Advent thoughts

Since I shared yesterday that I was going to concentrate on making Advent a time of gratitude, I want to share a few ideas from the reflection in Give Us This Day for November 28. It is from Ronald Rolheiser and begins with reminding us that Morris West suggested that when you turn seventy-five years of age there should only be three phrases left in your vocabulary: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!  
I will continue with ideas from this reflection tomorrow, but I was also struck by Sunday's reflection by Catherine de Hueck Doherty, also in Give Us This Day. The title is "A Pilgrimage of Stillness".
She begins by saying that Advent is a short season, "but it is a long road of a soul from Nazareth to Bethlehem."... It is a road into infinity, into eternity. "Advent is the road of the spiritual life, the pathway all of us must take if we wish to get to heaven....We must start with a fiat that re-echoes Mary's fiat. A fiat that each of us should say in the quiet of our hearts, and preferably at eventide when all creation is still."