Monthly Archives: December 2014

Bread

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IMG_0133 Advent preparation resembles the process that occurs when I bake bread.The work of milling has crushed the grains of wheat.  I choose the grains, gather the ingredients, add them in a deliberate way and begin to work, one step at at a time. But having the yeast, flour,liquid, salt and seasoning in the bowl does not mean there is not still work to be done. As I mix and stir these together, a new work begins – one of my efforts and one that is entirely the result of what has been gathered together to create new dough, a life of its own. As I turn the dough onto a floured cloth and sink my hands into its softness to knead, an ancient chemistry begins to stretch and change, creating flavor and fragrance and nourishment. The heat of the oven finishes this alchemy. This kitchen mystery is a reflection of  Advent Mystery.

 

don’t wait

to celebrate

one who hears

kneads dough with her hands

sets bread to rise,

breathing fragrant prayer

tasting this wisdom

now

 

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Light Received

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IMG_1887This thin slice of agate sits in front of a window in my home.  As the light changes and shifts during the day, the suspended crystals glimmer, one spot bright now, then another. There is womblike, mystery here, an exquisite dance of light, reminding me of angel visitations and Light received.

 

Christmas Dream 

“…an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.”  Matthew 1:20

 

“Amiably at home with virtue and evil –

the righteousness of Joseph and Herod’s

wickedness – I’m ever and always a stranger to grace.

I need this annual angel visitation.

-this sudden dive by dream into reality-

to know the virgin conceives and God is with us.

The dream powers its way through winter weather

and gives me vision to see the Jesus gift.

Light from the dream lasts a year. Through

equinox and solstice I am given twelve months

of daylight by which to build the crèche where my

Redeemer lives. The fetus of praise grows

‘deep in my spirit. As autumn wanes I count

the days until I bear the dream again.”

Eugene Peterson

 

 

 

 

Surprised by God

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IMG_1406This folk art crèche from Mexico was given to us as a 25th wedding anniversary present.  We lived then in Indonesia, and many of our friends were expats who had lived around the world.  The couple who gave it  had names similar to ours and the gift tag read  “A Mary and Joe from Mary and Joe to Mary and Joe!’

Thinking of Mary and gentle Joseph as simple Joe and Mary somehow gives another dimension to these little nativity figures. seeing my sweet granddaughters as they laugh and cry and run to hug me helps me give flesh to Mary , too. In her innocence, trust,  and willingness to say yes to what seemed impossible, she modeled for me the miraculous outcome of being surprised by God.  This touches me in a way that none of the Madonna masterpieces in all of art history.

Announcement

Yes, we have seen the studies, sepia strokes

across yellowed parchment, the fine detail

of hand and breast and the fall of cloth –

Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Titian, El Greco, Rouault – each complex madonna plotted at last

on canvas, layered with pigment, like the final

draft of a poem after thirty-nine roughs.

But Mary, virgin, had no sittings, no chance

to pose her piety, no novitiate for body or

for heart. The moment was on her unaware;

the Angel in the room, the impossible demand,

the response without reflection. Only one

word of curiosity, echoing Zechariah’s How?

The teen head tilted in light, the hand

trembling a little at the throat the candid

eyes, wide with acquiescence to shame and glory –

“Be it unto me as you have said.”

from Accompanied by Angels, Poems of the Incarnationn, by Luci Shaw

Waiting, Watching

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Outside my dining room window we planted Holly. The plants were no more than large bushes when they went into the ground almost 10 years ago, but now they have surpassed their intended purpose, which was to grow tall and branch out and give us a lovely green screen in front of our fence . Each year, they produce enough holly branches and red berries to decorate the whole neighborhood with fresh holly. But the berries are unformed in the beginning, then small  green nubs which swell. Around Thanksgiving, or our first colder weather,I begin looking out the window to watch as  the berries take on a blush, deepening to a burnt orange, before finally glowing Christmas red. As I wait and watch, the right time comes to bring some branches and berries inside for our own “hanging of the green.”

Advent’s theme involves waiting and watching while preparing for the coming Christ. As I wake and greet God’s new mercies each morning during Advent, the color in this ancient story deepens. As I wait and watch and reach, the time grows nearer for me to gather the brilliant mystery once again and celebrate.

Dwelling

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PorchTimeThe above photo is not a picture of my current home, or any we have had for that matter. When we lived in Indonesia, when those who were originally from that country asked for your address or where you lived, the question would usually be “Where are you staying?” Advent asks of us not so much where we are staying, but what we are allowing to stay in us. What dwells within me? Do I show that I welcome and offer hospitality for what God brings?

Mary set this example for us in her willingness to say yes to the physical growth within her of the indescribable gift of God’s son.  Advent calls me to that kind of willingness, for Christ to be dwell within me. If I allow my list of special things I feel urged to accomplish before December 25th to drive me, I may become so strained and frazzled one might believe I have lost the whole point.

“What if instead of doing something, we were to be something special?Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.”   ~ Loretta Ross-Gotta, as quoted in Watch for the Light, Readings for Advent and Christmas.

 

 

Patience

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100_1599In the basket of stones I keep on our back porch is a stone with the word “patience” on it.  I use these stones at times to help me pray, and I often need to pick up patience!  If the commercialization of Christmas cannot be ignored, it may take a great deal of patience to avoid jumping before Thanksgiving  into extravagant celebration of Christmas without waiting and working through the days of Advent. “Waiting for Christmas is like waiting for a star to fall. We know it will come, streaking across our lives with promised Light, but we can grow weary from the Advent strain of waiting.”

