For many, the season of Advent is about waiting—in a period of holy discontent—for something greater than our imaginings to pull the world out of confusion and suffering. Often that power is discerned only by listening through the din of the holidays to the quiet message of hope coming to the world.

Rev. Bret Lortie currently serves as an Air Force chaplain at Travis AFB. He has served two Unitarian Universalist congregations as Senior Minister—in Evanston, Illinois, and San Antonio, Texas—and prior to ministry was a magazine editor for the Chicago Sun Times and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Rev. Lortie is married to Cindy Lortie and in his spare time plays trombone in the Solano Winds.