Pay Attention




 It seems to me that Advent is a unique opportunity to pay closer attention with a renewed intention, a radical one!

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” Mary Oliver

Endless yes, for all times, and especially to be cultivated during Advent.

Yesterday was that blessed morning after our first snowfall of the year! The sun was bright; the sky that cobalt blue! At first my gaze was wide-angled and then a snowflake called me “to pay attention”. 

Perhaps I exaggerate and it was not just one but many. Nevertheless it was that contraction of the gaze which brought a new focus and insight.

God’s perfection. The snowflake was exactly as it should be, bringing brightness and luminosity and shape to yesterday’s grey world. 

Again, the snowflake was giving glory to God by being its unique self in a mass of selves!

I am now wondering whether I can find a holy morsel each day and bless it. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Love is Love

Image
  Blessed be God who animates our lives and loves us beyond measure that we too might bring love into the world. AMEN What a joy and honor to be here! I have been privileged to journey with Dana and now, to witness with her cloud of witnesses the sacrament of ordination, is something to behold!  Anyone who knows Dana knows she is passionate about the two great commandments and one of the creative ways she marks this covenant of Love with a capital L is to point consistently to the Robert Indiana Sculpture, that famous square of L O V E! (parenthetically the work of art also marks her love of Philadelphia) But let me use Love as the jumping off point today for it seems to me that no matter what or where or when, the Gospels point us to the Love of God or more accurately toward the God who is Love. And this love is expressed and lived and surrounds us through the mysterious and powerful dynamic of the Trinity. Moreover in our precious sacramental lives, ordination being such a moment but
Read more

Behold and Become the Beloved

Image
  Blessed be God who animates our lives and marks us as Christ’s own forever, God’s beloveds and     Kingdom bearers. AMEN You may have recognized the prelude which Jon played this morning; you may have noticed a tear falling. Hardly a sermon goes by when I don’t think about the words to the Hymn: I love to tell the story of Jesus and His love. We all have such stories, some biblical retellings and some contemporary adaptations. Whatever the story of Jesus and His love, they seem to illuminate the grace even in darkness and despair. One of mine goes as follows:  Almost exactly 23 years ago to the day, on a dark and stormy winter afternoon at St Christopher’s in Gladwyn PA, I received most difficult news. After a year of interviews and psychoanalysis and being told my ordination made so much sense, suddenly the rug was pulled out and with no explanation I was told no ordination, no second chances.  That evening was a baptism of sorts for me…there was water everywhere. Teeming rain outsi
Read more

Advent 4/ The Mystery of the Incarnation of Love

Image
  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
Read more