Christmas Eve 2021 was spent in Brooklyn with a Zoom trip to L'Arche Ottawa for our Pageant. My grandson, Lou, joined us on the ukulele for the opening tune - and then sang the carols with us, too.
Later we feasted on a modified Italian tradition with a three fish supper cooked by our brilliant and talented son-in-law. It was a quiet and rich time of being with one another in love. Here are my homily notes...
Text: In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” (St. Luke 2: 8-12)
Grace and peace to you dear L’Arche Ottawa as we celebrate this second Christmas Eve of the Covid era: it has been a trying, heart-breaking, demanding, clarifying, confusing, oddly restful year that at times has challenged our mental, physical, and spiritual health. It has made clear that we’ve been called by God to live as a community crafted on compassion. Fr. Richard Rohr tells us that: “Com-passion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. It requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human...
… and immersion into the human condition is what we’ve done. We’ve known profound loss as Michelle and then Louise crossed over from life into death and life beyond death by God’s love. We’ve encountered changes in our community life and leadership as well as a new way of being together given lockdowns, Zoom, masks, vaccinations, and social distancing. Considering all that has happened, I want to say out loud to you what the angels told the shepherds on Christmas Eve: “Do not be afraid! Good news and joy are coming, and this will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” The baby Jesus – a vulnerable child – was a sign of God’s presence during life’s ups and downs. That is, baby Jesus wasn’t a mistake – unexpected, to be sure, surprising, you bet – but not a mistake.
It’s easy to forget that often God shows up in the world in what is small, unexpected, and vulnerable. That’s why powerful, professional, and busy people so often miss meeting Jesus – especially baby Jesus born into a stable – they’re too busy and distracted to be still – and know. But not you, L’Arche Ottawa, not you. At your best, you practice going slowly so that you can see and love the Christ Child in each and all of us. In this, you are like the shepherds, a living witnesses to the soul of Christmas Eve. You may not realize it going through your daily tasks, but you quietly show the world something of that precious Christ Child whenever you love one another in community. Your patience, laughter, trust, tears, tenderness, and remarkable forgiveness for one another reveals the baby Jesus among us for those with eyes to see.
You do this quietly – humbly– much like the Lord’s birth in a stable in that dink, backwater town called Bethlehem. Carefully, not perfectly but always honestly, you give shape to what God’s love looks like in the flesh. St. Luke writes that Jesus was born in the darkness – not the bright lights downtown where anybody might notice – but in a barnyard cave filled with work animals. In the middle of nowhere – surrounded by people who were discarded or forgotten by their society – love came down from heaven at Christmas. Sound familiar?
It could be L’Oasis. Or Le Tournesol, Mountainview, Wabanna, La Caravanne or La
Source. I keep a picture of Terry, Sylvan, Jim, and Raymond and a few assistants dressed as shepherds on my prayer wall at home to keep me grounded. I have another with Francine, Lorie, Louise, and Michelle dressed as angels – and one of Chastity adorned as the Blessed Virgin Mary. No one is rushed or harried in these pictures. No one is forgotten, dismissed, discarded, or overlooked either. Each and all are treasured with a unique and cherished place in community. Honestly. Humanly. Not sentimentally but humbly and profoundly – and I call it holy ground.
Today we celebrate that Jesus is with us now: in community, our hearts, our homes, our supper tables. I think I’ve even seen Jesus at some of our Friday Zoom meetings, too. He’s been with us quietly this year as we found new ways to love, respect, and care for one another during lockdowns and loss.
But let’s be clear that part of Christmas is trusting that Jesus will be with us NEXT year, too – and we’re going to need him! There’ll be some heavy lifting in comm-unity where we’ll have to trust living by faith not sight. I give thanks that Christ is with us now (by whatever name we give him) and pray we’ll continue to discover him in the most unexpected places as the New Year ripens. I’m grateful to God that L’Arche Ottawa makes Jesus visible to a broken world with quiet humility and grace. And I am blessed to share a small part of it with you. Thank you, dear friends: Merry, Christmas et Joyeaux Noel.
I thought Christmas THIS year would be different. So did everyone else. Our family has been fully vaccinated - and boostered - and I mean the whole extended family. We've continued to practice social distancing and masking-up indoors since the beginning of the pandemic. We avoid crowded public places, prefer the solitude, serenity, and silence of our home more than ever, and still trust that a vigorous hand-washing matters. And the plague roars on: it morphs, mutates, and amazes creation to such a degree that more than once I've found myself singing the closing line from verse two of The First Noel after taking-in the evening news: "... and so it continued both day and night." Truth be told, I don't often make it to the chorus some days - "Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel, born is the King of Israel" - that just seems a bit too inflated and premature, don't you think?
I understand that my disappointments are miniscule. I grasp that this is a time to try our souls as now we must live fully by faith and not by sight. I concur with President Biden that Christmas 2021 is vastly different from Spring 2020, but in so many ways it is still more "In the Bleak Midwinter" than "Joy to the World." The NY Times speaks about covid fatigue amongst the privileged - and that rings true.
When I am able to step back from my modest sorrow, however, I can see the sacred paradox albeit it is through a glass darkly. The wise, mystical musician from Manitoba, Alana Levandowski, put words to what I trust beyond the obvious when she wrote in her Sunday Song and Rumination post (You should really check it out @ https://www.alanalevandoski.com):
Our Mother, this planet, may be weary of the fissures we wrought upon her in our teenaged tantrum throwing. But she is not tilt-weary. Our Mother may be churning by the externalizations of our psyches, our inner worlds now neck-deep in artificial light… the digital wasteland… dreams that are supposed to illuminate a silvering path, better seen in a woodland, in the dark. She may be churning, but she holds the wooden spoon. And the truth of it is… we are unmoored in her cauldron. The holy Grail.
I do not foresee mayhem. Although mayhem there may be. I foresee an awakening … an organic bubbling of dreams, held in the womb openings of every person who dares to wax poetic, who will not walk bloodless, and with a bit of dirt under their fingernails. I foresee sacred, intentional, slow, movement. Pilgrimage. Seed protectors. Water protectors. Earth builders. Sequesters - roots of the plains. Tree lovers entwining their legs in a branched silence. I do not see a king’s puritanical salvation… but a manger filled with matter… life… flesh and bones humility. Mary the inexhaustible fountain. My spirit exalts.
