Tag Archives: Reflecting

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

 

Grace

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Still our prayer, for 2015…

 

For the New Year 1981
I have a small grain of hope–
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source–
clumsy and earth-covered–
of grace

~Denise Levertov

Standing Still in the Light

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  • IMG_1514The first step to peace is to stand still in the light. ~ George Fox

 

There is a hush in the house that is different in quality this morning, after yesterday’s gathering for Christmas Day.  Before I go back to the kitchen to finish cleanup from our festive meal, before I make a grocery list to ready for our other children and grandchildren who arrive this week, even before I sit down at the piano to enjoy playing the old carols again just for Joe and me, I claim moments  of this quiet to sit in the dark with only the twinkling tree lights and be still.  I hear again in my mind the words of the song often heard sung around the world at this time of year. “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.?

 

 

Christmas Eve: Relationship

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The final figure has been hung in my Advent shadow box. In our Nativity scenes, the manger holds a baby. It is Christmas Eve, the time of laboring, receiving.  As waiting and expectancy end, the intense work so aptly named labor begins, the urgency of a baby’s entrance into our world gives way to embrace. With the birth of our granddaughter this year so fresh in my mind, I think of holding her minutes after birth.  So small and precious in my arms, so helpless, yet holdiing such power over my heart. In the hush of those moments, relationship locked and sealed forever. Relationship that began the moment I heard of her coming, that grew so sweetly when I saw ultrasound images, became one that will endure past physical life.

It is in that way Christ came to us. In that picture of receiving Him that we see God’s intention for relationship. We don’t just know he is coming . We welcome Him into our hearts.

 

IMG_1479This Nativity belongs to our youngest son. He first set it up when he was very small. As a boy, he built the little shed from scraps of wood shingles.  Now it sits in his own home, where his daughter holds the figures as she discovers her very first Christmas.

 

 

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?

Reflection

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“We have no choice. God is with us.”  Karl Rahner

In the days following Christmas, I think of all the sweet spots of our Advent journey, of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I wrap myself in the love and laughter of my family, the delight as we experience the beauty of it all as lights and reflection are everywhere – in the little girls’ eyes, in twinkling tree lights, in flickering candle light.

These lights string out behind us as we remember Christmases past – all reminding us of the Light that has come, the Light we have received.  And I ask, “How will I reflect his LIght?”

 

 

 

 

Light for the Darkness

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Our hearts and homes are filled with anticipation of Christmas – music, the laughter of children, twinkling lights, and cookie baking. But there is no blocking the awareness of evil and horror in our world.  Media brings the terror of war and injustice of humans to even children right into our living room.  We may prefer to close our eyes and shut our ears to this threatening clamor, and may be tempted to think there has never been so much to fear at a Christmastime. But through the ages, there has been darkness and wrong – 100 years ago, in the trenches of WW I, the December of the attack on Pearl Harbor , and in the time before the first Nativity.

The poem below was written years ago by Madeleine L’Engle.  I believe it was one of the previously unpublished pieces included in the collection in Winter Song, published by L’Engle and her friend Luci Shaw in 1996, and was written some time before that, so at least 20 years ago.  But it sounds like she could have been writing after seeing this morning’s newscasts.

 

Into the Darkest Hour

It was a time like this,

War & tumult of war,

a horror in the air,

Hungry yawned the abyss –

and yet there came the star

and the child most wonderfully there.

 

It was time like this

of fear & lust for power

license & greed and blight –

and yet the Prince of bliss

came into the darkest hour

in quiet & silent light.

 

And in a time like this

how celebrate his birth

when all things fall apart?

Ah! wonderful it is

with no room on the earth

the stable is our heart.

~ Madeleine L’Engle, as quoted in Winter Song, Christmas Readings by Madeleine L’Enlge & Luci Shaw

 

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

 

 

 

Opening My Eyes

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IMG_0869Years ago, when Joe and I were climbing around in an architectural salvage shop in downtown Houston, we literally stumbled across several large wooden beams.  When we looked, we could see carved into the pieces various Latin phrases, highlighted with faded gold leaf.  We bought all the pieces and hauled them home, having  been told only that they had been salvaged from the tear down of a Catholic church in Boston built in the 1800’s.  Now 2 of these beams hang in our home.  We are  not Latin scholars, but have had some help from various Catholic friends and their priests. This apparently is from the “old’ Latin, and although there was not agreement among our sources, the consensus was that this one in particular  is translated “Holy God, Holy fortress, Holy Immortal, Have mercy on us.”

On a Sunday afternoon not long ago, I rested for a while on the couch in our living room.  I opened my eyes to see sunlight moving across the Latin words, and received  a powerful awareness of the glowing light on the word Sanctus.  In Advent, we are called to watch for the Light, to be aware of the Holy. It is only by watching and waiting during these Advent days I can open my eyes to see the LIght of holiness that shined in Bethlehem..