“In a world that lives like a fistmercy is not more than waking with your hands open.” Mark Nepo

Keep awake! These are words that filter through the scriptures of Advent. Several years ago in the worshipping community in which I am blessed to be a part, I asked one of our members to periodically stand from his seat and shout out the words ‘keep awake’ during our worship hour. He is a bold guy and I knew he would have no problem with this request. We would be reading the scripture from Matthew about keeping awake, about how we never know when the Holy might show up, but I asked him to just randomly stand, shout it out, and then sit back down. 

The first time he did it there was stunned silence. People looked down at their laps and were perhaps wondering if this individual was having some kind of ‘episode’. The second time it happened, some jumped at the interruption, while others began to see where this was going and grins started sprinkling around the room. By the end of the service, the message was clear and there was a kind of anticipation of when the shout might come. And there were laughs all around. On that particular Sunday, the scripture had a new presence in the room. A jarring presence. A smack-you-over-the-head presence.

If we admit it we walk around through most of our days in a kind of semi-asleep state. Our minds are rarely in the moment in which we are breathing. Instead we are sorting out the tangled web of some past experience, words we wished we hadn’t said, words we had hoped we would. Or we are in some kind of time-travel state, projecting to the future imaging what might happen, fearful of what could, hopeful of what won’t. This kind of past/future living takes us away from what really is……this present moment. This breathing, heart-beating moment in which we are living right now. If the Holy broke into this moment, would we even be awake to it? 

Yesterday, I was interested to hear that Pope Francis had declared this coming year the Year of Mercy. I thought ‘Wow! Could we ever use that!’ A year of mercy…to one another…to those we love and those we call enemy…to our past…to our present…to ourselves. Mercy. It seems to me that the world is in deep need of mercy. The vitriolic speech that fills our airwaves and the hate language that is flying past our ears, sometimes settling and making a home in so many, has created a wound that can only be healed with mercy. “In a world that lives like a fist, mercy is not more than waking with our hands open.” writes the poet and wise one Mark Nepo.

Advent is a ‘hands open’ season. Advent holds the days for keeping awake to the silence, the simplicity, the beauty and the wonder of the in-breaking nature of God. We are invited, perhaps even urged, to stay in the moment, to resist the pull of the past and the push of the future. To travel slowly and with intention. To allow our fists to unclench and open with anticipation and hope of what goodness might be waiting in the darkest days.

If we can be present and awake, perhaps we can also take on the cloak of mercy and carry it into a new year. It seems to me that if we take seriously the birth many of us claim to celebrate at the end of our waiting, then carrying, indeed embodying mercy is one way to honor this prophet from Bethlehem. 

Mercy……may we be its bearers this day.

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.” ? Ben Okri

Story. As humans we are bound together by story. This is especially true at this time of year, during Advent, as we walk our way slowly and thoughtfully toward Christmas. In the Christian household in this season, we haul out the same scriptures, dust them off, read them again and pray with clinched hands and open hearts to breathe new life into them, to see some new wisdom there. The four Sundays of Advent have us wrestling with stories of end times, of the destruction of the world as we know it. This seems odd to many but sets up the surprising hope of a child who would help heal the troubles of the world if we would listen, if we would turn around and pay attention.

 One of those Sundays has us hearing the story of a man wearing the hides of animals, whose diet consists of locusts and honey, a seeming mad man who shouts at the top of his lungs to ” Get ready! Something big is on its way!” Another Sunday has us resting with interest and wonder at the story of two women, one older, one younger, both pregnant and surprised about their state as they support and calm the other’s fears. 

All these stories, of course, are only the opening acts leading to the big story told on Christmas Eve. This story, in most settings, is so good, so big, we cannot be content to just hear it though its telling is filled with wonder enough. This story is so good that the people cannot be contained in their seats. They must allow their children to don angel wings….”Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis deo!” their tiny voices shout. This story is so good young children are allowed to carry sticks posing as shepherd’s crooks right past grandmas and grandpas and tiny babies. Trust floods the room and sticks are held tight as the very good story opens its heart for the man, the woman, the baby. And finally, the last to arrive in the very good story….royalty. Awe and wonder fill the room though most present know the story, recognize the characters, know how it will end.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Before this story unfolds, there are the others being played out, retold all around us. As trees are decorated, ornaments are pulled out of boxes and stories of where they came from are told. Plans are made for those who make their way home for these days and tales are told of who will not be there this year…..or ever again. Stories are created as presents are chosen. Friends gather and in their gathering retell how their lives became enmeshed. Other people, once friends, no longer gather and the story of loss and hurt is remembered,felt deeply one again.

