Tag Archives: Advent

Voices of Joy Advent IV and Christmas and New Year

29 Friday Dec 2017

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A voice of joy! Advent began with a voice on one crying…in a wilderness! And we take a turn into the season with a voice of joy! I am relying heavily on joyful voices in this season, Music and words combine to life my spirit above the oppressive sounds of so much that is being given attention.

So I have heard Joy in the voice of children in productions of “Beauty and the Beast.” I have heard Joy in concerts downtown at Disney Hall, first all of the Bach motets, then the voices of Chanticleer. My Facebook community supplies me amply with music of Joy of many kinds–country western, early Renaissance, piano and cello, hundred voice choirs, a capella ensembles. On Christmas Eve by candlelight, we heard in variegated voices the story of the birth of Jesus into this world and what it means; it led us to stand and sing together “Joy to the World.”

And then we were stunned at dawn to get a familiar voice on our phone on Christmas morning telling us to go look on our front porch–and there to our shock and surprise was our complete Florida family awaiting to say Merry Christmas and to feed and love us, through this festival week. It has been followed with singular voices of Joy: laughter of cousins, hilarious remembering between siblings, excited regaling with new experiences, eager recitation of encounters with something special–all Joy! Certainly the we have shared the Joy of Christmas with enthusiastic voices this season.

I am convinced that I am to bring a voice of Joy into the new year. It is counter-intuitive if I become saturated with the voices of the world around us–news, op-ed pieces, and Cassandra like predictions of the doom to come. However, the voice of those who are seeking Spirit and intending to live with its energy are filled with hope,  perseverance, compassion and imagination because of what we are celebrating this Christmastide. Those are the choruses of which I would like to be a part. I anticipate with expectation the anthems of those who are joining their journey of Spirit with their intention to be part of the healing of the world, whether in political demonstration and action, or in service to those without resources or agency. I align my heart and voice with those who croon softly to the person in pain and despair, or to the ones who feels as if there is no place to call home. I accept the lowering registers of my own voice to calibrate it to the song I have been given to sing for now: God is here, does not leave us, nor can anything separate us from Divine Presence and Care. There is Joy in all!

Good Christian souls, rejoice! with heart and soul and voice…

In this New Year I am adding my voice to the band of angels and saints who hear and care for the voices crying in the wilderness, and then go on to bring a more hopeful, Joyful song of “Peace on earth, good will to all!”

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Arms of Love Advent III

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

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armsoffriendsThis third week of Advent, after Gaudete Sunday, where we praise the Holy, as Mary did, remembering her with  a rose colored candle in our Advent wreaths, is about Loving.  All of one’s body is involved in loving, but often the first movement is with our arms.

I found this work of art in Montreal this fall. So much Love is shown in the arms of these three: the expressive arms of the one telling her truth; the accepting arms of the one bent in to listen deeply; and the arms that hold and support the truth as it is being told. How many people, especially in this season, long for welcoming and supportive arms of Love outstretched on their behalf!

I have been noticing active arms of Love this week:

  • the driver who ferries the car pool daily, often adding to his load, children other than his own
  • the grandparent who opens her heart and arms to greet the little one after he trips and falls
  • the strong arms who give support and balance to the one whose gait is not quite as steady as it once was
  • the long arms that reach that elusive ingredient on the top shelf of the grocery store for the shopper who can’t reach it
  • those who put all their arms together to pack up turkey dinners for households who need them this Christmas
  • the quick defensive arms who keep others from tripping, or ward off danger from something unexpected
  • the willing arms that carry things from story to car, from car to home, from home to friends

So many ways to show Love! And each one is characteristic of the Holy One who is Love. The prophet Hosea characterizes God speaking this way:

…it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with  cords of human kindness, with bands of Love. (Hosea 11: 3-4)

I am seeking to make my arms loving ones this Advent, whether it is rocking a little one, following the Mother Mary, or offering a great-grandmother’s cookie recipe to guests invited, or sitting with relaxed posture to hear the story that needs telling, whether I am hearing it for the first time or have heard it many times before. As for my own needs to be replenished in Love this season,  I am taking shelter in the Loving Arms of the One who made me just the way I am, who can comfort and heal me, then send me out again to Love the world!

People, look east, the time is near/of the crowning of the year./ Make your house fair as you are able,/ trim the hearth and set the table./People, look east and sing today:/ Love the Guest is on the Way.