This is what the wisdom-keepers I trust keep saying. Kaitlin Curtice, a Potawatomi woman writer from the USA, reminds us that this moment is an in-between time. As she muses upon the insights of her First Nations creation narrative (you can read this on line @ https://kaitlincurtice.substack.com/p/this-not-that or in her book, Native) she offers grounding for our anxiety writing:
This, not that.
This moment.
This variant. This missed holiday. This gathering. This worry.
This extra zoom meeting.
Not that “normality”. Not that holiday. Not that beloved one. Not that celebration. Not that milestone. Not that hug.
Not that moment on the airplane.
I know better than to say that we need that “return to normality” because we know that the status quo of “normal” often means that poor, immuno-compromised, disabled, and minority communities are most oppressed. It’s not a return to “normal” but a turn toward something else. But while we are waiting for that turn, we sit in the variant reality...we are ready to begin again. We want That, not This. But for now, This is what we’ve got. We’ve got a new variant to deal with. We’ve got less hugs and gatherings. We’ve got to protect one another. We’ve got the fear of the unknown. We’ve got the cold water on our legs and a floating log and the lack of imagination for what the world might look like again. But don’t lose heart. The story doesn’t end there. We may not have That yet, but while we’ve got This, don’t forget to ask who’s holding you here. As the new world is born, what dreams will come forth?
Diana Butler Bass brought a measure of solace and light, too by sharing a poem from the late Madeline L'Engle entitled, "The Risk of Birth."
This is no time for a child to be born, With the earth betrayed by war & hate And a comet slashing the sky to warn That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born, In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; Honor & truth were trampled to scorn— Yet here did the Savior make His home.
When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on the planet earth, And by a comet the sky is torn— Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
This is our season for the wisdom of Mary to shine within our collective darkness. It is Mother Earth wisdom-time. Sacred feminine wisdom time where the poetry and rhythm, the songs and circle dances of the holy embrace our humanity with the promise of new life. Dr. Bass tells us birthing is messy. Having delivered both our daughters at home I know the fear and trembling of that sacrament.
Bodies are messy. Birth is messy. Unpredictable, dangerous even. You can pretty it up by talking about a virgin birth, thereby undermining both Mary’s sexuality and the real physical pain of bringing a baby into the world. But the truth of the matter is that Mary was a real woman, and Jesus a real baby who grew to be a real man; both were flesh and blood, both had real bodies. A woman’s body was torn open by a baby forcing its way into the world, a hungry, crying, and helpless infant body to feed, wash, and warm. Eventually, the mystery of God’s glory runs smack into the muck of human bodies; the divine Word became flesh from the same dust and spittle that made us all. Mary’s body brought forth the tiny body of God; her water breaking and the bloody birth made possible the water and blood of the cross some thirty years later. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” We emphasize “Savior,” “Messiah,” and “Lord,” but forget the most amazing word in the angelic proclamation: “born.”
This year, unlike the last, we will be with family again. We won't yet be able to be in public worship; that must wait for another time. Nevertheless, we will be together: safely and gratefully. Rejoicing. Renewing. Returning thanks with feasting and song. And periodic quick covid tests, too. As my friends from the Jewish tribe tell me, "dayenu" means that would be enough to return thanks to the Creator. And indeed it will. We are nearly packed now. Moving slowly but intentionally. We'll be in the city by early evening ready to settle in to a new way of doing Christmas together. We will be there for THIS feast, not those others, and that will be holy ground.
SMALL IS HOLY REFLECTION FOR ADVENT IV So, here we are at the Fourth Sunday of Advent in the second year of Covid. That’s two ways of marking time. We could also say it’s the 12th month in the two thousandth twenty-first year of the Common Era in the West; or, the five thousandth, seven hundred and eighty second year of time within Judaism. And if we really want to have some fun, we might note that it’s nearly the four and a half billionth Winter Solstice on Mother Earth – give or take 50 billion years. Scientists say that our planet is about 4.5 billion years old; so, for those counting at home, that’s two and a quarter million times around Father Sun in a universe almost 13.8 billion years old. Each of these ways of measuring time are true and hold some value for us. But they only tell us part of the unfolding story of our embodied spirituality.
In the Northern Hemisphere those committed to the inward/outward journey are now living into what was once known as the stay-at-home season. Like the indigenous people of North America, my Scots Irish kin moved everything indoors at this time of year – animals included – taking a few months to journey inward during the quiet and dark months. Winter has long been recognized as an occasion for resting after the harvest of autumn, listening to our lives after the brilliant bustle of summer, and telling stories in anticipation of a new life cycle come spring. A ditty adapted from the Carmina Gadelica – the Celtic book of sacred/secular wisdom collected from the Scottish Highlands and islands – puts it like this:
Hey the Gift, ho the giver that came to us in the time of winter. See the hills, see the host on the wing,
See the icy strand of Christ the King. See the angels in the clouds and the messengers in the snow Coming with words of friendship for all down below. The Child of the dawn is born, the Child of the clouds, The Child of the planets, the Child of the stars, the Child of the rain,
the Child of the dew, the Child of the flames, the Child of the dark,
the Child of all spheres, the Child of the moon,
the Child of the elements, the Child of the sun.
the Child of God: Mind and Mary, the Child of good news,
Bright and cheery.
So, hey to the Gift and ho to the Giver: That came to us in the heart of winter.
To live in harmony with the seasons is to practice an ecological economics. Robert Costanza, one of this movement’s founders, calls this a trans-disciplinary field integrating psychology, history, anthropology, archaeology, and spirituality with the ways we live in nature and make that living. It is, he says, “a grounded way to design a sustainable future that does not stop with an analysis of the past but applies that analysis to something new and better.” It is the contemporary academy catching up with an ancient way of being that always set winter aside to be a story telling season.
+ Once upon a time, winter was the organic time to take stock of what had happened in the year past; contemplate what had been revealed, learned, and lost; and share those insights with one another – especially our youth – so that tradition, understanding, and hard-won common sense didn’t fall by the wayside when our outward lives resume.