Yes. We are people of story. We are, after all, the ones in the whole of Creation with words. And so we tell the stories. And the stories we tell have power. It has always been so which urges us to tell them with care and for us to be wise as to which stories we give attention to and which we allow to fall away, forgotten. For stories carry the gift to trample or transform. They carry the weight of hope or despair. They can instill fear or faith.

From the first days when our ancestors gathered round the fire, their eyes alight with dancing flames and the gift of imagination, stories have held us and helped us create meaning. What stories are you willing to tell today? What story are you willing to let die today? What story are you holding today in the hope that it will enlarge your heart for the healing of the world?

There is always a story…..tell it well. 

There are many words associated with Advent. ‘Prepare’ is one of them. It is more than a mere word, more than a suggestion or even command. It is invitation. In the Christian scriptures, you can read “Prepare the way of the Lord” in at least three of the gospels. It is an echo of the prophet Isaiah and Malachi taken up by these Jewish writers making connection between their past and their present as they try to make sense of their future. They are words that come out of the mouth of that wily one of the wilderness, John the Baptist, the one who is said to have called for those around him to get ready for all that God will soon be doing in the midst of their ordinary lives.

Prepare the way for what God will do. Now there’s an invitation that can turn even these darkest of December days upside down. Which is the point really. Advent preparation is so much more than hauling out the wreath,more than lighting the candles one by one each week. Advent preparation goes so much deeper than decking our houses and our yards with festive lights and ribbons in preparation for guests and parties. Advent preparation asks that we clean out not only our homes but also our hearts for what the Holy might be ready to bring to the nitty-gritty pathways of our lives.

Twenty five years ago this Advent, we were preparing for the birth of a child at our house. We did not know if this child was a boy child or a girl child. We were willing to live in the surprise. Because this child’s older brother had had a dramatic birth, we had scheduled the date of December 15 as the day of the baby’s arrival into the world. We had prepared the nursery. We had prepared the house for Christmas…..tree bought and decorated, check……cookies mostly made, check….presents purchased and, with the help of a friend, wrapped, check…..explanations made to older sibling about how life would change, check. Our nest was nearly ready, our paths had been made as straight as we could possibly imagine.

But this child, like most children, had a mind and a rhythm of its own and decided to arrive a week earlier on December 8th. Plans that had been unfolding according to our lists and to-dos got set aside for the movement of Life that began breaking into our midst. Calls were made. Preparations got shifted. Many things were left undone. And a baby was born. A boy baby, full of sweetness and light and showering love throughout the whole of our planning.

The preparation we are invited to make in these Advent days is not about the outer world of Christmas that culture dishes up. Instead, we are urged to prepare our inner world, for what God might be bringing to life within each of us. We are asked to make a path for the Sacred straight to our heart, a path that will bring light and justice and peace to a world that is in desperate need. This Emmanuel, God-With-Us has its own rhythm, its own movement and we are wise to prepare for it, pay attention to it.

Sometimes this in-breaking Advent path comes in the form of a tiny baby, full of innocence and promise and the power to transform homes and lives as it did that first Christmas two thousand years ago, as it did for us twenty-five years ago. The invitation is always the same: Prepare the Way for what God is bringing to birth…..and be ready for all the love and surprise that will bring.

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” ? Dalai Lama XIV, The Art of Happiness

Compassion….’ a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.‘ I have been thinking about compassion in these beginning days of Advent. It seems the world is in such need of it. And, in the place of privilege in which I and so many around me sit, we seem to be the ones who are responsible, indeed required, to offer it. It also seems in short supply in our public discourse. And this is heart-breaking for compassion is one of those giver-receiver, receiver-giver experiences. Most often when we are offering compassion we receive it in return creating a circular energy that has power to transform both the one in need of an ease of suffering and also the one feeling deep sorrow on their behalf. It might well be one of the most central experiences of the Holy.

This morning I have been thinking about how the story of the birth of the Christ Child is fueled by compassion. The elder woman Elizabeth is gripped with compassion as she nurtures the younger woman Mary, who finds herself pregnant and not yet married. Joseph must also have been compassionate of heart as he took Mary into his home and his heart, as he chose to join his life to hers. And as these two traveled toward Bethlehem, having no place to lay their heads and bring their child into the world, they are offered the compassion most refugees seek…..an open door, a warm place to rest, the sense of being seen and heard, perhaps a kind word and even a loaf of bread. The nameless inn-keeper was a person fueled by compassion. In this story, even the animals might have had compassionate spirits, moving aside and making room for the encroaching humans.