 

 

 

Wings of Sorrow: Advent I

04 Monday Dec 2017

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I have begun Advent in Hope, but am deeply aware of all the sorrow swirling around me. I have been  for weeks now. It has shown up in all shapes and sizes among the people I know and love: the loss of a spouse for one longtime friend, the failing of another body part in someone else, the ending of traditions of many years because of circumstance, and more tragically, the continuous pouring out of the failure of human beings, personally and politically.  So I grieve, for that which has been lost, for that which has been broken, and for the allure of despair that can accompany grief in some of its stages.

When I think about the familiar characters in the stories of the Advent and Christmas season, I see that many of them were acquainted with sorrow in their participation on the events of the season we now celebrate. Mary was unexpectedly, inexplicably pregnant, with a fiance willing, possibly eager, to divorce her. Joseph felt betrayed, with no clear idea what to do next. The Wise Ones from afar seemed to be charged with the need to find a solution, a truth, to the searching of their minds and souls. And the Church marks with deep sorrow the slaughter of the innocent ones after Herod’s insane rampage in killing all the infant boys born, who threatened his imagination.

I can and do connect with those sorrows. There is sorrow in the child that appears, no matter what age or stage, that seems to require something more from us than we are able to provide, or with whom we are ill-matched. There is sorrow in marriages and partnership when illness or grief strikes a loved one. There is sorrow in so many who have been faithful to the ideals and the principles to which their lives have been committed, only to find that now all the rules, sensibilities and specs have changed. And our lamentation is deep and wide when we witness the brutality and callousness and dis-empowering of so many vulnerable human beings, in our own neighborhoods and in our nation and the nations all around the globe. In this “bleak midwinter” of our world’s history, we grieve profoundly, even as we look for some Light that will show us how to participate in its healing.

I began Advent with a trip to the local art museum where there is a stunning exhibit of the work that Marc Chagall created for ballet and opera. Colorful, provocative, enchanting, each figure and background set forth imagination and energy, but also each one carried a shadow, the sorrow to be found in the work for which it was created. Even in “The Magic Flute” by Mozart which delights with humor, with wit and intrigue, in the midst there is sorrow, an intimation of which I found in the backdrop (pictured above) that opened the opera, “wings of sorrow,” lurking even in the starry sky. I am comforted with the depiction.

I also began Advent reading Father Gregory Boyle’s new book Barking to the Choir in which he regales his readers with story after story of the tears of tragedy that is the daily fare of the “homies” with whom he works. The stories are unimaginable to some of us who live comfortable lives. A friend of mine said, “I laughed, I cried, I laughed, I cried, over and over.” Yet it is a book about Hope, even in and through the sorrow.

I am challenged to give place in my life to the sorrow that is part of who we are, where we are in this time in history. Sorrow is a constant thread of life, not strange, not the result of something bad, just life on this earth. But it is not the only thread, nor the last word. I acknowledge the sorrow, grieve it whatever way is right for me, and leave room for Hope to come in. Not a bad way to begin Advent!

Advent IV: Signs of Hope-Little Ones

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

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My days of hands-on childcare have come and gone, yet this Advent season, I am surrounded by babies and little ones, in the main virtually, but also in person. Next door baby Benjamin was born, a child with a black father and a white mother, adored and adorable. My peers are almost all grandparents, each year adding more to their tribes–Juliet, Asher, Joshua, Henry, Rosie and Alexander, among others. My hearts leaps up with Hope when I see or hear these little ones. I see Hope that something new and unrepeatable has been created, full of promise, untarnished as yet by the cares and pressures to which we as humans are heir.

Little ones give Hope with their eyes. Their watching everything that is shiny and new, without cynicism or boredom, lights up my own eyes.  If I can continue to look at each day, each person, each flower, bird and tree with the Hope that somethings precious is to be found there, I can replenish the Hope that so often threatens to die with the doom-saying media and the prognosticators of cloudiness.

Little ones give Hope with their vulnerability. They are willing to take love and nurture wherever it comes. There will be a time when they need to learn how to defend themselves, and to put their startle reflexes to good use. However, in the beginning they can trust that when food is offered, it is good food; that when warmth is offered, it can be nestled into, and that when smiles are shining, they mean good intentions and love. I would love to nurture a spirit of appropriate openness, one that radiates Hope.

Little ones are always learning, ever Hopeful that there is something new to be discovered–through their mouths, their hands, their skin–their own bodies. When they are moving as they should, they pave their way into becoming all they are meant to be. I want to keep Hopeful by continuing to learn about the world and those in it. I have had to learn much about my body this past six months, through surgery and accident, but on the other side of those challenges, I have deeper knowledge of how I am fearfully and wonderfully made, how the health of the earth contributes to my own health and how I need to participate in its on-going healing. I have also learned, incarnated in my own body, an intimation of what the senses and feelings are of so many who live with constant pain, suffering and challenge, and it has made me more compassionate and prayerful. And it has made me Hopeful that I can be an agent of healing or solace to the pain of others.