+ I think it was the public philosopher, Will Durant, who used to say: Animals have instincts to keep them safe; given the way the human brain developed, our instinctual center is small, so we developed stories to pass our legacy on one generation to the next. “Most of us, however, spend too much time with feelings from the last 24 hours and too little time with the stories of the last six thousand years.”
Our pre-scientific Christian elders grasped Durant’s insight millennia before him and, over time, crafted twelve holidays and holy nights to be the container for stories of our distilled human wisdom to be shared with those we loved most dearly. Liturgically, artistically, musically, theologically, kinetically, and emotionally, the feasts and fasts of the Christian year were designed to pass on what’s been gleaned from the careful consideration of one generation to the next. Using a series of descending concentric circles reaching back 6,000 years to the cradle of Western civilization and the earliest experiences of our Jewish cousins in faith, the Christian year offers those with eyes to see and ears to hear a way to construct a life of meaning that is in harmony with creation and at peace with all of God’s beloved. Like Rudy Wiebe wrote:
We show wisdom by trusting people; we handle leadership by serving; we respond to offenders by forgiving; manage money by sharing; deal with our enemies by loving; and challenge violence by suffering…. In the Jesus movement we repent and change our priorities NOT by feeling bad but by thinking differently and making our thoughts flesh everyday.
Part of our commitment to living in harmony with God’s creation is knowing that ours isn’t the only vehicle for sharing sacred wisdom and practical truths, right? First Nations people in North America have been sharing their wisdom traditions for at least 15,000 years on these lands – more than twice as long as our Judeo-Christian heritage has existed. And the evidence from Africa suggests that an ecological economy has been thriving there for 300,000 years. I can’t help but think of Jesus telling his friends: “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” A variety of ways to pass on God’s truth and a host of tools to mark and celebrate time.
As we honor this deep ecumenism, it becomes clear that almost all spiritual traditions share a con-stellation of stories, songs, rituals, and archetypes linking the cycles of nature with holy/human wisdom: we all speak of light and dark, fire and water, community and solitude, sound and silence in our effort to tell each emerging generation what it means to choose life over death – and why it matters. Christopher Hill puts it like this in his brilliant volume explaining the 12 key Christian cere-monies of the Lord’s Year: Contemporary people in the West think of time as a “straight, horizontal line with a middle point – where we currently stand – called the Present.”
This line is always moving past us like a conveyor belt. On the left is the Past, where present moments constantly flow and immediately cease to exist. On the right is the Future, which is always moving toward the Present but never actually arrives…This view of time is not bad… it can be a useful tool… but it’s not the way we experience time in the deepest parts of ourselves, on the level of our hearts, and it is not the way God experiences or expresses time. Above and below our abstract, one-dimensional timeline is… reality… which for most of human history, people have experienced not as a line but more of a circle or cycle. The cycles of sun, moon, and stars; of the seasons; of a woman’s body; of the life, death, and birth of plants, animals, and human beings. Everything went away, but then in some way everything always came back… and THIS way of engaging time is how the Year of the Lord in Christianity passes on its wisdom. (Holidays and Holy Nights, pp.6-7)
Our Christian cycle of stories, songs, and celebrations are each designed to stand alone but also take us deeper the more they’re repeated. Today we’re asked to consider what it means for the essence of God’s love, Jesus, to be born into human flesh within the darkness. It tells us that God’s love came down from heaven to dwell with and among us in a stable in a backwater town called Bethlehem within the womb of a Palestinian peasant woman.
One of our two night vigils, Christmas Eve, at its best, is a sacrament of feminine spirituality. Like the Triduum of Lent – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Holy Saturday Vigil that moves into Easter Sunday – Christmas Eve is shrouded in darkness and steeped in womanly wisdom which includes waiting, mystery, embodied trust, and a quiet, healthy incubation of the holy within our humanity. As I shared at the start of Advent, masculine culture is all about problem solving, treating waiting and patience as a waste of time. Feminine spirituality, however, knows that nothing healthy comes from haste. “As in pregnancy,” writes Gertud Mueller-Nelson, “nothing of value comes with- out a period of quiet incubation:”
Not a health baby, not a loving relationship not a reconciliation, a new understanding, a work of art, never a transformation. Rather, a shortened period of incubation brings forth what is NOT whole or strong or even alive. Brewing, baking, simmering, fermenting, ripening, germinating, gestating are the feminine processes of become – and they are the symbolic states of being which belong in a life of value – absolutely essential for human transformation.(To Dance with God)
It is no accident, therefore, that both vigils feature women as spiritual mentors who can lead us through the darkness into the light on a journey of new birth. Miriam of Nazareth is at the center of the Christmas story and Mary of Magdala resides at the heart of Lent. At Christmas, the flesh and blood of Mary, blessed Virgin of tradition and sacred Theotokos – Mother of God – by the spirit, speaks to us about treasuring matter – celebrating the earthly and feminine in their rightful place – as equal in value “to the godly and spiritual.” Dr. Mueller-Nelson says: “It is our lack of belief in the equal value of our earthly matter that misleads us into making false gods and idols. The aberration of materialism which so contaminates our current celebration of this season is just one example of our confusion.” She adds:
For the Lord, matter was NOT too humble. Woman was fully worthy to bear God’s child. Straw and animals, peasant-shepherds and the smells of the barnyard, all that the world deems inferior and worthless was the setting for God’s self-disclosure amongst us… which holy scriptures frames saying: the very stone which the builders rejected has become our cornerstone…” The great mystery of faith involves our embrace of seeming opposites – the marriage of heaven and earth – the dance of the holy with everything that is utterly natural: a virgin shall be with child, the blind shall see, the dear hear, the lame leap, the dumb sing as the wolf becomes the guest of the lamb, the calf and young lion browsing fields together and a baby becoming our leader.