Compassion is, as the wise one his Holiness the Dalai Lama writes, a necessity and not a luxury. When we forget this, we become our lesser selves, those ones farther from our deep knowing of what it means to be made in the Image of God. When we speak words and take action that moves us from compassion toward one another and especially toward those we choose to name ‘other’, we are fracturing the very fabric of what it means to be human, beloved ones of our Creator. 

There is a great swirling in our midst these days, a swirling that wants to catch us up and sending us fleeing into darkened and isolated corners, battening down the hatches of our lives and drawing thick, rigid lines around who we are, what we hold dear. Compassion is the antidote to this dangerous swirling and we would be wise to pay attention to its warm, glowing invitation. The one whose birth we will celebrate soon was also the one who embodied that compassion, welcoming the stranger, healing the broken-hearted, making a home for the least, the lost, the left-out.

If we are serious about this celebration, we are called to do the same. It may mean setting aside long-held beliefs about ‘who is in’ and ‘who is out’. It may mean opening our doors and offering hospitality in large supply. It may mean moving over and making room for yet one more, even one ready to give birth to something we cannot yet imagine.

Compassion…..it is a necessity. Without it we cannot survive.
  

Our church community is embracing the theme ‘Turning Toward Home’ for Advent. The inspiration comes from a little read scripture in the Hebrew texts of the prophet Zephaniah. It is a book in the Bible with only three chapters! I always love it when we have the opportunity to be shaped by words that have been present in the pages of our sacred texts yet often get trumped by the more popular, more familiar, those we assume ‘every knows’ and wants to hear again and again. Zephaniah is not one of those books. The actual text that inspired this theme comes from the third chapter and reads…..”At that time I will bring you home, at that time when I gather you.” 
Home. It is word that conjures up such complex and varied emotions. We all want to be like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying, and believing, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” as we click our ruby slippers together and appear in the sweetness of our Auntie Em’s embrace. And for some people this is true. Home has been, and always will be, a place that is filled with love and acceptance and safety. 

But we also know that this is not so for so many near and far away. We know that home can be a frightening place, a place of injustice and abuse, of scarcity and pain. Home can also be a moving target. Homelessness is quite the norm for many and as we watch the daily trek of refugees fleeing what they have known as home, loving or otherwise, we can quickly be thrown into a multi-layered image of ‘home’, one quite far from the comfy, farmhouse of Kansas fame. 

Somehow I think this often overlooked scripture calls us to an awareness of something that only begins with a structure that contains a door. It calls us to be aware of the places and experiences that help us feel gathered into the Presence in which we also have a greater understanding of the ‘home’ that travels with us at all times. Our heart-home, our inner-knowing home, our Spirit self, that place that cannot be built alone but must be nurtured fully and daily. It calls us to hold dearly, oftentimes firmly, on the Home of the Holy One.

If we are lucky, or blessed, we had the early seeds of that inner home planted in our literal home….the family and house we grew up in, the communities that shaped us, the people that have held up a mirror to our best selves and also when we behave at our worst. If we are lucky, or blessed, that inner, heart home has become bathed in compassion and mercy in big, gulping helpings. If so, we are most likely to do the same kind of nurturing for others. We can help create a safe house for others.

In all honesty, my heart-home feels particularly broken open this fifth day of Advent. As we have yet once again been thrown into the violence of gunfire and senseless acts of killing, my Spirit self is very fragile. It would be very easy to withdraw and try to hide away from the world. But this world is also my home and I cannot abandon it, I cannot become a refugee of fear and anger and mistrust. To do so would be to run away from that heart home that also houses kindness and gentleness and big, heaping helpings of hope.

At this moment in time I have no words of wisdom or answers for what has been happening In our world and in our nation in particular. I can only rest in the comfort of words written 600 years before Jesus walked the earth…..’I will bring you home…..I will gather you.’ 

May it be so for all this day who suffer, who despair, who don’t know where to turn…..who can’t find their way home.

