I have not written for a few days and may not for a few days after this. Consider this a placeholder! My mother died yesterday after a week of unexpected illness and organ failure. She was 89 and seemed to get more joyful each year. I loved her so immensely! We were able to be with her for the last 24 hours. She was courageous. And we were able by phone if not in hospital, to say goodbye and to tell her how much we love her and will miss her and how she taught us gentleness and kindness with grace always.  Her parting words to each of us consistently was "Remember I will love you forever" Forever now has a meaning and substance to it like never before! And so in this season of the birth of Incarnate Love I have been called to ponder a death which somehow perpetuates and prolongs that love. While poignant and excruciating, this grief also contains hope and peace. I cherish the gentleness and kindness she emoted. They follow me and go before me always like a cradle, like a lu

  This is the moment when if I am ever going to, I might gather in an understanding of “the scandal of particularity”. I have shied away from the word “scandal” most of my life! And prided myself on a broad lens which blurred the ordinary specifics and offered a general impressionistic vision. This false comfort has taken me far from my childhood love of gazing at ants or lying on my back to see a sky invaded by tree limbs of unique color and shape.   The scandal of particularity, a phrase explained in detail by Walter Brueggemann, calls me back to the divinity in all things, to a more Franciscan appreciation of all creatures great and small. The scandal is the unexpected news that something radically new is happening. The particularity is that it is happening in the ordinary, small things in life.  The scandal of particularity calls us to gaze into the ordinary until we realize the extraordinary! The most scandalous is of course Christmas when Love Incarnate was born in a very specifi

  I came across the poem below by R.S. Thomas quite serendipitously. It was not in any of my Advent collections. If anything it was filed away with “mindfulness” and “presence”. And yet it spoke to me as though a Christmas gift. I was just yesterday telling someone that I was so grateful for a heightened awareness during this strange Advent, a deepening of faith and hope really. This Advent has caused me to pause more and not to “go my way” quite as unthinkingly without some moment of appreciation.  This week I hope we are readier to “turn aside like Moses to the miracle...to a brightness” never to be taken for granted. Perhaps the pandemics and accompanying anxiety and grief have hollowed out that space for the brightness of eternity to enter in. How silently, how silently... The Bright Field by R.S. Thomas I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while, and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl  of great price, the one field that had the trea

  The Winter’s Solstice occurred this morning at 5:02 am! I know, I missed it! Yet somehow I knew it was happening... It is like so many other invisible occurrences we are unable to mark with exactitude. It is like dawn, or sunset, or Jesus’ birth. With apologies to scientists or wise ones who have all kinds of measurement instruments, I rather like this mystery.  After all we knew the days were growing shorter and hoped the cycle would revert toward more daylight. In fact we knew it would; the question was would we be there to witness it. This year all of us carry some grief into Christmas. The Longest Night, which really happens in the wee hours of the morning!?, has been used by many to pause and collect sorrow and offer it into the hope of light to come. We need to bless the sorrow in order to also know something of joy. May we pause on this the shortest day of light and the longest night of darkness to welcome a holy light  coming  into the world regardless of astronomy.  Bless us

  Throughout this season of Advent certain things have been everpresent and close to the surface. Certainly the pandemics invade our lives every day still and yet Advent offers us the opportunity to dig down below the thin covering of fear and anxiety and grief and recover or reuncover the love and hope we knew and are to know. Advent is a bit of a recovery mission. The candles on the Advent wreath call us intentionally to hope and peace and joy and love. And by now just days before the Incarnation we might locate those gifts and life giving graces in our own bodies and souls in order to be more fully present at the manger, to witness the birth of Love Incarnate.   We look, no gaze deeply, and then cause our eyes to bring what we perceive into view in our own lives. In Advent we pull back the veil which might mute or distort our own incarnations and remember, re-member, love.  To do so requires us to embrace our vulnerability. It can be painful. Yet in this poem by Denise Levertov we m

  Rembrandt As we approach the longest night of the year we also might notice things happening with shadows. With the sun low in the sky emitting apportioned light, shadows become distorted even more and dance differently to slower somber tunes. Shadows also play a role in Advent. We in the shadows of a bleak midwinter are called to use our time in shadow in preparation and with active hope. And so, in this poem by Elizabeth Jennings entitled Visitation I was caught up short by the repetition of “shadow”. Notice “shadows adrift from light”, “overshadowed the shadow of the angel”, and the “child who laid his shadow on their afternoon”. These images seem to evoke accompanying stillness and secrecy and even “springing”. The image by Rembrandt also uses light and shadow to reveal mystery and divinity. Through this poetic sibilance I am left with an urge to share this holy interruption. The Visitation She had not held her secret long enough To covet it but wished it shared as though Telling

  Annunciation and Study by Henry Osawa Tanner  The painting which begins this meditation by Henry OsawaTanner is a favorite, and he a fascinating artist. I spent some time with Tanner’s Annunciation recently, being transported to Williams College Art History days and as entranced by his study as by the finished painting. Perhaps the study tells me more about the artist. It certainly acts as a prologue. It helps me understand here to there.   Mary had no prologue, however. Her interruption by the angel was unanticipated. The suddenness is palpable, causing fingers to fail as the poet suggests. We are the ones who might benefit from prologues (epilogues are good as well!)  These poems on the Annunciation, as well as the images, serve to preface a Christmas like never before. I imagine our preparations carving out a space of holy possibility which then enables the discernment of a whispered infinity! “Mary’s Poem,” by contemporary poet Kathleen Wakefield When she heard infinity whispered

  Blessed be God who animates our lives and promises Joy to the World. Amen In the liturgical cycle of things today is known as Rose Sunday, the Sunday we light the rose colored candle which symbolizes the Joy which is born at Christmas and the Joy to come among us.  It is also known apparently by some as “stir it up Sunday”! This reminds me of preparing a cake to bake and getting out the lumps. Sometimes amazingly delicious, and joyful, things come from stirring. It can be a form of preparation. It can take time. So let me see if we might stir something up in order to come to a new understanding of God’s Joy at Christmas.  In stirring ideas about joy this past week and stirring the lectionary as well, I came upon something very new to me and related to joy. Simply put, Isaac Watts did not write Joy to the World as a Christmas carol! It was written rather as musical setting for Psalm 98 at a time when the Psalms were sung in different ways in the Church of England.  Talk about an aha m

  " When I enter into true deep communion with Jesus, I will find that it is in this small way that leads to real peace and joy” Henri Nouwen As we have been moving through Advent and trying on notions of our own incarnation we enter into the mystery of the Incarnation, the Mystery which draws us to Christ’s birth and to the divine expectation of His coming again in great glory. It is this paradox and this tension which create a space to receive Him still.  Friction can be a good thing. Friction can also be painful, even terrorizing. The world is fraught with friction right now. The Annunciation occurred when Mary was not only young but also surrounded by friction. Jesus was born into a fractured world. Yet, He was the Light which penetrated the cracks. Our preparation and our communion, even if different than years past, points us toward a readiness and space to receive the Joy of Christmas which encompasses the Joy of Easter which encompasses the Joy of Peace and Hope which the