So, like our ancestors in faith, as winter arrives, we tell one another again how God came to a young woman, Miriam, empowering her to trust the Holy Spirit within herself in such a way that her flesh gave shape and form to the sacred. This embodied trust in a young woman was made equal in value to all the ideas, words, dogmas, and abstractions about the Spirit that our masculine tradition loves to emphasize. With over half a century of marking time in the Christian Year, I’ve come to believe that the reason why God keeps calling us back to this story at this time of year has something to do with how quickly we forget it in our busyness.
Personally, and throughout Christian history, there have been extended and brutal seasons when the feminine mysteries have been ignored, erased, denigrated, and denied. The revolutionary grace Mary incarnates disturbs power – and it’s no coincidence that those most unsettled by Mary are men wielding power. Fr. Richard Rohr cut to the chase when he said: in Mary’s Magnificat this young woman of God tells us a truth we’ve neglected for at least fifteen hundred years:
Her song proclaims that it is the people on the bottom of the system — any system — who are usually much more ready to hear the word of God. Longing and thirsting for righteousness, they are more ready to stop protecting the status quo. Therefore, they're much more ready for conve-rsion because they have a head start, a symbolic if not real advantage. When Jesus matures and says: 'I've come to preach the gospel to the poor' it is linked to Mary’s wisdom and nurture. And what we must finally own after fifteen hundred years in the Western church of trying to preach the gospel primarily to kings, princes, the rich and powerful, is that this message always seems to get prostituted. It liberates nobody: the powerful remain in their illusions and preoccupations with security while the poor remain victimized and often bitter.
Rohr then adds in much the manner of our ecological economists that 21st century people of faith are finally making an important discovery. When you preach to the prisoners, to the financially poor, the handicapped and those who are not the beneficiaries of the system:
You get a much purer response to the gospel. It is not as likely to be used and abused for the purposes of control and power. I think that's why we're only now coming to deal with Jesus' words about war and poverty. If we continue to preach the gospel to the people on top, it will be used by them to support their system and worldview and they will never get around to dealing with the radical questions Mary sings about in the Magnificat.
More than ever before I believe the Holy Spirit has been working through the blind spots, bias, and patriarchy of our tradition’s wisdom keepers so that every winter we’re called back to the basics of feminine spirituality as Mary sings to us of the upside-down realm of God’s grace. Structurally and poetically, that’s what chapter one of St. Luke’s gospel is all about. It opens with a high priest from ancient Israel, Zechariah – father of John the Baptist – being struck dumb while Mary, the peasant woman from Nazareth, breaks forth in song. This contrast between Mary and Zechariah is stark – and intentional. One Bible scholar wrote: “Zechariah has heard the word of the angel and not believed it. He wants proof. He wants to know because unfaith always wants to know. To be in control. But the angel of God is not about knowing.” Trust comes in the story when Mary hears and responds as our role model. This winter story shows us two people:
One is a priest of the highest order in Israel who does not believe. The other is a common peasant woman – and she does! She is all that Zechariah is not… Mary believes the words of the promise. The angel Gabriel scolds Zechariah because he did not believe the words of promise. Zechariah is struck dumb while Mary sings: "Here am I," she says, "the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Faith has everything to do with hearing the promised word of God and trusting that word (with our whole embodied selves.) That's the simple yet profound message of entering the dark womb of Christmas. Not to condemn Zechariah, mind you, because we’re all too much like him. But rather to know that there is another way – Mary’s way – the way of song, love, and embodied trust. (CrossMarks, Brian Stoffregen)
And the poetry of Mary Oliver, I think, helps us hold these contrasting stories together so that we, too might opt for the embodied trust of Mary over the quest for control that haunts Zechariah. Oliver has a sweet gift for synthesizing spiritual truth into clearly stated poems that evoke count-less ordinary epiphanies. She tells us in, “To Begin with: the Sweet Grass,” to simply behold. Behold what God has already shown us in creation. Behold. Watch. Listen. Wait. Taste and see the love of God already becoming flesh within and around you.
Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat of the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or forget to sing?
Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I say—behold the reliability and the finery
and the teachings of this gritty earth gift.
Oliver is a wisdom-keeper of feminine spirituality par excellence. She doesn’t give us complicated texts to wrestle with nor impenetrable prose to ponder: just stop and look at what has now been created for you – take in the beauty of this gritty earthy gift – and the holy will become visible.
Eat bread and understand comfort. Drink water,
and understand delight. Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds who are drinking the sweetness, who are thrillingly gluttonous. For one thing leads to another. Behold and soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot. Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in… And someone’s face, whom you love,
will be as a star both intimate and ultimate, and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful. And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper: oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two beautiful bodies of your lungs.
Oliver trusts embodied faith – the mystical marriage of heaven and earth – and gives her heart, mind, body, and soul to the grace of living in radical trust. Like Miriam of Nazareth, Mary Oliver has become a singer of revolutionary love. “Surrounded by the all too real shadows of fear, hatred, and contempt” both women consciously choose the path of prophetic poetry to show how love can lead us through the darkness into the light. Mary of Nazareth sings:
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for I know that God’s mercy is for those who fear God – that is, those who are in awe of the Lord – from generation to generation. God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich empty away.
Mary of Provincetown sings this in her own way: Let me ask you this. Do you also think that beauty exists for some fabulous reason?
And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure— your life—what would do for you? What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself. Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.
That was many years ago. Since then I have gone out
from my confinements, though with difficulty.
I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.
I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.
They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment somehow or another). And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope.
I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.
I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,
I have become younger. And what do I risk to tell you this,
which is all I know? Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
This is the Serenity Prayer in poetry! Mary’s Magnificat for the 21st century. Bold, revolutionary feminine love is calling us all into an awareness of God’s grace expressed in real time: “Love yourself – then forget it – and love the world!” PERFECT! Mary Oliver gives another gift on this fourth Sunday of Advent in anticipation of the birth of Christ: it’s the tender reminder that songs can be another form of embodied prayer. Mary of Nazareth knew this but somehow our harried culture tends to forget it. So, Oliver pleads with us to reclaim song as communion with the holy.
I wish I were the yellow chat down in the thickets who sings all night, Throwing into the air praises and pandhandles, plains in curly phrases, half-rhymes, free verse too, with head-dipping and wing-wringing, with soft breast rising into the air – meek and sleek, broadcasting, with no time out for pillow-rest, everything: pathos – thanks- Oh, Lord, what a lesson you send me as I stand listening to your rattling, swamp-loving chat singing of his simple, leafy life- how I would like to sing to you all night in the dark just like that.