Ring the bells that still can ring…….Forget your perfect offering……There is a crack, a crack in everything….That’s how the light gets in……~ Leonard Cohen

Over the last weeks I have been in several conversations that hold questions that are similar….are things falling apart? Is the world unraveling? As I engage with these dear, inquisitive ones we almost always agree that these are age-old questions, questions that have plagued thoughtful people since language was first spoken. We also agree that someplace, yes, the world is unraveling for someone, their world but not the whole world. We affirm that in some places things are falling apart for some people, but not for all people. Sometimes this is a matter of privilege. Sometimes this is a matter of perspective. Sometimes it is truth and other times it is a lie being whipped into a message to harbor fear and aid control.

We all carry some brokenness no matter our age, gender, faith tradition, economic situation, status, ethnicity, race. In many ways, it is the one common thing in our beautiful diversity of humanness. Each of us has cracks created by life. Even the youngest and smallest among us. Especially the older and wiser among us. In his song ‘Anthem’, Leonard Cohen lifts that brokenness to a vessel of hope…..’there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’

Perhaps these Advent days of darkness are filled with more unraveling than usual….for some people…..for some places. My sense is that it feels more so because of our connectedness in this age of constant, sometimes overwhelming, information. But the truth remains that the brokenness we carry, all of us, is always with us. What we make of it, how we try to heal it, how we are present to the brokenness of others, is what makes for the light of hope and transformation. 

I think of the people in the story we are walking toward…..the story of Christmas. Each and every one had cracks. Mary, a young unwed pregnant teenager could have tried to hide from a society that would have shunned her. Instead, she opened her arms and her heart to an angel’s message…..letting the light shine in. There was Joseph, an older man with much to lose by taking a young, pregnant woman as wife, he let the cracks of his vulnerability and pride be filled with the light of love. Shepherds allowed their simple, predictable and broken lives to be shattered by the messages of a night sky, following and letting the light of stars dance in their bones. Wise Ones, gave up the luxury of privileged life to allow the cracks of their desire for something More to pour into them. 

There is a crack in everything…..Yes, we come to this Advent with, perhaps, a fuller awareness of the brokenness of our world, our communities, our lives. I wonder if the call of these particular dark days of this December, is not to turn our heads but to open our hearts more fully to those fractured places. I wonder if the call of this Advent is to ring the bells that still have song in them and to allow the cracks to be thresholds for the Light that is always present when we have eyes to see and courage to behold.

May this day be both gentle and prophetic……as Advent is meant to be.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel……..
There could be worse ear worms. Say, for instance, ‘It’s a small world after all.'( See, I got you, didn’t I?) Ear worms. These snippets of often not fully formed song that create a traveling soundtrack for the ordinary movements of our days. Sometimes you are aware of them. Perhaps you even find yourself singing along under your breath, maybe even swaying your head to the music only heard in your head. That is, until someone gives you that funny look that pulls you back into being a fully functioning, appropriate human being. You shake your head and look the other way determined not to fall again into the the ear worm’s trap.

Over the last two days, the song heard in my head that has been traveling with me is this ancient hymn, ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’. We did sing it on Sunday, the first day of Advent, so its music actually came from ‘someplace’. But now it is stuck in my head and moves with me with each and every step. As I said, there could be worse tunes, less meaningful words to be my companion. The tune is haunting, minor in tone and gives a perfect backdrop for walking in these dark days. It is, indeed, an Advent hymn.

‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel…..and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear…..Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.’ These words from the 9th century, still sung in the 21st century. This tune from the 15th century, on the lips of many who don’t know its longevity. Its message is a plea….for God to come near. For God to be in the very places where there is strife and anguish. For God to be made known even in the darkest and most frightening landscapes. For God’s Face to shine light into the corners of everything that seems so very far away from anything holy, anything sacred.

I am thankful for the musical companion. It has helped me to pray ‘O Come’ upon the people of East Africa and Israel and Palestine. It has allowed me to pray ‘O Come’ upon the people of Paris and all those who know the fullness of terrorism. It has urged me to pray ‘O Come’ over the people fleeing from Syria, over those turned away by countries also living in fear. And over those gripped in decisive fear, also ‘O Come’. It has been thrust into my mind and made me pray for both the victims and the perpetrator of violence in a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, ‘O Come’. It has swept into my heart and prayed ‘O Come’ over the people on the north side of Minneapolis, on those who speak the truth that Black Lives Matter and all those who stand in solidarity with them and all places around our world where racism is daily bread. 

On this third day of Advent, I will nurture this tune which moves just below my breath. I will keep it going like a mantra. I will not try to erase its presence. I will allow it to become my even deeper prayer. I invite you to do the same…..

O come, Desire of nations bind….all peoples in one heart and mind. From dust thou brought us forth to life……deliver us from earthly strife…..