Bowing. I do not come from bowing stock. Neither my culture or my faith tradition asks for much bowing. Something within probably resists the humility and vulnerability that bowing requires. And so it seems an odd act to be reflecting on in these darkest of December days. But it is what I have been doing.

It started with attending an Advent evening prayer service at Our Lady of Presentation Chapel offered by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet. I arrived early in the beautiful candlelit sanctuary that, for years, has held the prayers of these kind and mighty women of faith who have given their lives to social justice, art and nurturing generations for the future. Finding a space in one of the pews facing the flickering lights near the altar, I settled in to be silent, quiet, at home in the darkened room. One by one people of all ages arrived. Those that captured my attention, however, were the nuns who clearly had a greater comfort level than others in this space. Their traditional habits a thing of the past, these women instead were clothed in jeans and sweatshirts, colorful sweaters and comfortable pants. Some walked with the help of cane or walker but most moved confidently into the room. And then they bowed. Toward the candles lining the altar. Toward the altar itself. Toward the barely visible crucifix at the front of the sanctuary. One or two forgot something and had to leave their seats, bowing before leaving. and bowing again upon their return.

I found myself wondering what these bowing women thought about when they bent knee or waist and head. I wondered if at this point of their lives they did this so automatically that no thought flew through their heads, only an inner impulse to bow. This ritual action had likely defined their days in ways that are completely foreign to me. And yet I was drawn to it, wanted some of whatever they had for myself.

The three letters of this tiny word create many definitions: bow…to bend the head, body, or knee in reverence, submission, or shame; to incline the head or body in salutation or assent; to cease from competition or resistance; to express by bending the head, body, or knee. And these are just the verbs. A small word with powerful meanings.

Reverence. Submission. Shame. Salutation. Assent. I have thought of what it is that might cause me to follow the example of the sisters and to begin a bowing life. And then I noticed the Sun streaming through my window on a cold, winter day. I bow to its beams warming the floorboards and my bare feet. I picked up the book I had been reading and I bowed to the author and all the authors whose words challenge, inspire, entertain and persuade. I bow to the children learning to read as they struggle with sounds and understanding and the desire to please the adults around them. I bow to artists whose eye for color and form grace my walls and bring me such joy. I bow to the musicians whose work wafts from speaker and concert hall, from sanctuary and street corner providing a respite of sound and sentiment. All these and so much more bring me to a place of reverence and call for bowing.

I found that once you begin to bow you don’t know where to stop. I bow to the mothers who cradle children everywhere but especially those who hold tightly to the children they have carried as they move toward the borders of our country in the hope of a better life. I bow to the fathers who have walked away from pride and purpose to bring children and family through danger hoping to offer a home where those they love can be more than they ever dreamed. I bow to the workers, the helpers, the pray-ers who hand out clothes and meals and try to make connections and something civil out of situations most of us could not imagine. This bowing is full of reverence and laced with shame. 

All around the world there are caregivers standing at bedsides and in nursing homes and hospitals, holding hands, dispensing medicine, serving meals, offering smiles and the human touch. I bow to you. I bow to the teachers and the servers, the cooks and the bakers, to the sales clerks and the workers on factory lines whose work is used by most of us and whose names are never known. I bow to those who clean…our houses, our office buildings, our streets. I bow to the ones who know only loneliness at this time of year advertised to house cheer and human connection. I bow to the college students who are making sense of their lives and might be afraid to let their true heart be seen. I bow to all those who have too little and those who have too much and do not know how to share.

You see. Once you start bowing it becomes never ending. Maybe the nuns know that. Certainly the Sufi poet and wise one Rumi knew it. “If God said, ‘Rumi pay homage to everything that has helped you enter my arms,’ there would not be one experience of my life, not one thought, not one feeling, nor any act, I would not bow to.”

So I guess I have chosen to become one who bows. Perhaps it will start out only in my mind but who knows what form it will take as the practice unfolds? If you, too, are interested in the bowing life, please join me.

We are creatures driven by rhythms. The rhythm of minutes, hours, days, years. We are held in a rhythm of seasons. Spring, summer, autumn, winter. Any given day has us held by the rhythm of sunrise and moonrise. Given our home on the planet those seasons and the play of light and darkness varies but is always present. Sometimes we are more aware of these rhythms than at other times. Traveling, as I did in the past weeks, across the northern cusp of our nation and into the Pacific Northwest, I was always surprised at how early darkness arrived and how long it lingered in the morning. 

For those of us who share in the experience of the Christian calendar, the rhythm of the season of Advent has arrived. These days that lead up to the celebration of Christmas are, I have to admit, my favorite season. To hold in sacred grasp the anticipation, the waiting, the watching for a Light that will bring yet another rhythm to the world carries a remembering that we are creatures who have always been cradled between darkness and what has power to overcome the shadows. Shadows which are part of Creation and shadows which we ourselves create.

