deep knowing that something holy is being formed even in what feels barren.
The Hidden Bethlehem
Imagine, he says, that your soul is like a small, quiet Bethlehem.
The streets are empty.
The world outside is crowded and distracted, yet within you there is a stable — humble, hidden, waiting.
You might not think much of it; you might even feel its emptiness as ache.
But to the Divine, it is enough.
In that hidden place, straw becomes altar.
The breath you take becomes the Spirit’s wind.
Your willingness becomes the open door through which God enters time again.
Eckhart believed that every soul carries within it a seed of the Word — the spark that remembers its origin.
When we become still, that seed begins to quicken.
When we trust the silence, we can feel its warmth.
When we surrender, it begins to break open, and the light of God pushes toward birth.
He said, “The seed of God is in us. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and the seed of God into God.”
That is the audacity of hope: that the divine nature longs to express itself through us — through our laughter, our forgiveness, our courage to keep believing when nothing seems sure.
Hope, for Eckhart, was not looking toward a distant heaven.
It was the awakening of heaven’s consciousness in the ordinary heart.
He taught that every moment holds a Bethlehem if we are willing to notice.
The Silence Before the Word
Eckhart often spoke of Gelassenheit — the letting-be, the release that precedes divine birth.
Before Mary could receive the Word, she had to be silent.
Before the universe could echo with “Let there be light,” there was stillness.
Hope begins not with striving but with listening.
He said, “There is a silence deeper than all sound. God speaks there, and the soul that listens becomes light.”
Can you feel that silence even now?
The space between your breaths, the pause between heartbeats — that is where hope gathers.
It is not a passive waiting but a pregnant one, rich with unseen movement.
Think of winter soil.
Nothing grows on the surface, yet beneath the frost the bulbs are alive, drinking in darkness, gathering strength for spring.
That is the work of Advent: to trust the hidden processes of God, to believe that growth happens even when nothing seems to change.
Eckhart wrote, “The very best and noblest attainment in this life is to be silent and let God work and speak.”
Hope is not human optimism; it is divine gestation.
The Birth That Changes Everything
When the Word is born in the soul, the mystic said, it changes how we see.
We begin to recognize the divine pattern everywhere: in pain and joy, in failure and creation.
We see that the light which dawned over Bethlehem still dawns through our awareness.
This is why hope never depends on circumstance.
The outer world may tremble, but the inner birth continues.
No darkness can extinguish it because it is born of the eternal.
Eckhart wrote, “In this birth God pours all that God is into the soul, giving completely of divine being, so that the soul becomes light with the same light with which God shines.”
Imagine that — your very being luminous with the same radiance that once guided shepherds and kings.
That is not metaphor; it is mystical reality.
The Incarnation is not history; it is happening.
Every time you choose kindness instead of resentment,
every time you forgive,
every time you risk hope in the face of despair,
the Christ is being born again through you.
Hope is the daily “yes” that allows love to take form in matter.
It is Mary’s consent echoing through the centuries, finding its way into our own voices.
The Shadow of the Manger
But Eckhart was not naïve about how birth unfolds.
He knew that light is born through pain, that hope often begins in contradiction.
He said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
The manger is never tidy.
There is straw, there is noise, there is the discomfort of not knowing where the road will lead.
Hope does not erase struggle; it redefines it.
The stable, for Eckhart, symbolizes the ordinary life we often despise — the unfinished, imperfect parts of ourselves.
Yet it is precisely there that the divine arrives.
God avoids the palaces of perfection and chooses the rough shelter of reality.
That is good news for us all.
When you feel unprepared, uncertain, inadequate — that is your stable.
It is enough.
The light does not demand cleanliness; it seeks openness.
The manger is your heart willing to receive even in chaos.
So he invites us to see our own life as the place where God longs to be born —
not after we have figured everything out, but right here, in the midst of it.
The Midwives of Hope
Eckhart’s sermons were filled with images of divine motherhood.
He spoke of the soul as Mary, the womb of the Eternal.
