Friday - first week of Advent

When I was a young girl I found a spot in the corner of the church where I loved to sit. Here, before a tiered stand of votive lights I sat entranced by flickering flame. Intuitively I knew that although I was in the communal space of church, I had discovered a spot holding the faith of individual hearts.  Although I sat here when the church was quiet, I believed that by listening closely I could hear prayer circling around and through the lights: please ...thank you ...please ....thank you ....how can this be?  Accept my pain - my joy - my uncertainty - my confusion. Words of faith uttered as a human hand held a match to a waiting wick. The whispered prayers circled silently as I watched flames melt the wax of intention.

Remembering this spot of quiet I thought of one my favorite prayer-poems:

"Mid all the traffic of all the ways,
turmoil without, within.
Make in my heart a quiet place,
and come and dwell therein.
A little place of mystic grace,
of self and sin swept bare,
where I may look upon Thy face,
and talk with Thee in prayer."

These words were written in 1917 by John Oxenham in a London chapel where the poet had gone to think and pray upon receiving word that his son had been killed in World War I.  I marvel not only at the beauty of the prayer-poem, but also that his request to God during that time was very direct and very simple; 'make in my heart a quiet place and come and dwell therein."

"Come and dwell therein."  Are not those words the essence of the Advent journey?  We began this week of reflection with Mary. who when asked if she would be the vessel of creation that brought Jesus into the world, said "let it be done unto me according to Thy will."

I firmly believe that one intention of beginning our spiritual new year with the season of Advent and the old, old story of pregnancy and birth is to remind us that God's work of bringing His love to the world has not ended.  God remains dependent upon you and I to continue the work of creating his kingdom of love: God needs me - and you - today just as He needed Mary.

Sunday - First week of Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent ...the beginning of our spiritual journey to Christmas. 
A decade ago I wrote a booklet of Advent meditations and recently I have been being nudged to do some editing and share them again. So, it is my intention to post a short essay/meditation each day. Today's will be longer than the others simply to set up the theme of the meditations which is to me, the p

rayer we say as we recognize and agree to God's creative power entering our lives: 'how can this be?'
So, if you are interested, please enjoy ...and I apologize in advance for today's being a bit long and promise that the others will bemuch shorter.
The Christmas story of the birth of Jesus is one of the most beloved stories the western world has in it's possession, in fact so beloved that we have devised all kinds of celebrations in it's honor. The only problem with a story that has been told for so long and contains so many yearly cultural rituals, is that emotionally and spiritually we 'know' the story. More importantly, culturally we celebrate the end of the story and so, our tendency is to not pay much attention to all the flavor of the story.
The germination of the seed for this story took a very long time to bloom.The people of God had been promised a Messiah and for centuries they sat in circles and in temples telling stories of how their God acted in their lives and tried to find clues to how they might recognize this Messiah when he appeared.
All the waiting, all the imagining of what a Messiah might be and for heaven's sake, they had forgotten that the beginning of the story would be a baby; not a royal baby but an ordinary, everyday, born of regular folk, baby. Regular folk who had not planned on this baby and who had not - according to the story - conceived of this baby in the normal way. And who had certainly not planned their lives to be the ones who birthed, nourished and cared for a baby who would become the Messiah and so, regular folk who were left (I believe) asking themselves, as their lives became the creative chaos of God's love: how can this be?
First person in this narrative of inconvenience is Mary, a young girl probably all of about 14 who had been preparing herself for a life she probably assumed would be like her mother's. Down through the centuries artist have painted pretty pictures of the beginning of Mary's life journey: glorious angel standing next to a beautiful young girl, eyes demurely downcast, hands politely folded as she serenely answers yes to the request to bring God's child into the world.
I have always longed to see a painting of Mary shown after her yes, leaning against a wall, headdress askew, her body limp and a stunned look on her face.
My guess is that although Mary's yes came from her deepest being; the part of her that psalm 139 tells us is the 'inmost self created by God', there was nothing particularly serene about a yes that turned her life into chaos for she was now pregnant, unmarried and faced the task of telling her betrothed, Joseph, that he was about to become a father but uh, by way of God's creative power.
God's creative power is not particularly tidy. If we read the story that unfolds carefully we will discover that each person in the narrative said yes to the creative power of God only to be left looking at the resulting chaos and asking, how can this be?
Poor Joseph is startled to discover his beloved is pregnant and who tells him this news with a crazy story about an angel who asks her to bring God's child into the world. And Joseph struggles with God's creative power that has turned his understanding of how life behaves upside down, and despite his confusion must have offered his how can this be in faith for an answer comes in darkness while he sleeps.
And then there is Elizabeth, Mary's cousin who has been barren all of her life and now, when she is 'past the time of life for conceiving' discovers that she is pregnant. How can this be, she asks and then tells her husband Zechariah her husband who not only asks how can this be, but turns his back on her in anger. According to the story, his angry 'how can this be' causes him to be left mute: his voice is taken away for several months - until he turns and accepts that although he does not understand this movement of God's creative power, he accepts the chaos God's creative power created in faith that recognizes, it is good.
Keep reading this ancient story and you will discover shepherds, inn keepers and wise men who are startled out of their normal lives by the creative power of God leading them to leave what brings them comfort and their sense of place in the world as they say 'yes' to something much bigger than they alone could conceive.
One of my favorite writers wrote the following words which I meditate on each Advent:
This is the season,
where love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been full of reason,
there'd have been no room for the child
How might God be asking you to release your certainties, your comfortable knowings and your expectations of how life is supposed to be in order that new life might be born?

