During these December days of Advent, I have been holding the dark to my heart. I have been trying not to rush toward the lights of Christmas but have instead been scuttling about in the corners of darkness to find its varied gifts. I have been enjoying waking in the dark hours and returning home in the shadowed hours. I have even intentionally been using fewer lights in the house and in my office. One of my colleagues peeked in my door on Monday in the late afternoon to find me crouched in front of the light of my computer screen, the only other light in the room, a lovely red cutout star with its tiny night-light sized beam hanging in the corner. “It’s getting dark, you know.” she said.
Yes, I know. It is getting dark and has been dark and will get just a little darker before next Tuesday when the Solstice marks the slow, Zen-like return of the sun’s rays. This sitting with the dark has not been uncomfortable though I recognize the privilege with which I do it. I could turn on more light. I have working electricity and the bills have been paid. I could turn on all the lights and flood my senses with its mood-altering gifts. But since I do not suffer from SAD as so many do, I am dwelling in the blessing of darkness and sending my prayers off to those who would find this difficult and painful.

As is often the case, once I start to pay attention to a word or a concept, it seems to show up every where. Poems about darkness, quotes from famous people, songs on the radio, bits of conversations I overhear in a restaurant or on the street. The subject seems to be showing up all around me. It can seem like a movie and everyone knows the title….Darkness!

One such quote that has appeared several times in my reading is this one by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” These are words that many of us have heard for years,in fact, we may even have memorized as part of a history or church school class at some time. They are words that are on the one hand simple and straight forward and they are also challenging and confronting.

As I think about these words in the context of this particular Advent, they are also incredibly profound and prophetic. As our common life is bombarded with words and the sheer meanness of some, it can seem as if hate is being fed with hate, as if there is little light that will ever be found. Though I believe there is gift in darkness, it is also often seen as the symbol of what harms, what wounds, what shows itself as our lesser-selves. Only light can drive out that manner of darkness and its only healing remedy is the light turned on with full force. A light that can show all the cracks and crevices of words crafted in dangerous darkness, a dangerous darkness that fuels hate and divides us rather than unites us, that keeps us further from what our sacred texts assure us is the Holy’s intention for us.

I have been trying to take these words of Dr. King’s into myself and not get pulled in the direction of the culture around. I have been intentionally watching less and less television and listening to more beautiful music. I have made a point of looking into the eyes of those I encounter and not allow the rush, rush of the season to be my rhythm. I have been hoping and praying that my words and my actions will be grounded in love and have been doing a little check in with myself periodically to see how I’m doing.

These are precious days, as all days are, and we won’t get them back. Advent 2015 is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It is a time to put love in the driver’s seat. In the end, it is what Christmas is all about, isn’t it?
 

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.”~Og Mandino

We are always looking, I believe, for mountain top experiences in life. Of course, this means different things to different people. For some it is literally climbing a mountain they had set as a bucket list goal and finally achieve by reaching its summit. For others it is seeing a famous person, a celebrity or political figure they admire, someone whose presence makes them feel more than what they believe to be their ‘ordinary’ self. These mountaintop experiences can be planned but most often they are ‘caught’, they simply happen and are gift of serendipity. One minute you are walking around in the ordinary minutiae of your day and…boom…something happens that lifts you up. Call it magic. Call it miracle. It depends on the lens with which a person sees the world.

Still steeped in these dark days which seem to be getting even darker with the rain and clouds that are our constant companion, I have been remembering the times when I have been surprised by light, enfolded in the gifts of dark. One such time that always bubbles to the top for me happened several summers ago. My husband and younger son and I were driving across some roads in northern Wisconsin just shy of the Michigan border. It was dark, pitch black dark. The kind of dark that keeps your eyes scanning the road wildly because you can’t guess the moment a deer will jump out of the darkness and into the path of your light beams. No street lights or even houses brought any light to our path.

Because we were feeling brave…or wise…at one point we stopped the car and stood along the side of the road. Looking up we shared an audible collective gasp. Stars! More stars than seemed imaginable. The constellations learned in some elementary classroom in a by-gone day danced their night dance. The Milky Way swirled and confounded our eyes..you are HERE the twinkling shouted into the deep, blue sky. 

We were speechless and rightly so. Awe has a way of doing that. It rips the words from the human’s lips and shoves our bodies into the place of silence, that language of Mystery. Our minds lose all ability to form a word that would seem useless in the Face of such wonder. It was a mountain top experience for me. I have thought of it so many times and am filled with such gratitude for having shared it with two of my beloved ones.

