Monthly Archives: December 2013

Let Christmas Unfold

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008In our garden we plant host plants like Milkweed, fennel,dill and parsley  for butterflies. Once the larvae ravenously feed on these and undergo the change to chrysalis, nothing much seems to be happening until, metamorphosis complete, the limp wet wings begin to emerge and struggle to unfurl.  During this process if there is any attempt to help or rush the struggle, averting the necessary conditions for growth and transformation, the butterfly will not fly or live.

In many ways, Advent is a similar process of waiting and transformation. We may be tempted to rush the slow but steady journey but we need to take the time to live and lean into the meaning and experience of the coming of Christ.  It is not yet Christmas.  It is Advent, a time to anticipate the story and meaning.  In her book Simply Wait, Pamela Hawkins suggests that we take a walk through our home, room by room, and say a short blessing in each space.  “Take your time, imagine how you will live in this time and place over the next few weeks in ways that could help you not to hurry Christmas.”

What other ways help you be present to this Advent day and let Christmas unfold?

Called to Christmas

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After an early freeze this year, there is more intense color in our Texas Gulf Coast trees than I remember seeing in 20 years.  These Bradford pear leaves glisten in cold drizzle, their red and green echoing Christmas colors appearing inside our home.   As I turn the pages of our calendar and my Advent readings, I feel called to Christmas, beckoned to astonishment once again.

Prayer from the Unsettlng Season, by Donaald J. Shelby

“Lord, the calendar calls for Christmas. We have traveled this way before.During this Advent season we would see what we have never seen before, accept what we have refused to think, and hear what we need understand.  Be with us in our goings that we may meet you in your coming.  Astonish us until we sing “Glory!” and then enable us to live it out with love and peace. In the name of your Incarnate Word, even Jesus Christ.  Amen”

Expecting

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006Advent is a season of anticipation, of expecting, of waiting for birth.  My first response to the noun expectancy points to waiting in anticipation of important creation and change. I am reminded of my pregnancies – the anxious wondering of confirmation followed by wonder, amazement, and yearning for birth, then holding my sons to my heart.

Then, my grandchildren have been welcomed with joy in planning, preparing, making room!  For each of our granddaughters, I have begun writing a letter as soon as I heard the announcement of their conception.  I write that letter during our time waiting for them and give it to their parents when they are born to be kept until they are ready to keep it themselves.  I am journaling right now to the girl child who will come into our arms in the Spring. She is already in my heart.

Advent is like that journal for me – an expression of unconditional love and longing, a looking forward to the promise of a coming that will forever change our lives.

Waiting

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006“Advent is a dance set to the rhythm of waiting. We wait for the holy, we wait for the birth, we wait for the light…Advent reminds us that we are a pregnant people, for God calls each of us to bring forth the Christ.”      Jan Richardson, in Sacred Journeys:  A Woman’s Book of Daily Prayer.

 

Fear Not

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When an angel

snapped the old thin threads of speech

with an untimely birth announcement,

slit the seemly cloth of an evern more blessed

event with shears of miracle,

invaded the privacy of a dream, multiplied

to ravage the dark silk of the sky,

the innocent ears, with swords of sound:

news in a new dimension demanded

qualification.  The righteous were

as vulnerable as others.  They trembled

for those strong antecedent Fear nots,

whether goatherds, virgins, worker

in wood, or holy barren priests.

In our nights

our complicated modern dreams

rarely flower into visions.  No contemporary

Gabriel dumbfounds our worship,

or burning, visits our bedrooms.

No satellite signpost hauls us, earthbound

but star-struck, half around the world

with hope.  Are our sensibilities too blunt

to be assaulted with spatial power-plays

and far-out proclamations of peace?

Sterile, skeptics, yet we may be broken

to his slow, silent birth, his beginning

new in us.  His big-ness may still burst

our self-containment to tell us,

without angels’ mouths, Fear not.

God knows we need to hear it, now,

when he may shatter, with his most shocking

coming, this proud, cracked place,

and more if, for longer waiting,

he does not.

Luci Shaw, Accompanied by Angels:  Poems of the Incarnation

On the Way to Bethlehem

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GrayClouds       The Advent calendar we used when our sons were little came with a book.  My sons took turns opening the windows of a cardboard Bethlehem where they would find a symbol.  That picture or symbol would then be found on a page in their book where a short story explained it.  I will always remember their fingers pulling the windows open to discover what was uncovered.  The very first window opened to a dark, menacing cloud, sign of the troubled times for the people of Judah  long ago.

Like those who longed for help and hope groaned under the darkness of oppression and fear, we come as Advent begins each year with our dark clouds of doubt and anxiety as we again seek hope and light.  I love the poetry of Ann Weems.  She wrote from a place of loss and vulnerability, with transparency and honesty sharing both her pain and her faith.

Yesterday’s Pain

 “Some of us walk into Advent
tethered to our unresolved yesterdays
the pain still stabbing
the hurt still throbbing.
It’s not that we don’t know better;
it’s just that we can’t stand up anymore by ourselves.
On the way to Bethlehem,
will you give us a hand?”
Ann Weems, from her book,
copyright 1980, Westminster Press

Looking for the Star

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 The house is very quiet and still this afternoon, on this first Sunday of Advent. I have loved having all 12 (and another on the way) of us together.  After our family’s Sunday morning at church and lunch together, our adult children and our grandchildren have dispersed to their own homes.  Those who live in Fort Worth have been here the last 4 days during which we gathered all for a Thanksgiving feast, and as has become our tradition, then the Christmas tree was brought in and festive decorations begun. Lights in the yard and on the tree were reflected in the happy eyes of little girls, music filled spaces between laughter and excited conversation.   

As I sit among all the not yet placed wreaths, manger scenes, garlands and dear old things we hang on the tree, I think how the anticipation and joy did not leave with the children.  I sit in the quiet for a time.  Then I light the first Advent candle and begin listening to James Galway’s On the Way to Bethlehem.   Advent begins. How will you mark your Advent journey?  I would love to hear.

Adult Advent Announcement

O Lord,
Let Advent begin again
In us,
Not merely in commercials;
For that first Christmas was not
Simply for children,
But for the
Wise and the strong.
It was
Crowded around that cradle,
With kings kneeling.
Speak to us
Who seek an adult seat this year.
Help us to realize,
As we fill stockings,
Christmas is mainly
For the old folks —
Bent backs
And tired eyes
Need relief and light
A little more.
No wonder
It was grown-ups
Who were the first
To notice
Such a star.

~  David A. Redding,, from If I Could Pray Again