Tag Archives: faith

This Day, This Life

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As new calendars appear on our desks and the days begin to fill with scheduling and appointments, it is possible for us to slip into a feeling that one day is like the next, whatever our jobs or commitments.  But that is never the case.  Just as each snowflake is separate and unique and  beautiful, so are our days. Each new day may unfold within a familiar framework, but the minutes and hours it offers are unlike any other and will never be repeated. Of course, the same is true for each of our lives.

From Morning Prayer to Evensong, help me Lord, to treasure my moments and my days.  May I spend them well, because this is the way I am spending my life.

“How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and that one is what we are doing.”  ~Annie Dillard, in The Writing Life

 

Choosing Seeds

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Seed catalogs begin to appear in the mail just as Christmas cards have stopped making their appearance.  I begin to plan which plants will go into my garden long before the weather allows preparing the soil to receive new plants and seeds.  But I know I must plan and choose carefully before planting.  I have a choice whether I grow beautiful fragrant herbs or allow the wind to blow in unwanted, invasive weeds.  We may sow wildflower seeds on the sides of our roadways, but I don’t know anyone who intentionally puts weed seeds in their gardens.

As our new year begins, many of us prepare our hearts and souls for new growth,  expanding our capacity to experience faith, hope, and love. We can choose what is planted and allowed to grow within us.

“…the key to living well is not so much what’s outside of us as what’s inside of us. It is what is deepest within us, not what is vexing around us, that determines the quality of our lives…Everything that’s in the heart we either put there or allow to nest there. We are responsible for the content of our souls.” Joan Chittister

Prayer for the New Year

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O God of new beginnings,

You wipe away our tears

and call us to care for one another

Give us eyes to see our gifts,

hearts to embrace all creation,

and hands to serve you every day of our lives.

~a common Christian Prayer for the New Year

 

 

Unexpected Discovery

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One of my granddaughters likes to leave me little surprises in unexpected places that I find after she has left. Once it was a bright blue ribbon tied on the spiral binding of one of my cookbooks.  Another time she left a small rose from their dressup trunk The rose was perched on the crosspiece underneath a wicker rocker in the room where she sleeps when she is visiting. How long did it take you to be surprised to find a candy cane hooked over Joseph’s arm in our mantel Nativity?

When I find these unexpected signs Maddie leaves for me, I laugh and reach for my gift. In these days following Christmas, I also find joy in gifts that tell me again that God is with me – a brilliant sunset on Christmas Day,the scarlet flash of a cardinal on a bare tree limb, memories of all the ways He has come to me in the past.  I want to pay attention so I don’t miss the signs.  I want to reach for the gift.

Welcome

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100_1877Selamat Datang

This bamboo nativity is one we got when we lived in Indonesia , along with the chest beneath it. If I titled today’s post Selamat Datang, many of you would not recognize the greeting, but if I smiled, spoke the words, and held out my arms, you would receive the message. Whether the creche is made of bamboo, or wood, or carved in stone, or simply made of sticks, we recognize its meaning because of the posture of the figures and their arrangement.  Christ’s coming broke down the walls that separate us, the barriers of difference and indifference, the stones in our path to God and to each other.  As we welcome Him, we learn a language that goes beyond speech.  We are offered a language of love.

Rekindling the Light

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Solstice has reminded us of the shortest day and the longest night. It is also a turning point. As dawn gilded the sky this morning days begin to grow again., Advent, with its 4 candles, is also seen as an observance of this rekindling

When I  light these candles, I reflect on the coming of the Light of Christ.  Can I do so with the intention of sharing this  light? .

What are the ways in which I can help make the world lighter? How do I bring light into the lives of those around me?

Listening

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Notes on Christmas Eve

 

 

A favorite children’s  Christmas song asks “Do you hear what I hear?”  These few days before Christmas day dawns, there is music everywhere – in the grocery store, piped into elevators, volume turned high for busy shoppers on the sidewalk. I love playing with a handbell choir at church and singing the songs of Christmas. Time around the piano with carols sung every year is one of our most special traditions, along with listening to all the Christmas classics. But I realize the danger in over familiarity.  I want to listen to the words and thrill to the message of this music.

God, help me slow down

Help me be still enough to listen

for hallelujahs and joy to the world

for Singer and Song

for words that turn

announcing your coming

offering your promise

Help me to pay attention and be astonished

Give me your Song to sing

And Yet…

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DECEMBER
Gary Johnson

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.
~ Gary Johnson. Text as published online by The Writer’s Almanac (December 22, 2011).

Like Us

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Advent calls me to remember that Christ came to be one of us.  He came to be like us in all the imperfection of our messy lives.  Even his human family ancestry reflects this –  dotted with misfits and mistake- makers who also experienced grace, forgiveness and hope.

In Gail Godwin’s novel, Evensong,  a small town church in the Smoky Mountains is surprised when the local priest has a young teenage girl read the genealogy of Jesus recorded in Matthew  instead of the traditional Christmas story in Luke 2. The priest then quotes from an essay titled A Coming of Christ in Advent by Raymond Brown that says the genealogy list in Matthew 1 is “three minutes’ worth of tongue twisting names that  contain the essential theology of the Old and New Testaments for the whole Church, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant alike…If so much  powerful stuff can have been accomplished down through the millenia by..people who were such complex mixtures of sinner and saint, isn’t that a pretty hopeful testament to the likelihood that God is using us, with our individual flaws and gifts, in all manner of peculiar and unexpected ways?

“Who of us can say we’re not in the process of being used right now, this Advent, to fulfill some purpose whose grace and goodness would boggle our imagination if we could even begin to get our minds around it?”

Found in Evensong, b

 

 

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Yes

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For 15 years, my husband and I have been part of a Christmas event that our small church offers as a gift to the community.  In the beginning, it was only 3 scenes: A shepherd, two innkeepers (us), and a nativity scene set in a stable filled with hay.  Characters have changed through the years to tell the story, but there is always a young Mary. This year, several very young teenage girls donned Mary’s plain clothes and told her story. It is likely that Mary was indeed a very young girl, so these girls were very real in their earnestness and transparent trust.  Mary has to be in the scenes we create, because she was chosen by God to be the mother of Jesus. I am glad she said Yes to God’s message.  I love her preparing, her purpose, her pondering. The Pieta iis an exquisite rendering of her anguish.  I don’t know of any pieces of art or music that speak of her later life, but I love Edward Farrelll’s litany to her in his book Gathering the Fragments.

Woman

Mom

Mary of rattling tea cups and homemade cookies

Mary of open door, open hearth, open heart

Queen of varicose veins and chapped hands

Strong, fragile woman

Vulnerable, unshakable woman

Believer in love, reality, people, God

Back stooped and ear bent in listening to life’s

stories and to the giver of life

Stubborn fidelity to life in the face of death

Unflinching spirit that stares light into the darkness

of the tomb

Heart that breaks and pours love over the thirsty earth

Missing her son when he is gone to another home

Looking up in the sudden expectancy of hearing

his voice

Smiling wryly to herself and waiting

Waiting, gestating the kingdom once more

Growing in expectancy of second birth this time her own

And their laughter rocks the universe

Sending happy shock waves to echo in our dreams

Tugging our reluctant mouths into smiles of hope

and anticipation

Amen it will be so. Amen