Another Advent begins. Another cycle, another season, another attempt…at patience and stillness. Each year I pray that in this time all will be different, not ultimately resolved, just differently deep, peaceful, and just. And each year it seems I am reminded a little more powerfully of kindness and tenderness, stillness and silence. I am reminded of paradox. I am reminded that the greatest paradox among all the little paradoxes is that the mightiest, most powerful, most transforming divinity came and comes and will come to us in humility, poverty and unexpected circumstances. So by now in my life I might be more aware that Advent is more about anticipation of the countercultural, counter-comfortable, than it is about aligning facts and assembling historical events. By now I am learning that Advent is about letting go, wintering with fear, anxiety and discomfort yet huddled under a blanket of just enough joy and gratitude. At some level we know that in that dark winter cave of ou...

  “The words “gratitude” and “grace” come from the same root word, gratia in Latin. . . . “Grace” is a theological word, one with profound spiritual meaning. Grace means “unmerited favor.” When I think of grace, I particularly like the image of God tossing gifts around—a sort of indiscriminate giver of sustenance, joy, love, and pleasure. Grace—gifts given without being earned and with no expectation of return—is, as the old hymn says, amazing. Because you can neither earn nor pay back the gift, your heart fills with gratitude. And the power of that emotion transforms the way you see the world and experience life. Grace begets gratitude, which, in turn, widens our hearts toward greater goodness and love.” diane butler bass On this Thanksgiving eve as I ponder the many blessings of life and pray that I be thankful enough, as though that is possible, I am struck by the quote above by Diane Butler Bass. I am struck by gratitude’s relationship to grace and its power to transf...

  I have been intrigued by the phrase “the endless process of becoming”. Many of us seek a time in our lives when we feel we have become who and what we want to be. We want to arrive. And yet, it has been my delight and motivation to realize at each juncture, maybe each moment, that some process of transformation is occurring.   Becoming our fullest truest selves takes mutual participation, between the self and the divine. Of course, part of the influence on becoming is also experience and relationship. The key for me appears to be continual openness to the Spirit, an appreciation of the grace being poured upon us like a waterfall.  It can be overwhelming, inconsistent with our ego desires, and messy. The very word “endless” can summon exhaustion. Somehow I am drawn to the promise of eternity therein and take yet another step toward that invisible waterfall with my tiny cup extended, trusting that it will indeed run over and that will be enough.

  (photo by Emma MacFarlane) Padraig O’Tuama: We might have some capacity to learn how to respond with more equanimity to these forces we cannot control.  
 Sharon Salzberg: Certainly if I heard the word “equanimity,” long ago, I’d have thought, that’s really bizarre. What does that mean? And so many times, we think it means indifference, but it really doesn’t. It’s such a huge capacity of our hearts to see what we’re going through, to see what others are going through, and to just have this perspective of, there is change in life, and there is light in the darkness and darkness in the light. And we’re not avoiding pain, because some things just hurt. That’s fundamental. But we’re holding it in a way that it’s like the love is stronger than the pain, even. And then we can really be with things in a very, very different way. 
Equanimity is a word which has crept up a lot in my life lately and it is usually just on the other side of integration, or should I say productive integr...

  The Guest by Wendell Berry Washed into the doorway by the wake of traffic, he wears humanity like a third-hand shirt –blackened with enough of Manhattan’s dirt to sprout a tree,or poison one. His empty hand has led him where he has come to. Our differences claim us. He holds out his hand, in need of all that’s mine. And so we’re joined,as deep as son and father. His life is offered me to choose. Shall I begin servitude to him? Let this cup pass. Who am I? But charity must suppose,knowing no better, that this man is a man fallen among thieves,or come to this strait by no fault –that our difference is not a judgment, though I can afford to eat and am made his judge. I am,I nearly believe, the Samaritan who fell into the ambush of his heart on the way to another place. My stranger waits,his hand held out like something to read, as though its emptiness is an accomplishment. I give him a smoke and the price of a meal,no more –not sufficient kindness or believable sham. I paid him to r...

  Music by Anne Porter When I was a child I once sat sobbing on the floor Beside my mother’s piano As she played and sang For there was in her singing A shy yet solemn glory My smallness could not hold And when I was asked Why I was crying I had no words for it I only shook my head And went on crying Why is it that music At its most beautiful Opens a wound in us An ache a desolation Deep as a homesickness For some far-off And half-forgotten country I’ve never understood Why this is so But there’s an ancient legend From the other side of the world That gives away the secret Of this mysterious sorrow For centuries on centuries We have been wandering But we were made for Paradise As deer for the forest And when music comes to us With its heavenly beauty It brings us desolation For when we hear it We half remember That lost native country We dimly remember the fields Their fragrant windswept clover The birdsongs in the orchards The wild white violets in the moss By the transparent stre...