Can I take time to lean into the meaning of Christ’s coming?  Can I put down my lists of things to do, and simply be?  Waiting is hard. I need patience. I want to anticipate the fullness of the coming of Christ. Let me not hurry Christmas.

 

May I have a deep, calm resistance against the riptide of the season’s hurry.

While swell upon swell of Christmas laps at the very edge of our lives,

you call me to an Advent way of living;

deep calling to deep,

love bearing love,

Word becoming flesh,

Slow, labored, beloved Patience,

come, teach me to trust in Advent’s buoyancy;

suspend me, outstretched,for  the coming of Christ.     Amen

adapted from   Simply Wait, Cultivating Stillness in the Advent Season, by Pamela Hawkins

 

 

 

An Ucertain World

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y001My granddaughter holds out a heart made by my friend – a symbol of the open spirit and tender heart of both little girl and woman. Advent gives a time to recognize perilous times without closing ourselves to the ways God can help us to live and work in the certainty of His provision for us.

The Advent story begins with darkness and God’s silence and waiting. It begins before the angel’s visit, a pregnant girl,  the gathering of those in the manger scenes,, when there was a longing for the message that would unfold. It began in an uncertain, unsettled world. I looked through a journal I kept in 2012 recently and was reminded of months of surgeries for Joe, and the ways in which we crossed the threshold of that year, stepping into a path that we did not yet see clearly, waiting for Light for the next step, and Light to reflect to each other. Over and over, I read the notes I made that showed how that happened.  This looking back and telling the story is what Advent means – a story of a time of waiting through days that hold pain and grief, but knowing underneath all is the surety of God’s presence..

 

O God, help me live and work with certainty in an uncertain world. Help me to take the next step even if I do not yet see my way clear, trusting your Light for the way.. Help me to hold out my heart,

 

 

Advent Flames

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Another way of counting Advent days is the use of an Advent wreath with a candle to light and add each Sunday during Advent. For our Advent candles at home, we do not use the same arrangement every year, and often do not use traditional colors (3 purple, 1 pink, and a white candle for the center candle, the Christ candle).  I use the same candles from the year before when possible.  Here, the first candle, lit last Sunday, burns brightly – the candle of Hope. Of course the candles lit in the beginning burn down the furthest, If all the candles were new, all of them would be the same height in the beginning. This candle may be the tallest now, but will wind up being the shortest in the last week of Advent.

I recently learned about a little known Advent tradition of using an Advent log, instead of a wreath.  It has a candle hole for each day of Advent, plus one for Christmas day.   Here is a poem  that refers to this lovely tradition:

 

Prayer at the Advent Log

The small lights steady

against the dark

Your flame is touching ours.

Today is the fifth day.

It is a safe fire,

the candles still tall

against the brittle wood

of the birch, the air

damp and chill.

But the days will draw us

inexorably toward

Your celebration.

And again we’ll stand

in the crackling air,

the first day’s flames

licking the log

with their shortened lives,

the length of it threatened

by Your fire,

Your love dazzling our eyes,

And O Christ,

Your love

searing our nakedness.

~Jean Janzen as quoted in A Widening Light, edited by Luci Shaw.

 

 

 

Divine Interruption

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One of the ways our family walks the Advent path is with an Advent calendar. This is not like a desk calendar with pages.  We have a number of different ways of counting the days.  One of the first we used when our boys were very small was by reading a story from a Little Golden Book every night. The book came with its own cardboard triptych, a fold out replica of Bethlehem, with shuttered windows that could be opened to reveal a symbol inside. Our children loved opening the tiny windows and first listening, then reading the part of the story the symbol represented.  One of our sons and his wife gave us one that is a box, a stack of small drawers that can be opened each day.

Today is the 4th day of Advent, and this is the Advent “keeper” or calendar I used this morning during my quiet time. It is a little A frame shape box with hinged sides that fold shut and latch.  There are tiny hooks for small figures to attach representing a different character in the nativity story for each day.  When I look at these 4 figures, it seems they are all shepherds, young shepherd girls and boys. As I scattered the remaining figures, thinking of the days ahead, I thought how these had lives that were tremendously interrupted by the story of Christ’s coming – the shepherds, most certainly Mary and Joseph, and even the animals who shared their stall (there are cows and sheep to hang on hooks, too) – all were divinely interrupted and all had lives were changed forever in ways they previously could never have imagined..I wonder if I am open to such interruption, to being unsettled..  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”  I

“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 understand. Be with us in our goings that we may meet you in your coming…”  ~  The Unsettling Season, by Donald J. Shelby

 

Hope

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IMG_1336My young granddaughters and I made this painting project together last week. As I laid out cardboard under a blank canvas and handed out a tube of paint and paintbrushes, 6-year-old Jordann said she didn’t want black, that she likes different colors. I explained our first step was to paint the white canvas completely black.  As I spoke, I was reminded of the words of an artist who painted many sunlit landscapes and night scenes where light shone from windows. He said that he must paint the darkness first in order for light to glow in the way that made him famous.

So they painted all black and waited as paint dried. Later I painted words and added tiny lights.  Everyone loves this simple illustration of a favorite Christmas song.  I love, too, that it illustrates hope – the coming of light to darkness, the very image of Advent.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”   Isaiah 9:2

” …this is indeed a season of lights shining in darkness- candles in windows, colored lights on nighttime trees, a lantern glow in a stable, a star shining high in the heavens. Help me follow the light of these images to the unquenchable ligt of Your real presence.”   ~ in Christ the Light of the World by Thomas Kinkade, Anne Christian Buchanan, and Debra K. Klingsporn