It is not accidental that in this Advent season our Hope begins with a little one, a Child, born wide-eyed, vulnerable and growing in favor with humanity and divinity. I see that it is not sentimentality that calls us to celebrate the birth of the Child, but that it is a statement of Hope. What and Who is born comes to give sight to our blindness, openness to our hyper-vigilance, and learned hearts for our own usefulness and capacity to heal in the broken world.

This week as we move into Christmas, I will be seeing and hearing little ones–my own grandchildren, those in the neighborhood, real and virtual, and those around the world. My own little Sadie who looks at me so intently in the photo above is now eight and a half years old, with personality, vision, intelligence and, most of all, love. And her growth gives me Hope–for her own contribution to the world, for her own future.  She and her brother and cousins, my grands, are Hope for me. As are Benjamin, Juliet, Asher, Joshua, Henry, Rosie and Alexander. What God began with the birth of a Child continues to bring Hope, Healing and Things that make for Peace.

May the signs of hope brighten these last days of Advent in you!

 

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Advent III: Signs of Hope-Harmony

11 Sunday Dec 2016

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So much of the Great Grayness that we are living through is covered with noise and disconnection. We read of or hear people screaming, horns blasting, helicopters hovering, sirens klaxoning all through our roads and towns. I long for peaceful silence, and yet there is a hopeful lilt in the atmosphere when I hear beautiful harmony. It is in the old carol’s words, “heavenly music (that) floats o’er all the weary world.”

It grounds me in the promise of Hebrew Scripture that there will come a day with a new heaven and a new earth, where the wolf and the lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like the ox (Isaiah 65: 17, 25). Things will fit together and make beautiful music together. Most Sunday mornings as soon as I wake, I tune into our local classical music station to the offering called “Soul Music.” For three hours I drink in choral music, primarily sacred, sung to ancient texts of Hebrew and Christian Scripture. Some of it is sung in languages other than my own; some of it offers plangent chords and melodies which cover the words. But the bringing together of the voices themselves–four part, madrigal, chant, echoes–all remind me of the promised dream: Peace on earth and good will to all people.

I practice feeding that dream all during Advent and Christmas. This year so far I have heard Eric Whitacre conduct a holiday concert in the downtown Disney Hall, blending old Christmas songs with his modern compositions. I have heard our church choir sing one of Bach’s less known cantatas, “For Unto Us a Child in Born,” expressing words of hope and trust. In our small group of friends who have gathered for 20 years, as we reflected on this past year and anticipated turning into the new year , we sang in the half-light, “O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer  our spirits by thine advent here…” Then we sang, “Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel,” words from the 9th C. Latin, hoping, looking, trusting, as we are trying to do. And the harmonies reassure me that it is all true!

In my conversations in these days, which can so readily turn to despair and bleakness, I listen for the harmonies can keep me hopeful. There is a family widely divergent in their politics whose members treat each other with love and respect. There is a man who has given himself to caring for an aging family member, as he volunteers at his church for the jobs that no one else does. There is a church who provides a community dinner every Sunday night all year long for the seasonal workers who come through the town. There is a community of educators who unanimously vote to safeguard its students who are at risk of deportation. There is a church who goes out on a limb to bring justice and mercy for those who are at risk in the neighborhood.

My call as the music in me and around me brings harmony to the world is to be one of the voices that fills in the chords, that supports the ostinato beneath the solo, that helps the chorus swell with joy as the Light appears, or even as the Hope of it soothes my heart. I  sense I want to be one of the angels that the carol sings about and let the Hope  in harmony fill me:

And you beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,/ who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,/ look now for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:/ O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing. (It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Sears.)

 

The illustration is taken from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

 

 

 

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Advent II: Signs of Hope–Lights

04 Sunday Dec 2016

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My Hope continues to need prompts. The scent and blossom of the rose give me cues, and this week the Light in the semi-dark expands my repertoire of signs. I love our Advent Candles, plopped down in the midst of closed blinds, rumpled couch covers, and uncertain plans. The world hovers with great grayness, disheveled-ness and despair. But in Advent someone keeps lighting a Light!