Monday - first week of Advent

Advent is the beginning of the new year in the liturgical calendar. Above is a beautiful illustration of the circular season of a liturgical year. 

Unlike most calendars, the purpose of the liturgical calendar is not to mark time, but is a way of celebrating and understanding more fully the mystery of Jesus - the incarnation of God in human form.

I grew up Catholic and so the liturgical cycle of seasons and stories is part of my blood and bone and what I most appreciate as I get older is that whereas the calendar is a circle: whole, complete and everlasting;repeated endlessly, it also begins anew each year. If I perceive this calendar as having a new beginning place, Advent, then I have a way of also perceiving my life and my life with God as having a new place of beginning.

The celebration of Advent within my living is therefore a deliberate choice to remember that God needs my 'yes' to being open to the Spirit of God being born in me and from me as much as God needed Mary's yes. I also am asked to be part of the continuing creation of God's goodness in the world.

And so, I begin this new season with the story of creation ....and God reached into the formless void, shaped it and blew breath into it ....and Life began ...

As the story begins again, I am given another opportunity to open myself to Love ...not the love of gooey feelings but a love that is so huge and undeserved that I may well end up muttering how can this be? Like the people in the original story, opening myself to the Breath of God can possibly look crazy and scary and will almost always be a serious interruption of my ideas of what life is 'supposed' to be.

My suggestion for walking this way of love one little step at a time is to get a candle and set aside 15 minutes of each day. Find a little quiet space, light the candle, sit in the stillness and simply breathe in your willingness to believe in goodness. You may also consider offering into the flame you own personal cry of "how can this be?"

Tuesday - first week of Advent

Yesterday I shared that Advent begins the spiritual new year. Thinking about the concept of new year I realized what a wonderful difference there is between the cultural celebration of a new year and the spiri

tual celebration of Advent.

The cultural new year urges us to make resolutions of the fix-it variety: lose weight, exercise more, be more prompt, be less negative, save more and spend less - the list of possible fixings of our self is endless.

Advent as a New Year asks a completely different kind of attention; we prepare our selves to become open to the birth of God in the world. And on a personal level of awareness, we become willing to prepare for receiving God into our human heart in a way that allows for new life to be manifested in our living.

Manifest is one of my favorite words as it means 'to become palpably evident.' The phrase palpably evident brings to mind LIFE that is seen: flowers, trees, critters, art, and yes, we wondrous beings called persons. And Advent reminds us that in order for new life to become palpably evident: seen, we must be willing to believe it will indeed be born even when it is not yet seen.

Virtually all living things come from seeds that must germinate: they are generally planted within darkness of soil and then undergo a process where the shell of the seed cracks open and the life inside begins to expand into becoming the life that was hidden within the hard shell.