Any one who has spent any time away from the lights of the city knows the power of the darkness that allows us to see the stars. It is not chance, I believe, that the night sky plays such a central place in the story of Christmas. Stars signal the birth. Stars guide the way to the stable. Stars kept the shepherds company as they watched their flocks. Stars help the wise ones navigate their way home by another way.

Oh, yes, I do love the light. It helps me find the path and makes my going easier in the world. But the darkness…oh, the darkness. It is mirror for stars…and the bringer of awe.

The night sky might be cloudy where you are. But continue to look up. You just never know when the stars might be leading you to someplace you had not expected to go. This is another gift of Advent. Accept it with open hands and a willing heart.

Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
~Mary Oliver.

I am an early riser. I like getting up in the wee hours of the morning and having the house lie in stillness around me.I have a little routine that I have established in this moving and I am happy with it. Each season of the year holds particular early mornings gifts….in spring it is the morning songs of birds returning…in summer it is the sweet smell of flowers and cut grass…in the fall it is the goodbye call of geese heading to their winter getaway.
But in winter, in December, the gift of early morning is darkness. There is a certain contemplative spirit that lurks in the corners of every room, inviting reflection and calm. It begs you to sit with it, to notice its offerings.There is the promise of the light that will arrive in its own good time. Eventually there is the arrival of the sun on the horizon. Often it brings a palette of color that stuns the senses…lavender, baby pink, orange and yellow. To have waited in the darkness for all this splendor is pure gift.

Last night I attended a concert with two amazing singer/songwriters: Barbara McAfee and Claudia Schmidt. The theme of their concert was ‘Hark the Dark!” they wove together poetry and songs of darkness…its beauty and its terror. And also, with these two wily women, its humor. What both performer and audience held in common was a healthy respect for the gifts of darkness.

As we make our way to the Winter Solstice in a few days, I am struck with this love/ hate, push/pull relationship we humans have with darkness. I am also more keenly aware of the way in which honoring the Solstice connects us with all those who have walked before us. I think particularly of the Celtic blood which flows through my veins and my ancestors who rightfully celebrated the return of the light in the late days of December darkness as it began to shine on their green and rocky soil once again. I think about how my ancestors who took up the Christian faith settled on celebrating the birth of Jesus, our Way-Shower, near the date of this return of light to the earth. Why not? Light is light.

I think of all the times I have heard people describe how they have come through difficult times…dark times…to see the gift in it. Over and over I have heard people talk about how without this seemingly dark time, they would never have learned, known, discovered, realized, accomplished…whatever. Someone or something had handed them a box full of darkness and they had eventually seen that it was gift, too.

Somehow for me, this movement through Advent, this moving toward the Solstice, this walking the path on the way to Christmas is all tied up like a box full of darkness. I am waiting in expectation to see what the gift will really be. I am hoping to be surprised.

Won’t you join me?

We imagine the Divine as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.~Pierre Teilard de Chardin

Advent is a ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ time. It is what someone I read yesterday refers to as a ‘shoulder’ season. Those of you who may do some traveling know that shoulder seasons can be the times when airline fares are cheaper, hotels more affordable. Shoulder seasons are in-between times. This person used this term to mean that Advent sets the stage for the big show of Christmas. This is not as easy to glimpse given how, in our culture, we take down the Halloween decorations and move directly to hanging sparkling lights and adorning our doors with red-ribboned wreaths. But Advent is the quieter, more slow moving cousin that shows up to help us prepare at holidays and stands back while its showier relative, Christmas, takes center stage. I wonder if this is why I love the season so? 

Often times in sermons during Advent we use this metaphor of the season being ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ to talk about how the scriptures speak of the in-breaking of God. The glimpses of the reign of what we have named the kingdom of God has been, is and is not yet fulfilled. It is heady stuff, difficult to grasp for most so we gloss over it. Those that can unfurrow their brows and follow the golden thread through the thinking get it. But most just let it go as ‘preacher talk’ or ‘theologian speak.’ Now. But not yet.

I wonder if much of what brings such pain in the world is the result of not recognizing the Divine presence in our midst, of not noticing the ‘now’ part of Advent all year round. I mean, how might our lives be truly different if we recognized that we are ‘steeped in burning layers’ of the Divine in every moment. Not just on Sundays or whenever we set aside time for worship. Not just on the days which each faith tradition has carved out to celebrate the God moments spoken of in our ancient and enduring life. I wonder.

