cultivating a sacramental consciousness during advent...

We are quickly approaching the Fourth Sunday of Advent. My spiritual tradition asks us to embrace a threefold discipline during the four weeks before Christmas by getting grounded in the practice of patience, cultivating a contemplative presence each day, and trusting the spirituality of this season, wherein the earth shares wisdom with us if we have eyes to see and ears to hear. It is a practical mysticism committed to nourishing a sacramental consciousness: a way of being that discerns both the facts of our reality and their more profound truths. Chris Webb suggests that living sacramentally means consciously acting so that "everything we do and everything we experience in the material world - the depth and breadth of our existence - is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace."  Interfaith author, Kaitlin Curtice, talks about this as "wintering" - going inward, watching, waiting, and wondering what will be revealed and experienced during the unfolding darkness - a core commitment of her Potawatomie heritage. My soul hears a parallel in Gertrud Mueller-Nelson' description of Advent spirituality:

Waiting is mysteriously necessary to all that is becoming. As in a pregnancy, nothing of value comes into being without a period of quiet incubation: not a healthy 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, and gestating are the feminine processes of becoming, and they are the symbolic states of being that belong in a life of value, necessary to transformation. (To Dance with God, p. 64)

Cultivating a sacramental consciousness has always been a challenge, all the more so in these days of perpetual engagement with our digital distractions. Nevertheless, my musical colleagues and I in Wednesday's Child believe that we can not only interrupt the tumult of our culture by offering a bit of respite in what we call our Blue Christmas/Longest Night liturgy, but also share tools for unplugging, too. I have partnered with these gifted and faithful musicians for over 15 years of music-making, gift-bearing, consciousness-raising, and soul-sharing. We create in pursuit of faith, hope, and love. In doing so, we have become a small but eclectic collective that spans different ages, backgrounds, genders, spirituality, family, aesthetics, and perspectives. A small faith community nourished by song, striving to integrate each person's unique gifts, quirks, and blessings into the whole. As we've been preparing our 2025 take on the Longest Night (December 21) through music, song, silence, poetry, candlelight, and presence, I've heard a sacred invitation to learn from the darkness.

Darkness scares us. Darkness can feel like a nightmare. We’ve been taught to fear it, to avoid it, to keep the lights on, to think happy thoughts, to pretend everything’s all right, and to not go into “that dark place.” Yet because God created both light and dark, day and night, and called ALL of creation good, we are invited to learn to see in the dark. It is, to be sure, an acquired art, without which we will miss what is there. Barbara Brown Taylor, put it like this in her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark: "I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light....new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark."

After collecting the songs and poems that resonated with us this year, three discrete yet interrelated challenges surfaced. One recognized the fullness of our respective schedules: it hasn't been easy to ensure the whole band is consistently together for rehearsals. Because we deconstruct songs before refashioning them, having folk away slowed the simmering process of creativity down considerably. There are a ton of reasons why this has been so, and there's no blame; it's just the luck of the draw that's made this year more complicated.

A second challenge involved new material and genres: the core of this year's liturgy is built on seven songs from Gen X and Millennial culture, which is a big shift for some of us old timers. It's been exciting, but also required a longer learning curve to make the art of Alanis Morrissette, NIN, REM, David Bowie, and others work within our groove. Which points to wrinkle number three: how to close this gig?  After finding a path through the first two challenges, we came to a strategic and aesthetic fork in the road. After tossing away a few good but as yet unformed songs, there was no consensus about how to bring it all home.

At first, this was vexing to me: with only a few days before it was time to stand and deliver, I was yearning for clarity, and it wasn't coming. Further, my heart genuinely wanted us ALL to weigh in and clarify how we thought it best to wrap things up, but we had to do this virtually. Would that we had a few more weeks to meet, talk, and rework some tunes in person, but we'd already used all the available time. So, after probably too many IMs and emails, we agreed to trust simplicity and see how that shakes out. My point in recounting these challenges is that creating art and worship in community is an existential act of practicing sacramental consciousness. We were listening to what the heart wanted us to know. What were likewise searching through the wisdom of our flesh, too, even while discerning how the whole presentation fit together intellectually. Aesthetics, culture, liturgy, and experience mashed together with reality, trust, love, confusion, and our mission to create a safe space for contemplation. I won't speak for others, but this strikes me as a growing edge for the band. Tricia Gates Brown wrote in her Substack column:

Listening, singing, and sharing music in a certain heart-wide-and-open way has become for us closest thing to prayer we know. And it’s not that listening leads me to pray or puts me in a mind for prayer and we become so filled with love/empathy/awe for my fellow creatures and life itself, that we feel deeply in touch with the divine.

Creating and sharing sacramental consciousness music in cooperative solidarity is transformative. It is not always easy and never simple, but rich, rewarding, and blessed in ways I could never have imagined. Come join us this Sunday in Palmer, MA @ 4 pm.

a week of sorting clutter...