I wonder: what songs of love and justice are prayers for you? How do you express joy and revolutionary love? What songs turn your world upside down and empower you to bring some loving new grace to birth in the darkness? EVERY time I hear Aretha sing, “Respect” I get pumped up! Same when the Boss belts out: “Come on up for the rising, come on up put your hand in mine!” I’m pretty damn partial to U2, Carrie Newcomer, the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, and St. Lou Reed as well.
The discipline – the spiritual practice – of this Fourth Sunday in Advent is to feed and fortify our commitment to compassion. We call it love when lighting the Advent candle, but it’s not at all sentimental: it’s hard won, gritty, earthy compassion. Standing with another. Carrying another’s water and burdens and lightening their load in solidarity. Mary Oliver found inspiration for her compassion listening to the yellow chat down by the river.
Mary of Nazareth tapped into the song of her Jewish ancestor, Hannah, as inspiration for her own song which she belts out in the Magnificat. I’ve found God’s call to compassion coming from my Celtic kin as they sing, “The Christ Child’s Lullabye.” It’s NOT Aretha or Bruce but it is a love song of commitment of embodied trust and compassion in a gentler mode. So, let’s give it a try:
My love, my treasured one are you; My sweet and lovely son are you You are my love, my darling new, Unworthy I, of you Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Your mild and gentle eyes proclaim the loving heart with which you came A tender, helpless tiny babe with boundless gifts of grace Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
King of Kings, Most Holy One, God the son, eternal one You are my God and helpless son, High ruler of mankind Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
We decided NOT to put up a Christmas tree this year. Ok, the word decided is perhaps too strong. It was more an act of acceptance than an overtly conscious choice. Something akin to what my friends in AA say whenever uncertainty arises: Just do the next right thing. This year a variety of events, weather, intuition, our dog Lucie's UTI, the health of the body politic as well as our own health care commitments conspired to keep us from acting on our traditional search for a shrub suitable for decorating. Given that we now spend the actual feast day of Christmas with loved ones in Brooklyn also diminished the urgency of making the time to purchase a tree and then festoon our home with greenery to mark the Lord's birth.
Let's be clear, we do have an Advent wreath; actually three different Advent wreaths spread throughout the house. There are candles, Christmas CDs, fairy lights and pine boughs outside and a few other incidentals, too. But, in much the same spirit that previously impelled us to get out of the USA for Thanksgiving this year, so too our sense about celebrating Christmas 2021. Inwardly, this year feels more subdued than in years past. More tenuous and possibly wounded as well. It's certainly more "In the Bleak Midwinter" mode than "Angels We Have Heard on High." Not morose, mind you, nor hopeless. Just a bit more understated and fragile than even last year's experience of Covid Christmas Number One.
A year ago, I was grieving. The unfolding consequences of our newly mandated isolation was slowly coming into focus. I was particularly glum not to be going to worship on Christmas Eve with Louie, Anna, Jesse, Mike, and Di at Trinity Episcopal Church in Manhattan. Lou had been singing in the children's "peppercorn" choir for the past two years and the Christmas Eve Family Eucharist was becoming part of our family's new tradition. It's a delightful mélange of sights, sounds, and smells that integrates this young choir with oversized puppets who move about the Sanctuary as Christ's birth narrative is proclaimed and carols reverberate throughout the hall. To forsake all of this to shelter-in-place felt simultaneously anti-climactic yet life-affirming in 2020. So, we Zoomed and made the best of our disappointments.
I am not overtly grieving this year nor am I personally disappointed. I am heart sick that covid deaths in December 2021 are still over 1,000 per day and that we're about to hit the 800,000 dead milestone. I am angry and afraid about the Republican march towards fascism. And it sickens my spirit that politicians of all stripes who know better still choose to let Mother Earth burn rather than help us make the hard transition to a sustainable economy. Clearly, the big picture is part of why I feel oddly detached from the festive aspects of this season. But reality is just a part of what's going on within. Something deeper is changing, urging me to let go in new ways so that my outward activities and aesthetics better reflect this new alignment of my soul. This era, you see, demands more more silence than words, more songs than politics, more waiting than fulfillment, and more trust than proof. For a few years I've been pondering these words from Fr. Henri Nouwen and it's my hunch they are becoming part of my flesh:
We expect God to show up in “spectacles, power plays, significant and extraordinary events” that will change the course of history in their grandiosity. We, ourselves, are often taken-in by wealth, prestige, and sparkling things that glitter and shine. We can be so easily distracted. Perhaps that is why God chose to come to us as a small child of Palestinian peasants in an insignificant stable surrounded by animals and shepherds. This way we see that God’s kingdom is humble, simple, small, and very vulnerable. One of the gifts and surprises from Jesus is that he shows up for us in the most unlikely little places – and if we refuse to look for holy in what is small, we will likely give-in to despair.
So, with a quiet smile and playful spirit, we found a tiny Rosemary tree yesterday. It now stands about 10" high on our living room bookshelf. I wrapped a tiny string of white fairy lights around it and realized that this wee tree, along with our Advent wreaths is enough: no clutter, no mess and just a simple hint of beauty and light to challenge the darkness. It fits.
SMALL IS HOLY TEXT This week we’re asked to light a candle of joy even as we’re surrounded by shadows of sorrow, heartbreak, and despair. Talk about a spirituality of paradox! Intuitively, it seems simpler to me to grasp hold of just one end of life’s polarity or the other – joy or sorrow, hope or despair, light or darkness – but not both/ and at the same time. Yet this is precisely the conundrum at the core of Christian spirituality for adults: can we learn to trust both/and more than either/or? Theologians have tried to describe this paradox in a variety of ways:
· Some speak of the mystery of the incarnation, others say the marriage of the human with the holy, some call it the sacred circle dance of spirit embracing matter, and Christina Rossetti sang it was love coming down at Christmas in her hymn.