If we truly believed and lived like we believe that we are steeped in burning layers of the Sacred, that the Presence we call by a thousand names was pulsing through each person and throughout the Creation in which we stand, how would we show up? How would we behave? What words would we choose to speak to one another? What words would we leave unsaid? How might we welcome the face…the Divine Face…of each and every person we encounter in every blessed day? 

I love how the word ‘Namaste’ has crept into our culture. A word used in India and other countries is often the ending of yoga classes. With more and more people taking up this practice, ‘Namaste’ as a greeting or a goodbye can seem natural. ‘The God is me honors the a God in you’. ‘The Holy that lives within me greet the Holy that lives in you.’ 

This is the message of this one powerful word, namaste. It is a single word that affirms that we are all steeped in burning layers of the Divine. Even when we forget. Even when we behave otherwise. Even when those layers are smoldering rather than shining.

Words are flying around us in these days. Words that often deny the layered divinity that exists in all people and not just some. They are hurtful and dangerous words that harbor fear and seek to pull people into camps of alienation. They are words that fuel the imaginary, and untrue, notion that the Divine is distant and inaccessible. But this One who breathed us all into being…all, not just some…will not be silenced and indeed moves in the shadows inviting, urging us to notice the beautiful, burning layers of the Holy in one another. Perhaps in our noticing and with ‘namaste’ on our lips and in our hearts, we can begin to drown out the awful words and turn the tides. Something tells me this is the quiet work of Advent. Something tells me this is also the work of Christmas.

“While shepherds watched their flocks by nightAll seated on the ground.

The angel of the Lord came down,

And glory shone around, 

and glory shone around.”~Nahum Tate, 1700

Watch. Advent is meant to be a time of watching. Watching for how light and darkness dance together….how one seems to be leading and the other following. Watching for the ways in which darkness can bring much if we are open to its wisdom, its presence. Watching how our hearts are bent one way or another by encounters with our fellow travelers on this path.

With regularity I indulge in some watching. I sit at Amore, a coffee shop in our neighborhood, that sits at the corner of two roads converging. I hold a cup of excellent coffee between my hands and I watch as the story of our neighborhood plays out. I see cars go by too fast and those that amble along in an almost contemplative fashion. I watch as young people, heavy with sleeplessness and over-stuffed backpacks wait for the bus that will take them to a place of joy or pain, depending on their connections or friendships or alienation. I watch the antique store across the street with its changing window display and the blinking of the Summit beer sign in the window of the local restaurant. I watch familiar faces come through the door and those I have never seen also enter looking furtively around deciding if this is a ‘good’ place or not.

A lot can be learned from watching which is different than looking I’ve decided. Watching implies intention. It implies that the watcher expects to see something important, something that might capture the imagination or offer a surprise or transforming moment. It also implies a spirit of guarding the moment, of watching over in a air of protection…..watching over our children, over our four-legged companions, over our vulnerable ones.

This is what the shepherds were doing in the Christmas story we are walking toward. They were watching over those in their care. I imagine that a shepherd’s skill of watching is pretty honed. Perhaps their ability to watch…to look with intention…keeps them open to being awake to other experiences, other sights that come their way. Wolves, for instance, who might attack a flock. Storms. Stars. Unusual stars. Really bright stars.

The watching that the shepherds did led them to an encounter with the Holy we are told in the story. It was an encounter in which ‘glory shone all around’. I don’t know about you but I am in need of some ‘glory all around’ moments. The words and the news of this particular Advent are weighing on my heart and spirit. I could really go for a few ‘glory all around’ experiences.

This morning I received an email from the receptionist at the church where I am blessed to serve. She was passing on a story of something that had just happened to her. A young man who had been riding his bike near the church had found $57.00 on the ground. Maybe he had been watching well. He came in and gave it to her saying he thought the ‘ church would find a good way to use that money.’ And he left. She passed on the story to all of us so we could bask in its sweetness, so we could reap some of the reward of his watching. And I now pass it on to you. 

Watching. I think Advent, particularly this Advent, is asking us to ‘watch’ and to do it well and with intention. We are being asked to watch for the places where goodness and kindness and hope break into our world. We are being asked to be vigilant in this watching. And when in our watching we see the in-breaking of God, we will know that glory is indeed shining all around.

And when it happens…we would do well to tell about it.
 

“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.