Advent One 2025: I HATE clutter. Always have and always will. So, on what became a delightful snow day, I gave my attention to dusting, vacuuming, sorting, tossing, and scouring our home. I have no idea when this happened last, but the accumulating detritus was contributing to my weariness and needed the old heave-ho! (There's still a bedroom in need of attention - and my personal study is a wreck - but that may have to wait for another day.) The "Two of Us" band practice was cancelled, a chicken is in the sink defrosting, and soon our satchel of Advent/ Christmas music will reappear to grace our home with the sounds of Loreena McKinnitt, Vince Guaraldi, John Rutter, George Winston, and a host of subdued Celtic and French carols. All of this, as well as the silence of the snowfall and the absence of our clutter, has brought me a measure of blessed serenity - and I am grateful.

To say that this Advent feels like a reckoning of sorts for me would not be wrong: I am increasingly aware of my own mortality, conscious that on some days my energy dwindles and requires a newfound attention to choices, profoundly concerned about the ups and mostly downs of my loved one's health, and perplexed about the long-term consequences of my nation's ongoing obsession with chaos and cruelty. Earlier in the day, I read C. Christopher Smith's Substack column, Paying Attention to Poetry, which noted that:

Poetry (can be) a way to practice paying better attention—a habit that is essential to resisting the ever-encroaching allure of exploitative technology and consumerism and to being formed more deeply into the image of Christ. Paying attention is a key part of what makes us human, and poetry can be a valuable tool for developing that skill.

https://cultivatingcommunities.substack.com/p/paying-attention-to-poetry?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Could it be that in this season of watching, waiting, and paying attention, beyond the clutter, it's the poetry of Advent that is calling to me for a new hearing? I'm rather taken with this from Wisława Szymborska: A Little Bit About the Soul

A soul is something we have every now and then.
Nobody has one all the time
or forever.

Day after day,
year after year,
can go by without one.

Only sometimes in rapture
or in the fears of childhood
it nests a little longer.
Only sometimes in the wonderment
that we are old.

It rarely assists us
during tiresome tasks,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases,
or traveling on foot in shoes too tight.

When we’re filling out questionnaires
or chopping meat
it’s usually given time off.

Out of our thousand conversations
it participates in one,
and even that isn’t a given,
for it prefers silence.

When the body starts to ache and ache
it quietly steals from its post.

It’s choosy:
not happy to see us in crowds,
sickened by our struggle for any old advantage
and the drone of business dealings.

It doesn’t see joy and sorrow
as two different feelings.
It is with us
only in their union.
We can count on it
when we’re not sure of anything
and curious about everything.

Of all material objects
it likes grandfather clocks
and mirrors, which work diligently
even when no one is looking.

It doesn’t state where it comes from
or when it will vanish again,
but clearly it awaits such questions.

Evidently,
just as we need it,
it can also use us
for something.

This is an act of faith - trusting that our elusive souls can and will use us for something - an incarnational paradox resolved only by patience and practice. Lou Reed sang, "It takes a busload of faith to get by" -  and he wasn't kidding. Kate Bowler adds, "Advent begins in the dark—with one small candle and a stubborn kind of hope. Not the shiny, everything’s-fine version. The gritty, keep-going kind. We wait. We bless what’s unfinished. Because the world is still a mess. And God is still coming." Her reflection for Advent One rings true to me and feels like I do today:

The church, in its wisdom, starts the new year not with champagne toasts or gym memberships but with a candle in the dark. Advent is the beginning of the Christian calendar, though you’d be forgiven for missing that detail if your mailbox is already stuffed with glossy holiday catalogues. We start here—not at the finish line of Christmas morning—but in the long, deliberate work of waiting. Advent always begins on (or around) the feast of St. Andrew, the first disciple to follow Jesus and the first to drag someone else (his brother Peter, no less) along with him. Andrew is not the most memorable apostle. He’s not Peter with the speeches or John with the poetry. He’s the brother in the background. But he is the one who told his brother, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41).

The first week of Advent is devoted to hope. Not optimism, which is a little too seamless, too unrealistic, too pie-in-every-sky. And not nostalgia either. Remember those childhood Christmas concerts in drafty school gyms, where a dozen shaky recorders and one out-of-tune piano were supposed to sound like angels singing? We didn’t care—it was magic. But nostalgia can trick us into thinking the best days are behind us. Advent hope is grittier. It looks squarely at the world as it is—fragile, unjust, unfinished—and still insists that God is not done yet.

And so it is, has been, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Last Sunday, I taught the children of the church some of our Advent hymns - and how to use the hymnal. After worship, we all made Advent wreaths to take home and I was given this stunning and arresting crucifix made of wire and nails. It took my breath away. This Sunday, our children will present the congregation with a new white altar cloth. We will baptize a newborn, too, before gathering around the Lord's table to celebrate Eucharist. Indeed, the world is still a mess - and God continues to come to us for the Holy One is not done yet.