The shell holding the life within seeds is a paradox; the shell is needed in order to protect the dormant life and yet for the life to become manifest; seen, the shell must crack open, a process that requires planting into soil, fertilizing or nurturing the soil, watering and providing light.

As I begin Advent I am reminded that even at age 60 there are seeds within my being that are still protected by a hard shell and are awaiting my willingness to allow God to be the gardener of my soul. My part is a deliberate willingness to be open to the grace of God's love; to allow that which is an obstacle to the roots of the seed to be removed and to water the soil with gratitude and turn myself to the warmth of God's love in faith.

When I need to fortify my faith in things as yet unseen and in the basic goodness God created I turn to one of my favorite passages of scripture. Psalm 139:13-14

It was You who created my inmost self,
and put me together in my mother's womb;
for all these mysteries I thank you:
for the wonder of myself, for the wonder of Your works.

Wednesday - First week of Advent

Light is an astonishing gift. Without light it becomes difficult to find our way as we walk. Without light we cannot see what we are doing. Without light most seeds could not move upward through the darkness of soil in order to begin the next process of growth. Without light we would not have flowers or grass or leaves or fruit or vegetables. Without light from

 fire we humans would have died off from cold and been unable to cook food. Without light human existence is virtually impossible.

In modern living it is extremely easy to forget how essential light is because it is easily obtained: flip a switch and rooms are flooded with light. Yet through most of the history of human existence light was a very precious commodity: there were no switches to flip, coals within the hearth were tended diligently and candles required labor to make and the materials used to create them were limited.

Our Advent journey we reminds us to honor Light not only as an essential ingredient of living but Light as the fulfillment of God's promise for living as spiritual beings.

An Advent wreath is the symbol of using light as a means of remembering that God's promise was not only fulfilled but continues to be provided so that each of us may grow and live from the Light of God's love.

The wreath is generally a circle: God's love and presence is eternal without beginning or end. Most often the wreath is made of pine or fir branches: the tree that remains green with life even through the barren time of winter. On the wreath are placed four candles; three purple and one pink with a fifth white candle in the center called the Christ candle. A purple candle is lit during weeks one, two and four. The pink candle of rejoicing that the time is coming nearer is lit on the third Sunday and the Christ candle is lit Christmas day: the promise has been fulfilled as we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

The candle lit during this first week is called the Prophet's candle and honors Isaiah who was given the call to proclaim the vision God gave him of a Messiah who would come and rescue the children of Israel and deliver them from oppression. "The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine." Isaiah 9:1.

This promise of God fulfilled in Jesus continues to be fulfilled through all of time, including today, by the grace entering our lives whenever we take a tiny step of faith and turn our hearts in faith to God's presence: the Light of our Spirt.

Turning to the Light can be done in very small gestures, in fact sometimes faith can only come alive in tiny steps. I have had times in my life of great darkness: grief when a person whom I loved died and times when I lost a piece of my life that I had thought essential to being who I am. During those times it was difficult to continue believing in the Goodness of God. I did not exactly lose my faith, but I had a very, very difficult time SEEING any light.

Part of my personality is the need to make things concrete and when I am in a time of darkness - or that awful 'dusk' where I am jaded; that is I am weary because life seems to be mostly task and duty, I especially need concrete actions to remain conscious of God's presence. During the first time of awful darkness two actions became very important. One was getting up before dawn and watching tendrils of light seep through the darkness of night. Slowly over many years I learned that Light ALWAYS overcomes darkness. My only part in this grand daily miracle was a willingness to get up, watch, and rejoice in another promise of life fulfilled.

The other action I love is candle lighting. There is something very powerful and potent about striking a match and holding it to a wick. Consciously holding my lit match to the wick and offering what is most pressing in my heart, I see the wick receive what I offer and burst into flame: a concrete action affirming my faith that God is present and receives my words.

So, if you are inclined you might gather what is needed to create an Advent wreath and put it in a place where you are able to light a candle affirming both the promise of God fulfilled in the world and the willingness to believe that the promise of God's love and light is fulfilled in your life. If a wreath isn't on the agenda for this year I would suggest getting a candle and dedicating it to this season of Advent and taking maybe 10 minutes each day to sit with a flickering flame and believe that God's promise of life and light IS fulfilled in your life in the same way God's life has remained alive and personal through all of human time.

