Category Archives: Christian Life

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.

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,

 

 

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

Recollect

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On my piano rests a book given to me by my son years ago. Every year around the middle of November, I take the book from its place on a bookshelf and place it again on the piano so that we can enjoy hearing and singing this music again.  It is a collection of Christmas music from around the world, many very old traditional carols. I do not form a new collection; I remember this very good one and bring it close to me so that I can use it, savoring the words and melodies.

This is a good picture of the word recollect for me.  My grandparents used that word, pronouncing it “reck-o-lect,”  as remembering.  But the wider meaning is one of gathering back, of bring back to awareness, to assemble again something that is scattered.

It is this sense of gathering back that I am given as Advent unfolds. As I choose to open my music book once more, I am practicing one part of this remembrance.

Let It Begin Again

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sitting in early morning darkness

waiting for slivers of dawn

I light one candle,

dispelling this room’s darkness

sunday morning in church

one purple candle will flicker

all signs of beginning

the ancient Advent story

of dark need

of light coming

again

Saying Grace

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IMG_1063                      Our entire Satsuma harvest – but the tree is very small.
                                 
 As we move toward the end of November, our garden is a reminder of things that can be counted on: Gulf Coast Muhly fronds mound up like pink froth.   Satsumas are ready for harvest, Meyer lemons are hanging ready on the tree, the last of our okra and tender herbs fade as the first frost comes. Marigolds, chrysanthemums and calendula bloom gold and copper. Thanksgiving is less than a week away.  We will gather friends and family and favorite foods at full tables.

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Marigolds

I am remembering childhood meals around my Terrell grandparent’s table in Smith County, Texas. There were hearty breakfasts with farm fresh eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy,  dinners (at lunchtime) that often included  peas and tomatoes from their garden and an iron skillet of cornbread cut into wedges.There were suppers, often the same food reheated or a bowl of soup, and Sunday dinners after church. There were holiday meals at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas where the table and kitchen were both filled with chicken and dressing or a ham, plus those garden fresh vegetables which had been put up into canning jars. To follow, there would be an assortment of sweets – cookies, sweet potato, pecan, and mince pies, and often a pound cake. The food and occasion might vary, but there was always the same beginning: This, too, was something I could count on.  Papa Terrell would say grace. Today we may say a blessing or give thanks, but he always said grace.  The words were always the same, and rattled off so quickly I could never understand them.  But his posture spoke to my heart with no need for words.  Over 70 years later, now I see him clearly in my mind:  gray head bent forward and bowed in humility.

“We offer grace at table as a form of waiting with confidence…reciting such a prayer is sometimes referred to as a way of preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. We offer grace in amazement that even the good things we have rejected are being offered again. And then we eat, and the food meets an earthly need of our souls, and we are made whole.” – Cynthia Rigby, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary*

For me, the calendar days designated to Thanksgiving are a wonderful approach to  beginning of Advent exactly because of this waiting with confidence…preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. Our family will gather once again around the old oak table, the very same one that Grandma loaded with food and where Papa said grace.

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Pink Gulf Coast Muhly, a coastal grass

*as quoted by Wayne Slater in DallasNews, a Texas Faith Blog

Finding a Place to Grow

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PalmTreeFern

I have never been fond of palm trees in my garden landscape. To me, as close as we live to the coast, they seem much more at home near the ocean, fitting right in with the sand and sun and waves. However, I adore ferns, and grow several different varieties in our wooded back yard. But as you see here, there is definitely a friendly relationship between these ferns and the large palm where they so happily grow. I noticed this cluster of ferns when I took my 6 month old granddaughter out in her stroller for a walk one morning. This palm is the centerpiece of a small pocket park in their neighborhood. I don’t think I had ever truly paid attention (sorry, Mary Oliver!) and been astonished at the sight, and certainly had never talked about how these graceful little ferns happen to find enough to grow on in what seems to be just a notch left by palm fronds as they age and break off.

In this case, the palm’s growth habit (aging?) creates a little pocket where debris and leaves collect. The point where the palm fronds once attached to the trunk – called boots – collect leaf litter that composts to create a growing medium that ferns love. This is a natural occurrence  in areas like ours  where wet, humid conditions favor the ferns.

The ferns are epiphytes. This means they are growing on another plant that serves as a host, but they don’t get their nutrition directly from the host plant or cause any it any harm. Spanish moss is another common epiphyte.

Another little fern called the Resurrection Fern can be found growing on a palm trunk, although the most common choice for this fern around here are the large old live oaks where the fern grows along the branches looking like brown moss until it begins to rain. Then it transforms into emerald lace!  (See my previous post   http://tinyurl.com/TheOldOakTree)

I am glad I paid attention to these feathery green surprises. One day tiny spores were  floating around and a puff of wind carried them to just the right spot to root and grow. I am reminded of the lovely phrase used by Hildegarde of Bingen:  A Feather on the Breath of God. Maybe we can learn to let go enough to be shown just the right place to grow. And it just might be an unlikely place, an extraordinary place, one we would never have known to dream of.

“Pay attention

Be Astonished

Tell about it.”  ~ Mary Oliver

 

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Nourishment

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Milkweed and Lantana in our garden have continued to thrive and bloom in our South Texas heat.  I am grateful for the splashes of color from their small flowers.  But I am more grateful that they provide nectar for these giant swallowtail butterflies.  I understand that this butterfly will feed only from these plants, and afterward will find my Meyer lemon tree where they will lay their eggs.  These, of course hatch into  caterpillars with voracious appetites for citrus leaves, and then form their chrysalis where they become these lovely winged creatures. The cycle never ceases to amaze me.  I am blessed by this beauty.

Without stretching the comparison too far, I consider how, given the choices I have for the care and feeding of my soul, I choose that which nourishes me in the best ways for growing and changing.  I want to be more intentional in my choices of entertainment, the books I read,the art and music I enjoy,  the thoughts with which I fill my mind.

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“Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.”

Philippians 4:8   The Message