Mary held all these things and pondered them in her heart...

This week, while basking in the joy of being with family after the storms created an unexpected reunion for Christmas, I am thinking about both the 12 days of Christmas and the gospel text for this coming Sunday: January 1, 2023. The essence of the gospel from St. Luke 2 is: "Mary held all these things and pondered them in her heart." So, I am going to share some of my ponderings shaped by her spirit and presence. Reading the reflection from Richard Rohr this morning was a serendipitous affirmation:

The ego loves to use words, but the primary way we communicate “the reign of God is at hand” is by our presence. Jesus clearly modeled this. It seems that Jesus and his disciples took up residence in people’s homes and lived as closely as possible to the people. In their ministry, healing and preaching are so intertwined that we could say that there has been no real proclaiming of the kingdom, no authentic conversion, unless there is healing in some real sense. Understandably, many of us have come to rely on an impersonal medium like the printed word. But the only way words can have any effect on our lives is if a person is coming across through this medium. When I am preaching, teaching, or writing, I have to try to give myself away; I have to let others encounter me in some real way. That’s the only experience that will make any of my words halfway believable. Jesus gave us words, but more significantly, he gave his “flesh” for the life of the world—in the way he lived and the way he died.

To say that my journey in faith began by loving the ideas, concepts, and words of the tradition - the hymns, chants, and liturgies - only to slowly relinquish and replace their "authority" for the messier but more satisfying reality of relationships merely hints at this inner revolution. There were times when I did not know how to celebrate real love because, for a time, these loves seemed beyond the confines of orthodoxy. The heartbreak of these encounters, however, taught me to keep letting go of the words and replace them with simple acts of compassion and solidarity. I can't help but think that Mary faced her own reckoing with the way love overthrows words, abstractions, and even orthodoxies. For now, I'm just going to play with the little ones. When they head home, I'll try to outline my reflection so that we enter the New Year grounded in grace.

this is how you pray: advent 2022

Over the weekend, the soul of Advent 2022 began to emerge for me: I was able to create a new type of Advent "wreath" with handmade candle holders, ornamental corn, and gourds; we found an "affordable" Christmas tree and started to decorate it; I brought out the Advent/Christmas cds including two new ones from Loreena McKinnitt; I led worship and celebrated Eucharist with a sweet congregation in Northern Berkshire County; and reconnected with a small circle of friends on my weekly livestream: Small is Holy (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php). It was also time to lay out the remaining pumpkin debris that the squirrels have been feasting upon for the past two weeks. One time has come to a close as another begins to ripen.

The next two weeks will incrementally take me into more waiting, watching, listening, and discerning as our L'Arche Ottawa community prepares to gather in a week to renew our inward/outward healing work. I'll be on the road at this time next Monday for a quick 48 hour visit. At home again, the band will gather to get in a bit of practicing before the Christmas feast day. We'll also schlep down to Brooklyn to take in grandson Louie's ukelele concert at Jalopy's on the 15th. We will have a chance to worship with the crew for Advent IV, too before starting a few weeks of relative simplicity and quiet for our celebration of Christ's birth at home in solitude. I am trusting that the closing weeks of December will bring time to bake some bread, practice some music, walk in the woods, and take stock of yet another weird, wonderful, and worrisome year. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, crafted this Advent poem that continues to speak to my heart.

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

This Advent is obliquely encouraging me to go deeper into a spirituality of tenderness. After in-person worship yesterday, a number of wise, old souls spoke of the grief and anxiety currently residing in their hearts. That's one of the strange charisms of mixing gentle humor with spiritual vulnerability and compassion in a homily: deep calls to deep as secrets long held in the heart are shared with trust and even a measure of hope. I sense a comparable yearning to confess the consequences of the chaos and loss we've encountered in the cultural, political, and spiritual trauma of the past year. Collectively and personally we know ourselves to be a quiet, fearful people who don't yet feel safe enough to be singing, singing together for our lives. We want to, that is clear, but it doesn't this moment is frought with too many challenges and dangers.

My hunch, therefore, is that 2023 will be a time where leaning into the mysteries of mercy, grace, and trust will br crucial. Clearly, the pandemic is not finished with us yet. Nor the culture wars although there are clues that some among us are figuring out win/win solutions that transcend our political calcification in favor of fortifying the common good. Let me call your attention to two nuanced essays that captured my imagination this weekend:

+ The first is a carefully considered take on the delicate balancing necessary to strengthen both LGBTQ rights and religious freedom. I think that Anglican priest, Tricia Harrison Warren, brings important clarity to this challenge. See her words @ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/04/opinion/303-creative-supreme-court.html

+ The second, by NY Times columnisht, Ross Douthat, is equally compassionate and complicated in his consideration of euthanasia and social cohesion. Find it @ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/opinion/canada-euthanasia.html

I don't expect to see an easy path into or through the mystery unfold in 2023. My friend, Pam, continues to help me let go of the spiritually sentimentalized word "hope" in favor of the more accuate "possibilities." So, like the late Mary Oliver, I look for places in 2023 where the tension is real but the possibilites promise more of the world that could be. 

I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.