So Soon  An hour after we light the tree, it’s hard to remember how the room used to be — so soon we relax into radiance. It makes me want to whisper luminous words, string kindnesses together like twinkling garlands, hang them wherever it’s dim. If we all spoke in light, imagine that glow — how quickly even the darkest spaces inside and between us could become welcoming, warm, even, imagine, incandescent.               Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer While the proem above’s point of reference is a tree lighting, I am wondering, as I sit here on Christmas eve in a darkness interrupted by a radiance human made and divine, whether it is also a metaphor for the birth of light and love. After a long Advent sprinkled with tiny points of light in a darkness of violence and deceit, fear and random cruelty, “it’s hard to remember how the room used to be.” From wilderness to cave we emerge witnesses to a magnanimous glow -“so soon we relax into radia...

    Be ready by Steve Garnaas Holmes               You must be ready,              for the Human One is coming              at an hour you do not expect.                                —Matthew 24.44 Grace flits in, a butterfly in winter. Forgiveness dismantles gallows. A child, frightened, stands anyway. The minds of the dulled are on other things. Heaven passes unnoticed. The naive keep waiting for the white horse, the sword. Foggy opera glasses. Cynics, fearing the mystery, can always prove otherwise. The lock snaps shut. The faithful are not sure but open, watching for the luminous. A spirit, wholly given, emerges like a song...

  Blessed be God who animates our lives and in the midst of chaos, offers us opportunities to testify to God’s great and good grace and in so doing save our souls.AMEN I struggled with today’s Gospel, especially struggling to find a message consistent with the beautiful opportunity to baptize dear Caleb! Fact of the matter is after reading the first 2/3 of Luke’s account I thought about punting to the prophet Isaiah and images of new earth, new heaven….now that is consistent with new life and baptism…right?   That, however, felt like cherry picking and ignoring context. I believe God intends for us to wrestle and be uncomfortable even on the most glorious of days. To come through the struggle; even scathed can be deeply meaningful and even liberating ultimately. And so I tried and tried again. I let the account of destruction, persecution and insurrection sink into my bones and realized how timely   the news of death and destruction indeed might be in contemporary terms. ...