On Sunday morning, the first of the Advent season, I sat in worship looking at a banner that became icon for me. Not an icon of the computer world but one of the religious world meant to foster devotion and connection with the Sacred. Usually these paintings are created on wood and feature a face of Jesus or another holy figure. This image that held my gaze off and on during the service was not of a human but of colors of blue, purple and black painted on fabric interrupted with flashes of shining drops of light. Amidst word and music both lovely and engaging, what offered itself to me as an invitation into Advent was this banner created by the people of the community. Over the last few days I have continued to be visited by this image. I have thought about how the streaks of white light were actually a part of the darkness, how they danced within the Advent colors of blue and purple, how they created more of a wholeness rather than the opposites so often portrayed when talking about light and darkness.

Later in the evening I sat with some people who lamented the safety and goodness of their lives while children and families suffer at the southern borders of our country. We felt held in the shadows of our privilege. We spoke of the difficulty in knowing how to celebrate and mark what is meant to be a time of family, of faith, of joy. We shared in our feelings of powerlessness and despair. And we also spoke of the beauty of music we had heard in the last week, the gifts of friendship and hope for a future where justice will indeed roll down like an everflowing stream and the gift of that longing to lift our spirits. 

As we shared in all of this, my mind traveled back to that image…blues and purples and blacks woven through with flashes of light. Perhaps the real wisdom in this vision of Advent is that the light is always present. Always. Dancing throughout. While we may want a bright light to stamp out all the shadows in a flashy Vegas way, the reality is that this dance of light and darkness is the place of our living and where we find the strength to continue to help bring light to the world.

In her book Night Visions, Jan L. Richardson offers these words: “Move over the face of my deep, my darkness, my endless restless chaos, and create, O God: trouble me, comfort me, stir me up, and calm me, but do not cease to breathe your Spirit into my wakening soul.”

May these dark days of the Advent season find us troubled, comforted, restless, always watching for the flashes of light that call us to be bearers of what might heal our world…

**Great gratitude to the people of Macalester Plymouth Church in St. Paul for this amazing image.

I believe that landscape shapes us and informs how we see and experience the world. I believe this because I know it in my bones. There are certain landscapes that stir up something within me that calls to me from an ancient place etched there by the ancestors who birthed me and placed me upright in human form. Rolling green hills, sharp, jagged stones, water teeming with mystery, danger and refreshment, desolate while beautiful, all these speak to the soul of my emergence from lands far off yet deep within. These landscapes make up the story that lives within my DNA and informs how I see the world and my place in it.

The past two weeks I have been traveling through landscapes unfamiliar as we made a road trip to Seattle to spend Thanksgiving with our two sons. Staring out the window as Minnesota prairie bled into North Dakota farmland and oil fields boasting rocky formations that were often Moon-like, led me to reflect on the gifts and challenges of being human shaped by the soil on which we were planted. Gazing out at the snow-capped cliffs and many hued rocks of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, I began to imagine the mindset of all those who have known these views on a daily basis. How has seeing these strange and beautiful formations shaped their worldview? How does the coming together of rock and river and the common sight of so many forms of wildlife affect a person’s understanding of the world and their place in it?

As we moved into the mountains of Montana and Idaho, I wondered if the people there forget to see, really see, the magnificence all around them. Trees towered as tall as skyscrapers and hugged the ever undulating mounds of earth that reached toward heaven. Is it any wonder people who have tried to explain and name God have used mountains as a measuring stick, a metaphor? Do the people who live there find the mountains a comfort in their surrounding presence or do these enormous mounds simply begin to represent something to be conquered and moved past? I wondered. For this person simply passing through, I just know the experience as one of awe. Pure awe. I wanted to open my arms Maria Von Trapp style and turn in circles breathing them in.

And then there was the sky. The sky kept painting pictures that continued to take away that breath, filling me instead with a deep solitude and humility for being lucky…and blessed…and privileged enough to see the colors and the clouds shapeshift in the closing days of November. Does such a sky cause most people to quiet mind and heart in the presence of such an unimaginable sight? I hope so.

Over the last week, I have been rereading some of Irish poet John O’Donohue’s words so it was only natural that I kept thinking of his wisdom while clicking off the miles on this road trip. “The earth is full of thresholds where beauty awaits the wonder of our gaze.” Yes, indeed. The various vistas my eyes beheld were each unique and had a beauty all their own. And each was a threshold for opening myself to the diversity of landscape that welcomed my gaze…and invited me to wonder.

And for that I am eternally grateful.