The Gospeller records: What has come into being in him was Life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3b-5)

How much I am looking for points of Light, as a former president phrases it! And I have noticed and felt them. As I am being treated in physical therapy, my healer tells me a story of Thanksgiving largesse, spontaneous, imaginative and far ranging, with compassion, kindness and long-lasting effect. In hearing about the death of  long-time saint of God, I also hear an outpouring of times and places where her milk of human kindness was served to so many with energy, intelligence, imagination and love. A community observes the anniversary of a horrendous act or terror, and despite the deep wounds that will leave scars forever, as individuals and clusters, they pray, they witness, they improve methods of protection and they support one another.

I am grateful for each voice and pen that shows a way to light the Light in Hope in this Advent season: for each prophetic pastor who speaks the Truth in Love, for each blogger who does not sink into hand-wringing or indulge in diatribes or leap to ad hominem assaults of shame and blame, for each commentator whose voice is that of the turtle-dove rather than the hawk. I receive Hope in each conversation in which the darkness is not denied, but pragmatic steps to turn the Light on are offered–writing letters to people in power; bringing in the trash cans of an elderly neighbor; giving to food programs, blood banks and toy drives. Not any of them alone bring the Light of Hope to full blaze, but each little Light reflects the Light of Life, and gives Hope.

I will keep my eyes open for points of Light this week: in the concert hall, in the shopping center, in the general stores and specialty stores, in the coffee shops, in my living room, in my inbox, on the phone, on Facebook, in the mail. And then I will ask myself where I can bring the Light of Hope–next door? down the block? across the street? to the food bank? to the start-up in service of the frail? to this particular conversation in which I find myself? If the Light is shining, it needs to shine in me, through me, with all my limitations, opportunities, and affections. And I am humming in Hope from the Iona Community, “Kindle a flame to lighten the dark, and take all fear away, ” flexing my Hope muscles in belief that the Light cannot be extinguished

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Advent IV: Love, the Star

20 Sunday Dec 2015

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I keep looking to the east this Advent. How I long for a Star in the east that would bring us goodness and light!

Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim one more light the bowl shall brim, shining beyond the frosty weather, bright as the sun and moon together. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Star is on the way. (Eleanor Farjeon)

The promise is that the Holy One has visited/is coming in this season. When I look out east from my prayer corner, I don’t see stars. The ambient light has faded them away, or daylight is overtaking the night sky. The same is true for the anticipatory longing looks in my soul. But I trust that there is a Star shining beyond the frosty weather, bright as the sun and moon together who has appeared and will appear in my heart and in the world. So I pray in these last days of Advent:

Come, O Star of Wonder, fill me with wonder–at your created beauty, at your amazing diversity, at the endless surprises in making a way where there is no way. Shine in me and through me, so that I am a bearer of wonder along the trails that I wander, and bring delight to my companions on the way.

Come, O Star of Night, into our world of opaqueness and myopia–shine into the crevices and crannies where the Light seems absent and impossible. Shine into my own darkness, which I know is not dark to you, and shine through me so that I can go boldly into places along my path that are longing for light.

Come, O Star of Beauty, buoy me with the beauty I see in your star-shine in the world–in faces of peacemakers, in random acts of kindness by strangers, in the artistic renderings of painter, poet and composer, in birds and trees and friendly beasts. Shine your beauty on and in me that I may bring brightness to the neighborhood and city and nation awash with the smudges and soot of trying to make it through the day, trying to make sense of things, trying to make ends meet.

Come, O Star of Grace, illuminate my own own understanding of how you are present in our world, from the knottiest and most complicated issues of the day to the tiniest and most fragile of connections between people and your created world. Shine your Grace upon me that I can walk with Grace, in Grace, gracefully.

May your Love, the Star, keep shining, giving us great Light, in us and around us, until we are able to see it and follow it! Amen.

 

 

 

 

Advent III: Love, the Rose

13 Sunday Dec 2015

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I flew to the east this past week. I didn’t encounter “weather” the likes of which I hear about in the news, but it was definitely winter where I was. There was no snow or rain, but there were bare trees and gray branches. In my own yard back at home, there were no roses left, no camellias out, not many blooms anywhere.

Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare, one more seed is planted there. Give up your strength this seed to nourish, that in course the flower may flourish. People, look east: and sing today: Love, the Rose, is on the way (Eleanor Farjeon).

This Advent it has been a challenge to see much besides “bare furrows” in the field–loved ones suffer, old acquaintances square off, tribes stake out exclusive claims, and so many just weep in loneliness, frustration and pain. Yet on this third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, the Church offers a rose colored candle to be lighted, both to honor Mary, the mother-to-be, and in an older time, to give respite to the darkness of Advent, by lifting some of the practices of austerity, in hope that there is a “seed” left to nourish. We are asked to give up our strength to support the tiny seed of hope nestled in the ground which seems unforgiving and barren, even when the darkness does not allow us to see what might be about to blossom.