· Whatever name we give to this puzzle, the Bible is filled with examples like: the Word of God became human flesh and dwelt among us; or we see by faith not by sight; or now we see as through a glass darkly but later face to face; or the living presence of Jesus is with us when-ever two or more are gathered in his name; or, even we are nourished by the Risen Christ who meets us mystically in ordinary bread and wine.
This spirituality of paradox has long been a part of our faith tradition although in the West it’s been treated more as a minority report. So, consider Psalm 85: after their exile in Babylon, perhaps 500 years before Jesus was born while the second temple in Jerusalem was being rebuilt, ancient Israel proclaimed this paradox in worship confessing that whenever we turn away from selfishness by opening our hearts to sisters and brothers in need the holy is honored: God’s kindness and truth will embrace (in our presence) as sacred justice and peace intimately kiss. Truth shall spring up from Mother Earth as healing generosity falls down from the heavens and the Lord grants bounty to the land by increasing its yield.
The same song was sung by the prophetic poet, Isaiah, in chapter 11 of his vision: In God’s shalom: the wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the lion and the fatling calf shall be together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze together as their young lie down to rest in the same field… a nursing child shall play over the hole of the as yet none shall be hurt or destroyed on all my holy mountain for the earth will be full of the know-ledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
The Bible closes with Revelation telling us that: God’s voice assures us that the Lord’s home is among humanity. God dwells with us and within us and this makes us God’s people. The fullness of the holy will wipe every tear from our eyes for death will be no more; neither mourning, crying nor pain will remain for these first things will have passed away. And Jesus himself said: Those with eyes to see know that God’s kingdom – the promises and presence of the holy – is within and among us always. Therefore, we the light the candle of joy on the third Sunday of Advent even as we experience being surrounded by shadows of sorrow, darkness, heartbreak, fear, and despair.
This suggests that Advent is for adults: paradox is NOT something children can consciously com-prehend. That’s why every culture creates fairy tales, nursery rhymes, and simple visual rituals to open and close the day, mark personal and social milestones, or greet and dismiss the seasons. These rites express the challenges and contradictions of reality in overstated and fantastic ways so that our little ones discover healthy tools to deal with conflict, fear, desire, and human relation-ships. On one level, our Advent candles introduce paradox to us like small spiritual night lights gently illuminating the darkness with God’s loving presence.
On a whole other level, though, the candles of Advent ask the adults in the room to grow up. St. Paul wrote I Corinthians 13 that when I was a child, I thought like a child, spoke like a child, and acted like a child. Over time, I matured – went deeper beyond the obvious, learned from my mistakes – and put childish things away. Now I know that what I see is only gazing upon a mirror darkly.Later I trust by faith that I shall see face to face beyond the darkness. As an adult, Paul concludes, we choose to trust faith, hope, and love by practicing them in specific ways repeatedly. THAT is what the adult Advent teaches: learning to trust that God’s love is greater than all the shadows of darkness that surround us. Love doesn’t banish the shadows; rather, it accompanies us as we practice moving through them towards the light step by step.
As a child, you know, I heard the promises of this season as one dimensional either/or assurances for such is the organic innocence of our first naivete. I literally believed that one day ALL contradict-ions would perish and there would be a resolution to war and suffering. That’s how I heard the promise of SHALOM, ok? I should probably tell you that for a while I also literally believed in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too. As a child, I trusted it all completely…
· … for that’s what sacred stories, poetry, songs, and rituals are supposed to do for children: evoke trust and awe. Childhood resources have been dragged through the sand of time so that distractions and dross are scraped off and left in the dust. They’re calculated to captured us by their light and awaken our hearts to a loving awe of the Lord through time-tested arche-types
· I danced with delight the first five or six times I saw “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens on TV. When Ebenezer Scrooge finally gets religion and brings a feast to the Cratchit home on Christmas morning? I was ecstatic! I was equally enthralled reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. And I’m not ashamed to say that I still weep tears of joy like a child whenever we sing “Silent Night” in community at the close of candlelight worship on Christmas Eve. We’re supposed to be lifted-up, carried away by joy, drawn out of the darkness and towards the light as children. It is the work, Paul Ricouer tells us, of our first naivete.
As adults we’re asked to practice a second naivete by exploring the light and darkness of Advent at a deeper level. Just as there is a time to be entranced by innocent naivete, so is there also a time to mature in faith, hope, love, and wisdom. James Fowler, Erik Erikson, Gertrud Mueller-Nelson, Carl Jung as well as Alfred North Whitehead and John Cobb describe this as a fluid, non-linear descent into the stages of faith. Some scholars use prayer language to suggest three stages of faith – purgative, illuminative, and unitive – that is, prayer as thought, practice, and wisdom.
Others have borrowed from the social sciences and speak of seven stages of faith:
A primal faith grounded in trust, an intuitive faith inherited from family and culture, a literal and naïve faith shaped by innocence and institutions, a conflicted and adolescent faith that is oppositional and questioning, a reflective faith that is driven by adult personal responsibility, a conjunctive or mid-life crisis faith that either sorts out paradox or falls backwards into a stagnant literalism, and a universal or enlightened faith that makes peace with the ebb and flow of insights and strives for lives grounded in patience and acceptance.
Now, I chose to tell you all of this before even starting to engage our poetry and scripture because if you’re anything like me these days feel darker and more troubling than at any other time in recent memory. Diana Butler Bass, church historian and popular author, said it as well as any: It may be Advent (and the Advent calendar continues daily), she observed, but there’s still news — and sadly, a lot of that news isn’t very good. In recent days, several stories have appeared about Christian nationalism, the power of authoritarianism, the threat of democratic collapse, and the role of some religious groups in the January 6 insurrection. I’m deeply concerned about all of this. Well, more than concerned. Worried. Really worried. Add to this list from Dr. Bass our own fears about the covid variants and the personal wounds and loss we all carry and right now does not feel very joyful to me. My fears and feelings, in fact, take me right back to that adolescent stage of faith where I wonder if any of this spiritual stuff really matters.
