Blessed be God who animates our lives and causes our witness to the birth of the Light of the World. May we witness this mysterious manifestation of glory. Amen I confess to being a bit obsessed with storybooks, especially the ones which speak to child and adult alike. There can be a profound wisdom there and the fact that few words and pictures can speak volumes of meaning brings me closer to a still holy moment. Tonight is like that storybook moment. The message and meaning are conveyed as much through music and silence, poetry and scripture, beauty and sacred image, as through any words I might come up with.   My job is to shine a light on the holy pages of the Incarnation. One of the lines from such a storybook goes like this: When you feel lost said the bear to the rabbit, try to remember what makes you feel found” Tonight we are found By a tiny baby Who is Christ the Lord The words of the prophet poet Isaiah echo this calling home: A people who have walked in darkness have seen

  Holding the Light by Stuart Kestenbaum  Gather up whatever is  glittering in the gutter, whatever has tumbled  in the waves or fallen  in flames out of the sky, for it’s not only our hearts that are broken,  but the heart of the world as well. Stitch it back together.  Make a place where the day speaks to the night and the earth speaks to the sky. Whether we created God or God created us it all comes down to this: In our imperfect world we are meant to repair and stitch together  what beauty there is, stitch it  with compassion and wire.  See how everything  we have made gathers  the light inside itself and overflows? A blessing. ------------------- I cannot imagine a poem which better reflects my Advent sentiments this year and this day. With 6 days until Christmas I am caught up in what has been one of the darkest times and one of the most pregnant of times, pregnant with hope. Like Mary I have been visited by an angel, well actually many angels, some in the form of strangers enter

  This Sunday, the third in Advent, marks our pause in Advent to appreciate deep joy, an anticipatory joy really. I reprise my “go to” for joy in all its tensions and paradoxical manifestations. This appeared in my blog in December 2020. We have traveled miles and have returned to the place again as though for the first time…: " 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 fric

  “ If you live by the cosmos, you look in the cosmos for your clue. If you live by a personal god, you pray to him. If you are rational, you think things over. But it all amounts to the same thing in the end. Prayer, or thought or studying the stars, or watching the flight of birds, or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, it is all the same process, ultimately: of divination. All it depends on is the amount of true, sincere, religious concentration you can bring to bear on your object. An act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer. And you choose that object to concentrate upon which will best focus your consciousness. Every real discovery made, every serious and significant decision ever reached, was reached and made by divination. The soul stirs, and makes an act of pure attention, and that is a discovery. […] It is the same with the study of the stars, or the sky of stars. Whatever object will bring the consciousness into a state of pure attention