But he also spoke of the friends of Mary — the midwives who help bring the birth to completion.
He said that when one person allows the divine to be born, it awakens others to do the same.
We become midwives of hope for each other.
A gentle word, a listening ear, a moment of compassion — these are the hands that steady another’s labor.
This is how God’s birth multiplies in the world.
He reminded his listeners that hope is not for oneself alone.
“The soul that truly knows God,” he said, “must pour itself out into love.”
To hold the Christ within and refuse to give it away is to halt the birth.
Hope fulfills itself only when shared.
So when you carry hope, you are carrying the world.
Your inner light becomes a lantern for others walking through night.
The Eternal Now
Perhaps Eckhart’s most daring statement was this: “The now in which God created the world and the now in which the soul receives God are one and the same.”
In other words, creation is ongoing.
Each moment is a fresh beginning.
Hope is not linear; it is vertical — it rises through every instant.
When we awaken to that, time itself becomes luminous.
The past loses its grip, the future releases its anxiety, and we stand in the eternal present where everything is possible.
He called this the “eternal birth.”
God forever giving, forever speaking, forever being born.
And we, forever becoming.
This means that even in your darkest hour, the divine pulse continues.
Even when you feel abandoned, the Word is still gestating.
Hope is the realization that there is no moment devoid of God’s creative breath.
Living the Birth
How then do we live this birth of hope?
Eckhart offers three simple postures:
- Detachment— not indifference, but freedom from clinging.
Let go of the need for outcomes. Let your hands open.
Hope grows in unclenched palms. - Stillness— the willingness to wait without hurry.
Trust the silence. The seed will break in its time. - Compassion— allowing the birth to continue through you.
Every act of love is a Bethlehem. Every kindness a cradle.
He said, “The soul that gives birth to God must become one with the nature of God — generous, radiant, life-giving.”
So we do not keep the light for ourselves.
We become its reflection in a shadowed world.
The Light Returning
As we move through Advent’s long nights, imagine yourself standing in the hush before dawn.
The horizon is still dark, yet something glimmers — a silver edge of promise.
That is hope.
You cannot hurry it; you can only face east and wait.
Slowly the sky softens.
A single ray reaches out, touches the earth, touches your skin.
You realize that the same light that rose over Bethlehem is rising now in you.
You are the horizon where God meets creation.
You are the threshold of birth.
Let that awareness fill you — the warmth, the wonder, the simplicity of it.
God choosing you, as you are, as dwelling place.
The Infinite choosing the finite as home.
This is the mystical heart of Christmas:
the union of heaven and earth not once long ago, but now, again, within.
Hope is not waiting for something to happen;
Hope is recognizing that it already is.
So when you leave this place, do not seek the light elsewhere.
Turn inward.
You will find the manger glowing quietly behind your ribs.
You will find Mary’s yes echoing in your pulse.
You will find the Christ child breathing in your breath.
And you will know, as Meister Eckhart knew, that the dawn of God has never ceased to rise —
it simply waits for our awakening.
🌺 Thankfulness
Now, bring to mind three quiet things you are grateful for —
perhaps something that has been growing in you unseen,
a new awareness, a tender reconciliation, a small act of love.
Hold each one in your heart as a candle, and whisper,
For this light, I give thanks.
For this birth, I give thanks.
For this holy waiting, I give thanks.
Gratitude is the atmosphere of divine birth.
It is the soil in which hope takes root.
Even the smallest thanks opens the door wider for light to enter.
✨ Closing Reflection
As we close, may you carry this truth with you:
that Hope is not somewhere beyond the horizon —
it is rising within you now.
Like Mary, may you trust what is forming, even if unseen.
Like Eckhart, may you know that God is always giving birth in the soul.
And like the dawn, may you keep returning — gently, faithfully, bringing light to a shadowed world.
Together, softly, let us say:
The light within me is of God.
The dawn within me is rising.
I am part of the birth of Love.
Until next time,
may you Breathe… Reset… and Rise.