Oh, intellectually I know that there have been times much bleaker than our own and other cultures and individuals who have suffered WAY more than myself. Somewhere deep in my heart I continue to believe that the arch of the moral universe does tilt ever so slightly towards what is right, true, noble, and just. But not always. Like Fr. Henri Nouwen once confessed, sometimes I forget it all and ignore the paradox that more often than not in the heart of our pain lays a kernel of blessing where there is joy hidden within our sorrow:
I know it from my own times of depression (he said.) I know it from living with people with intellectual handicaps. I know it from looking into the eyes of patients, and from being with the poorest of the poor. We keep forgetting this truth and become over-whelmed by our own darkness. We so easily lose sight of our joys and speak only of our sorrows as the only reality there is. And that’s why we need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow can also be the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. Indeed, we need to be angels for one another, giving each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.
Which is why I give thanks to God today that we’re asked to light the candle of joy one more time. It reminds me that I don’t have to rely on and live only in my feelings. Or that Advent is just about my darkness. Rather, I can choose to practice the disciplines of Advent, to listen to the testimony and poetry of those who have gone before me and remember that the journey of faith is a continuum not a predictable, straight line. Over and over again – and probably over and over still some more, too – it is not only OK to re-commit one more time to the adult way of Jesus, but like Mary Oliver says, it’s part of God’s design in acquiring an adult faith. Her poem, “Thirst,” sounds exactly like what I’ve been feeling of late: a testimony to the ups and downs of trusting God’s paradoxical love beyond the obvious darkness in the most ordinary language.
Faith, she tells us, is not only connected to thirst, but because we’re naturally born slow learners, God has created a world filled with beautiful lessons for us to discover in joy every day that are hidden but every bit as real as the shadows. Oliver writes: Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.
Practicing joy makes our wounded flesh holy, encouraging a human generosity and justice that we can share in simple ways. Too often I make this complicated by over-thinking and get lost in the mystery. But the candle of joy points me back to John the Baptist who, like Mary Oliver, speaks of sharing joy simply and practically. “Got two coats? Give one away. No need to get fancy Oliver insists. Just be generous with what is ordinary.” In her poem, “Mindful” says that: Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight – that leaves me like a needle in a haystack of light. It is what I was born for: to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – To instruct myself – over and over – in joy – and acclamation. And I am not talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful – the very extravagant – but the ordinary, the common, the very drab – the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these: The untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made… out of grass?
The Advent texts tell us that the spiritual practice of joy starts with simple
generosity and justice shared within our ordinary lives. My friends in L’Arche say: Joy ripens one heart at a time. if you only look at the massive brokenness overseas or pay attention only to the tragic headlines on the Internet, you’ll trap yourself in despair. But if you practice the 10-foot rule, loving and sharing generously with those you can actually touch, the joy of the Lord will ripen in your heart as you cherish another one heart at a time.
Simple acts of generosity eliminate all distinctions between gift-giver and recipient in what looks like the polarities of grace. You give and I receive, then I do likewise in the ebb and flow of reality that moves not in a straight line but more like a circle dance. Joy takes us deeper into a continuum of alphas on the way of becoming omegas until there is no beginning or end. Just now, right here and right now. How does the Servant Hymn put it: I will weep when you are weeping, when you laugh, I’ll laugh with you; I will share your joys and sorrows till we’ve seen this journey through. I do this for you trusting that you will do it for me. This is putting childish things away and practicing Advent.
And that’s another reason I am grateful for today: I once thought I understood Advent. I suppose I got some of its wisdom. But this year, thinking paradoxically about so much of what I used to take for granted – even the Advent candle lighting ceremonies – I’m realizing Advent is something I must practice rather than simply observe. “Practices shape us to be better, wiser, more gracious people now,” Dr. Bass insists, “even as these very practices anticipate in our lives and communities the reality of God’s kingdom that has entered into the world and will one day be experienced in its fullness.” She goes on to say take the practice of hospitality: “It opens our hearts to those who are strangers and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, there will one day be no strangers. The practice of forgiveness cleanses our souls from guilt and shame and anticipates that, in God’s Kingdom, all will be forgiven.” So, what do the practices of the Advent wreath anticipate?
The first candle of hope asks us to practice mindfulness: being awake and empty enough that God can show us what to embrace in our ordinary lives. Hope in an adult Advent is NOT about being filled-up. Like John the Baptist says elsewhere: I must decrease so that Christ may increase. Fr. Richard Rohr notes that: “when we desire satisfaction for our hopes, we’re demanding to complete history on our terms. It’s wanting to be in control. Same goes for demanding that our anxieties or disappointments be taken away; saying as it were: Why aren’t you this or that for me? Why didn’t you do want I wanted.” Hope as the practice of mindfulness helps us to let go, become emptier, awake and trusting that God will be God. It is the practice of letting the holy finish the picture – complete the poem – write the last verse of the song. It is incarnating the wisdom of the Serenity Prayer.
The second candle of peace asks us to practice shalom. Peace is so more than the end of conflict or a cessation of fighting. In an adult spirituality of Advent, shalom is about right relations between people, nations, religions, and creation. Sometimes that means finding out what has been TAKEN AWAY from someone and returning it. You may recall that repentance, metanoia, is changing our minds and actions by turning back to God’s love. And sometimes that looks like returning land to those whose ancestral homes have been stolen, or returning dignity and safety to people who’ve been ignored or wounded including ALL the creatures of earth who were created to be our partners in creation. Shalom is living into the rhythm of the seasons, honoring the prayers made out of grass and anticipating that time when sharing by all means scarcity for none.
And the third candle of joy asks us to practice generosity from a heart of delight. What some-times passes as gift-giving can be driven by obligation or manipulation – and there’s no joy in that. Mark Twain use to say about the Pharisees in the time of Jesus that “they were good men in the worst sense of the word.” Mary Oliver tells us this is the wrong motivation for generosity; it should come from that “something that more or less kills you with delight.” Or, like Frederick Buechner says: it is sharing your greatest joy with the world’s greatest need.
To light the candle of joy today – and all this week – encourages us to ask like the Baptist: what can you give away to bring joy to the world? What “chaff” could be cleared away from your heart to be more kind, more just, more luminous in your everyday, walking around lives? What are the prayers of the grass saying to you – and God? The prayers of the trees? The prayers of the stones? As you listen for these prayers: let your heart and mind be open. Empty. So that you can react to them without hesitation. Wise Advent wisdom keeper, Mary Oliver, tells us that:
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty: Joy is not made to be a crumb.
