Advent offers us a sacred time to reflect, several times daily if we wish, on how consciously we are living. To be truly in the present means to wait, to be real and to know with the wisdom arising in stillness that what we are waiting for has already arrived. This kind of waiting is real hope – not the usual compound of daydreams and desires – but the core certainty that the final outcome has already happened and is waiting to be born in time and circumstances.