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 ...

  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, wel...

  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 ...

  “ 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 ...

  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...