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blessing in a bottle

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  As I began to slip into the despair of these times, feeling like circling a drain, obsessed with news feeds and horrific images, I came across entirely different images for which I hadn’t known I was looking. I had fallen into the desperate habit of scrolling on social media. I usually justified this by telling myself I was looking for beauty and I would pause on photographs of owls sending out wisdom or paintings of the sea inviting me to immerse myself in grace.   Something different happened this time. A group of pedestrian monks were walking…just walking. Something about their faces, their pace, their commitment and their witness caught me up short. I opened their page, Walk For Peace, and started reading their posts. Peace, mindfulness, well-being. Image after image emoted these qualities. They were peace. And they were just walking. Yet peace seemed to emit from their bodies.  Then there were crowds of people including children who seemed not only to anticipate th...
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outbursts of hope

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  Outburst of hope A great armored machine gnaws toward us on cruel tractor treads, venting fumes of sorrow and dread, a friendly logo of terror painted on its side, boasting invincibility. We stand in its path, naked and fragile. But not helpless. Not afraid. We don't await heroic intervention. Our flesh is Word made flesh. We love courageously. We tell truth. Make noise. Sing lustily. We give wildly. Take every hand extended. We impede the wheels. We don't stop. Our joy is disturbing, our peace unsettling, our confidence reorienting. We live every day as an outburst of hope. Every day we rise.                                 Steve Garnaas-Holmes Outburst…starburst; explosive, powerful, surprising. Explosive and powerful are words which trigger these days and not all of us like surprises. Trigger murder, violence, capture, and corruption. Hard to see the hope in any of those bursts of physical power. ...
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We Love By Grace

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  Savior       by Steve Garnaas Holmes           To you is born this day           in the city of David           a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Holy One.                        —Luke 2.11 On a cold night, bundled in our fears, tired from taking care of ourselves, we come, curious: maybe there's something here for us. Angels promised a savior, but this is no one who could bail us out: a mere infant, who could never fight for us, or overwhelm our enemies, sneak us out of the trouble we're in or take for us the lashes we have coming. This is no one who could strike a bargain for us. How could this one save us from the failure of the lives we were meant to live? He gazes up at us serenely with utter trust, ...
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Relax Into Radiance

  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...
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Advent Made New Again

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    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...
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Oppotunities to Testify

  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. ...
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