In the twelve days left before Christmas I am turning my attention to the “littles,” the small things that might have a seed to hope in them, that need nourishment from me in order to become what they can be. I am remembering the last days of my own pregnancies, when all the big items had been taken care of–nursery ready, supplies on hand, arrangements made for getting to the hospital. What was left was the waiting and internal preparation. Was I ready to be a mother? what would encourage me, nurture my hope? would there be companions on the way? and was I paying enough attention to positioning myself to access that strength?

This Advent the “littles” I need to which I need to pay attention this year are inner ones primarily.  I have had a long run of attending to “seeds” around me in the wider world, people who have needed care, situations that have needed mending. However, the “seed” in my own heart feels buried and thirsty. So in these last two weeks of Advent I want to give up my strength primarily to that soul work. The sacred text that came to me at the beginning of Advent was this one from James 5:8–Do not lose heart…God is kind and compassionate. But these past weeks I have been moving at warp speed (for me), and I have not slowed down enough to wait with patience to notice the kindness and compassion of the Holy One. Mary was known for pondering things in our heart: I have much to ponder this week. I will do that with silence, with music and reading, with walking the labyrinth–do not lose heart! Mary was known for going to soul friends for protection, comfort and wisdom: I will reach out to beloved ones who keep bearing flames of hope by example and insight–do not lose heart! Mary was willing to receive what the Holy One wanted to give her: I am offering the little seed that is my heart to receive whatever it is that I am being given–do not lose heart, the Holy One comes to you!

Love, the Rose, in on the way–in the little seeds of my life this Advent.

 

 

Advent II: Love, the Bird

06 Sunday Dec 2015

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Birds, though you long have ceased to build, guard the nest that must be filled. Even the hour when wings are frozen God for fledgling time has chosen. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Bird, is on the way.  (Eleanor Farjeon)

As I look eastward out my window in the morning, I have a host of birds that entertain and intrigue me–mockingbirds, wrens, crows, the busy hummingbird quite in love with the fig tree next door, who drops in often, and if the wind is right, seagulls come screeching through. One morning we were even visited by an adolescent hawk, resting mid-flight on her way to somewhere. But even in our temperate climate, there seem to be fewer birds aloft than in spring and summer months.

According to the carol, the Advent task is guarding the nest that must be filled. This week my heart longs to know how to guard and protect the nests for the little ones in our world who are at risk. We are closely connected to our neighbors in the east in the towns of San Bernardino and Redlands. Beyond the colleagues who were slaughtered last week, I am in grief for the children whose nests have been permanently upended because of  that day–the 6 month old child of the shooters, the little ones who were left without a parent after the shooting, the learners who endured hours of lock down while the sorting out process continues, the neighborhood gaggles of young people who now have been close up and personal to the effects of terror. How am I called to be a protector of nests and the ones who inhabit them?

I am reminded again and again how in both testaments of the Bible, there is a call to protect, to care for, to be advocates for the widows and children. A friend here is part of an interfaith coalition of people who are are becoming advocates for undocumented immigrant children shipped in from the border, awaiting in warehouses for the judicial process to grind its wheels. And I support with energy the many gatherings of faithful ones who labor at feeding the hungry children, housing the homeless ones and providing for the well being of so many vulnerable ones. In the movie “Mary Poppins” the most poignant plaint is from the Bird Woman on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, singing “Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.” How am I to feed the birds this Advent?

 The promise is that Love, the Bird is on the way this Advent. In a very provocative book, Consider the Birds, pastor Debbie Blue writes about the appearances and meanings of birds in the Bible. Some are metaphors, some are illustrations, some are even names for the Holy One. When I am praying for Love, the Bird, to come quickly, I have in mind one not named in Scripture, but one from the Celtic tradition, who is the symbol for the Iona Community, the Wild Goose. I am told by members of that community that she was chosen as a symbol of the Holy Spirit; they were drawn to her because the wild goose is known for going where it will, like the Holy Spirit, and sometime it makes what seems to us to be a great mess. Certainly I don’t know how and when the Spirit is coming among us, but I believe she will, and I feel sure that in guarding the nests of the little ones, some neat and tidy ways of societal organization might be left in a mess.

Even so the Spirit and the Church cry out: Come, Lord Jesus!

The whole creation pleads: Come, Lord Jesus!

And meanwhile, I am paying attention to the places where I can guard the nests that need filling and care and feed the little birds that are here in this world.