So I want to practice giving in to joy right now: I was going to ask you to sing “Angels We Have Heard on High” to get ready for Eucharist, but after reading my friend Pam’s blog I realized that today we need to sing “In the Bleak Mid-Winter.”
Yesterday I finished cleaning the house after our time away: it always sets my heart to rest to do this work. Like baking bread, the quotidian mysteries of cleaning, cooking, and laundry bring a measure of order to my world. And in times like our own even the illusion of order is a welcome friend. Outside it is freezing cold with a multitude of uncertainties swirling about like dried leaves caught in the wind. The wetlands are grey and barren. Our politics continue to veer towards chaos. And the new covid variant carries more questions than answers, more fear than solutions. Is it any wonder I take solace in scrubbing the wood floors?
Sr. Joan Chittister has written in her guide to contemporary monastic insight, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, that the practice of "an ordered life" slowly trains our hearts, minds, bodies, and souls in the ways of peace. "Just about every person I have ever met who was serious about spiritual things," she tells us, "thinks that... daily life is the stuff of which high sanctity can be made. But just about nobody I have ever met... really thinks this is possible."
The idea that sanctity is as much a part of a married life or the single life as it is of the religious life or the clerical life is an idea dearly loved but seldom deeply believed...Over and over again, cures and cults and psychological exercises are regularly tried and regularly discarded while people look for something that will make them feel good, steady their perspective, and bring meaning and direct to their lives...But if we are not spiritual where we are and as we are, we are not spiritual at all. We are simply consumers of the latest in spiritual gadgetry that numbs our confusions but never fills our spirits or frees our hearts... (That is why) Benedictine spirituality seeks to fill up the emptiness and heal the brokenness in which most of us live in ways that are sensible, humane, whole, and accessible to an overworked, overstimulated, overscheduled human race. (Wisdom, pp. 2-3)
The quotidian mysteries, as Kathleen Norris discovered, are pathways into serenity. "The ordinary activities I find most compatible with contemplation are walking, baking bread, and doing laundry.” Me, too - except I would add vacuuming, dusting, and scrubbing floors. I continue to be drawn to both the 16th century kitchen monk, Brother Lawrence, and the 17th century Carmelite nun, Sr. Teresa of Lisieux, the Little Flower. Their focus on small acts of love make sense to me. So, too, Psalm 131:
O Lord, my heart is not lifted up; my eyes are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a child with her mother's breast; like a child at rest is my soul within me.
I don't understand most of the science shared every evening in the NY Times. I read it and applaud their commitment to keeping us connected to the best wisdom available during this phase of the pandemic. But the truth is I don't get most of what I read at all. I am at a loss when otherwise smart people choose to dwell in ignorance and actively encourage others to resist vaccinations. And God knows our media's obsession with labeling the negotiations of politics as life and death conflicts when this used to simply be part and parcel of striking a compromise bewilders me, too. Our addiction to bottom lines is in play, I know. So, too the spiritual darkness born of frustration, anger, economic loss, and despair that sporadically encourages witch hunts, pogroms, and lynchings. But when I am thoroughly honest with myself, I really only understand hospitality, tenderness, and being present in the moment.
And so I clean. And do laundry. I prepare simple suppers every night and strive to shape our home with beauty and a modicum of order. Sr. Joan teaches that "the spirituality we develop affects the way we image God, the way we pray, the types of ascetism we practice, the place we give to ministry and community in our definition of the spiritual life." She goes on to say:
Spirituality draws us beyond ourselves to find significance and meaning in life. It is our spirituality that defines our life values: self-abnegation or self-development; community or solitude; contemplation or action; personal transformation or social justice; hierarchy or equality. The spirituality we develop, in other words, is the filter through which we view our worlds and the limits within which we operate. (Wisdom, pp. 5-6)
What I have found over the years for myself is a "spirituality of living an ordinary life extraordinarily well... transforming life rather than transcending it" in order that I may live: "Calmly in the middle of chaos, productively in an arena of waste, lovingly in a maelstrom of individualism, and gently in a world full of violence." A prayerful practice, if you will, that finds beauty in a clean floor, joy in a satisfying meal, sacramental trust in clean sheets, commitment in a well-scrubbed toilet bowl. These things I understand. Even cherish. I suspect that same is true for making music: rarely are my songs or arrangements complicated; often, I pray, they are refreshing and loving. Simple and real. That is why I am drawn to the creations of Canada's Alana Levandowski.
This Advent I have quit trying to understand politics, science, even religion in order that I might be present, grounded, and open to tenderness with those nearest to me. I still read the NY Times each morning and watch part of the PBS Newshour in the evening. I take-in a few important newsletters by Times authors, too so that I'm not totally left in the dust of this era. But mostly I am walking with the poems of Mary Oliver (and a few others) along with the appointed gospel texts of the season as I work to keep a measure of order in my small corner of creation. Today the sun is out but the wind is howling. When I got up to put Lucie out this morning, for some reason she had peed on our new rug. Later, I received a touching email from an old friend seeking forgiveness and reconnection. And I have prayers and songs to share via Zoom with my community in L'Arche Ottawa. So, I prepared our breakfast, cleaned the pee, practiced a simple song of peace, and reread this Hanukah poem by Brad Aaron Modlin called "One Candle Now, Then Seven More."
I grew up in a family that did not tell the story. I am listening to it now:
Even the morning you see a robin flattened on the street, you hear
another in a tree, the notes they’ve taught each other, bird
before bird before we were born. And elsewhere, the rusty bicycle
carries the doctor all the way across an island. He arrives in time.
Somewhere his sister adds water to the soup until payday. And
over the final hill in a Southwestern desert, a gas station appears. No,
the grief has not forgotten my name, but this morning I tied
my shoelaces. Outside I can force a wave at every face who might
need it. We might spin till we collapse, but we still
have a hub: Even at dusk, the sun isn’t going anywhere.
We have lamps. The story insists it just looks like there’s only