I apologize for this being so long today ...tomorrow MUCH shorter - I promise.

Thursday - First week of Advent ...

At age 60 I find myself drawn to Elizabeth in the Christmas narrative. Elizabeth was Mary's cousin who found herself 'with child' after her time of 'being able to conceive' was over. What a glorious reminde

r that we are never to old conceive and birth God's life and love.

Advent is a journey of pregnancy; that time of carrying deep within our body, new life that slowly develops and grows until it has developed enough to be birthed and live in the outer world. I have been pregnant three times and each pregnancy, each birthing and each child were different but the one constant in each was the awareness that a new life - separate from me; completely different than I - was using my body as a vessel of creation.

What Advent reminds as we begin a new year of spiritual awareness is that we are never too old to conceive new life in and with God. The Advent journey of pregnancy reminds us that it will take time for this newly conceived life to grow; that in the early stages there are few outer signs of conception and yet, over time, as this Life grows within, your body, mind and spirit will alter in order to accomodate IT's growth.

The picture attached is a candle flame ...a reminder that God's love and the life of God each of us carries within our being is alive and potent. This flame of love may well, at this point of conception, be small and barely seen, yet, as the stories of faith remind us, it IS.

Years ago, decades most likely, I scribbled down a couple lines from the writer Louis Everly. I wish I could remember the book they came from but nonetheless, here they are.

"Inside of every human being God exists and waits to be detected so that Creation may thrive. Loving people means summoning them forth with the loudest and most insistent of calls. It means stirring up in them a mute and hidden being who can't help leaping at the sound of our voice."

As you light your candle today may you know in your heart that God lives within you and cannot help but respond in delight to your voice.

All Saints Day

Growing up I went to church a lot.  Not just on Sunday but weekday Mass was the norm since I attended parochial school.

Because my childhood was a long, long time ago, Mass was said in Latin and truth be told, the sermons may as well have been for all the interest they held, so, to my mind, there was a lot of empty space to be filled while in church. I filled that space with stories.  First I discovered that the gospels and epistles were bible stories and so I'd read those but my favorite goldmine of stories was in the back of my missal. There, in the back pages were stories of saints, which it turns out, were not stories of goody-two-shoes but stories of passionate adventurous people

I was thinking about this because today is All Saints Day, a day of celebrating people who lived the adventure of being passionately in love with God: ardent persons.

Ardor is an old fashion word and in some ways, it is an old fashion way of being for there is nothing sophisticated about the burning enthusiasm of ardor.  Children naturally have ardor; what they love is loved without reservation be it bugs, dinosaurs, rocks, their best friend or pet.  A child bestows love without reservation because a child has no image of self to uphold and therefore a child's love is unsophisticated; it is genuine and fierce. Witness a young child spying their mom or dad after separation and you see ardor in action as the child runs and flings themselves; their entire being captured by enthusiastic love.

Enthusiasm is one of my favorite words of living for taken apart, the prefix en means within and theos is God: enthusiasm is to be within God; to know the experience of being held within love, exactly as a child knows love when held in the arms of mom or dad, grandma or grandpa, beloved aunt or uncle.

Maybe the saints, those ardent persons who lived knowing they were animated by God's love are at heart, simply persons who took seriously one of the best known stories of the bible.  You know it, it's the one where Jesus has been preaching all day and is looking a bit tired and still, at the end of the afternoon, parents are pressing to get to the front of the crowd so he may bless their children . Meanwhile,  the apostles are trying to be helpful and give Jesus some space and so they're telling the parents, 'no he's tired, let him be.'  And then Jesus hears this and immediately puts a stop to it, "do not keep the children from me' he says, for unless you become as one of them, you shall not enter my kingdom."

Unless we become like a child: unsophisticated, eager to discover and learn, fervent, genuine, sincere, fiercely devoted and full of ardor: burning enthusiasm, we cannot enter the kingdom.  Why?  Because the kingdom is love and the story of the saints always has one common element: they entered the kingdom of love by passionately living the life they found within God's love.  They became God's child.