Tag Archives: Reflecting

Called to Christmas

Posted on by
Reply

002

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

001

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
2

020

 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

   

Looking Up

Posted on by
Reply

JeremyLight

I am indebted to my son, Jeremy Parker, for receiving this image.  Thank you for looking up.

” Each one of us somewhere, somehow, has known, if only for a moment or so, something of what it is to feel the shattering love of God, and once that has happened, we can never rest easy again for trying somehow to set that love forth not only in words, myriads of words, but in our lives themselves…we have scarcely any choice but to go on trying no matter what, and there is much that is beautiful and brave and true about it. Yet we must remember this other word too: “Unless you turn and become like children …. “-Originally published in The Magnificent Defeat by Frederic Buechner

We are hours away from the beginning of Advent.  My practice this year will be to record my journey here.  Jeremy’s picture helps me see new wonder and light looking not just through this piece of stained glass at my kitchen window, but following as it points upward to the light, helping me turn and become like a child in the expectant waiting of Advent.

Unbroken Peace

Posted on by
4

 

 

075

Two of our granddaughters have been with us this week.   Maddie and Jordann fill the house and our hearts with energy and laughter.  They love playing with their cousin Skye,  being in our garden, feeding the fish, gathering herbs, picking flowers, and tending plants.  Maddie helped me make pumpkin waffles. Jordann drew everyone’s picture.  We sang songs from The Sound of Music and then watched the movie.  They love to play board games with Joe and me.  They like to take out the Story Cube box and make up stories from the picture cubes.  But they didn’t even know what a powerful story they were telling when I took these photographs.  They asked to visit our church’s prayer garden, so we did.  In one corner of that garden is a bench and a sandy area that contains 12 smooth stones and a clay marker engraved with the word “Peace.”  When we arrived on this afternoon, one of the first things they saw and exclaimed about was that the marker was broken.

As I watched, Maddie put the pieces back together and smiled as she read “peace.” Then they began picking up the river stones and trying to dust the sand and gravel off, but decided to take them over to the small stream nearby and dip them in the flowing water. One at a time, the stones were washed and brought to put in a circle around the Peace marker.

076

When all 12 stones were clean and in place, I asked them if they would like to use the stones to help them say what they are thankful for.  Without a moment’s hesitation, each girl walked the circle, saying, “I am thankful for…”  They named each other,  their Daddy and Mommy, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins, their cat and dog and home, the trees and flowers.

Their story is fresh and new, because they are. But it is also an ancient story, one that speaks of acknowledging brokenness, restoration, transformation, and redemption.  And that this prompts deep gratitude.

I am thankful for unbroken peace.   And Maddie and Jordann.

078

Sunsets and Sonnet 73

Posted on by
5

Today is my birthday, and I almost missed one of my gifts!  While I was thinking about how many sunsets and sunrises I have been gifted in 73 years, I almost failed to go outside and witness the blaze of glory that is today’s sunset.  We do that, don’t we?  We busy ourselves with good thoughts and activity and miss the glory of what is happening right this minute.  I am thankful for every day and every blessing I have been given.  But I want to practice being present in the moment that will pass forever if  I don’t (in Mary Oliver’s words) pay attention, be astonished and tell about it.  Today’s sunset will be remembered, but the gift it has given me is more than its beauty.  Help me, Lord, to celebrate the now.031

That time of year thou mayst in me behold (Sonnet 73)   William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
....
 This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Don’t Let Love Lose

Posted on by
2

009

don’t let love lose

because of tripping and stumbling

don’t let light die

though it may flicker

as petals shatter

and thorns bring blood,

don’t let the rose die from drought

let it bud again with fragrant bloom

014

let healing happen

I choose you again

let love win

015