Author Archives: Sally

Not Yet

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“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

We were given a box full of darkness on Friday. It is a gift we do not understand, did not want, do not know what to do with. As news trickled in about the horrific shooting in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, we became held captive by a darkness that threatened to overwhelm. At both times wanting to listen, watch, and wanting to run from this horrid scene, we once again felt helpless in the wake of yet another shedding of the blood of the innocents. How to hold such darkness……

It is too soon to look, as Mary Oliver reminds us, for the gift in this. The grief is too large, too raw. It will take, as she says, years to understand what may be at some time in the distant future named as gift. But even in the darkest corners of this black box, the light of hope still refuses to be snuffed out. As we learn of teachers who became superhero protectors, we see a glimmer. As we hear of those who responded first and shielded children’s views from things that would scar their eyes, for a lifetime, we get another glimpse. These are strands to hold onto until our learning evolves.

All through Advent I have lifted the image of darkness and light and the holiness that resides in both. The last few days have made that more murky, less visible even as a metaphor. And yet something inside me believes that even in those who walk in darkness, a darkness that no human heart is prepared to live, some experience of the Holy One still exists. This is, perhaps, the true hope of what can seem like sentimental notions of Christmas, of the in-breaking of God in the every day lives of people.

I have thought much about the young ones who did not come home on Friday. I have found myself looking more intensely at the children who have crossed my path. I have noticed their smiles, their eyes, the ways in which they move with confidence or reticence in this world. I have remembered to note how precious they are. To look, to really look, and to bless them. To remember that Jesus said that heaven belongs to them.

But I have also thought about the young man who visited such violence upon this world. I wondered at the box of darkness that had been handed to him, perhaps from his birth, the one that traveled with him every day as he tried to find his way in an unwelcoming world. It was never gift to him and there must have seemed no one, no older, wiser adult, who could make it so. What is it like to wrestle with such darkness each and every waking moment?

We will, of course, continue to try to make some sense of this tragedy. The years have taught me that there may not be any words or way to fully understand. We will speak of gun control yet again. Hopefully, we will speak of mental illness and how to help those who suffer, their families, their communities. We will look for answers that may or may not be present. We will chase after the haunting ‘why’?

Some day we may see that we see some sharp-edged or luminous gift in all this. But not yet. Not yet.

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Holy Fire

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Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.
~Anne Frank

Slowly, ever so slowly our house is being readied for Christmas. Our tree went up last week and one of my favorite moments of the day is when I walk over and press my foot against the button which will bring this tree into its fully lighted self. I try to do this without turning on any other lights in the house. This allows its ever-green presence to be center stage. As if a seven foot tree placed in a room does not already occupy that identity! But I do love the moment when darkness draws my vision toward the tiny, twinkling lights that adorn the tree. It never fails to fill me with a sense of magic.

Last night I sat with a friend in a darkened St. Paul restaurant. The mood was illuminated by the same small, white lights that dress our tree. Candles on each table flickered a pale yellow light making everyone’s face soft, dreamy, beautiful. Candlelight, a flame’s fire can do that. It can take even the most weary, beleaguered face and make it that of an angel. Don’t you think so? Try it sometime.

Though the light of electricity has replaced candlelight, we are people meant to sit around fires, to allow the glow to wash away the grime of worry and toil of whatever life has handed our way. Last week my husband and I took our walk later in the evening rather than in the morning. We took a different path than usual and were busy solving the world’s problems or those of our respective work places as is our custom. Turning a corner which sent us along the backyards of neighborhood homes, we came upon a man bundled up in his winter gear. He sat on a stump of wood which faced a blazing fire. Nearby were other empty stumps ringing the blaze. His face glowed a bright red in the dark of night, the brilliance of fire. He was intent on watching the dancing flames. I wondered what his day might have held.

“I want to go sit with him.”, I said. Being the voice of reason my husband cautioned against it. There was a fence after all. And we did not know this man. Who knows what he would think if a strange woman hopped the fence and just joined him in his watching, his meditation upon fire? He might not understand that I saw his fire as an invitation to join in all the fires that have been lit throughout time. Fires to warm the body and clear the mind. Fires around which stories were shared and meaning was made. Fires to cook food and ward off warriors. Fires for dancing and singing around. Fires that reminded the humans of their power to create and also destroy.

Fires defy darkness but also define it as Anne Frank points out. This light and dark is at all times in a constant dance. If we are attentive, we can experience the holiness that lives and breathes in both.

How is the darkness defining you these Advent days? What light are your longing to see? What fire calls to you? What fire burns within you? The early Christian household talked of ‘tongues of fire’ dancing over their heads when they felt the Spirit’s movement. May this day bring an experience of fire to each of us. And may we know it as holy.

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The Grace of Stars

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“When you have thrown
the cloak of evening
across me,
and when you have drawn
your midnight hand
across my face;
when you have made my soul
as dark as the nighttime sky,
and when the shadows
are my only companions;
then, O God,
turn my face upward,
that I may know
the grace of stars
and give myself to rest.”
~Jan L. Richardson

Last week I remarked that, for my money, no one writes more eloquently about Advent, than Jan Richardson. Her book, Night Visions, continues to be my go-to Advent text. The ways in which her collage images and phrases capture the longing and expectation of these waiting days always stuns me.

The last two weeks in worship we have read the scriptures of the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians. This past Sunday had us imagining his words as those of a Christmas letter. Instead of the usual outpouring of the events of the last year, the triumphs of children or the demise of health or a parent’s condition, we imagined his words of affirmation and love coming to us. We also imagined what it would feel like to send those words as our own Christmas letter. As I did this, these ancient words became alive for me again in new ways. Ahhh…..the gift of living word!

The reality is that Paul was writing his letter to this community of new faith from prison. His new faith had got him into a heap of trouble. It would seem to me that when a person is in prison they have ample time to reflect on the people and places that have shaped them. There is, I’m sure, plenty of time to think on those you love, those who have made you crazy, those relationships in which you have regrets. Paul used his prison time to try to build up and instruct the many people who had come to understand the Way of Jesus as a life-changer, those who were willing to go out on this faith limb with him. To that I say ‘God bless him’.

The ‘cloak of evening’ is thrown over people in myriad ways and can feel like an experience of prison. For instance, I know those who are staring straight into the face of a first Christmas without a loved one. That blanket is mighty heavy. Others I know are wrestling with the ways a ‘midnight hand’ has altered their lives…..separation, divorce, illness, job loss, struggling children.at this time of year, nighttime dark souls can become a double whammy of hurt and sorrow and bone deep pain. To those in this place, again, I say ‘God bless you.’

Cloudy nights do not allow us the view of the stars that clear ones do. And yet we know the stars are in the heavens blinking their shiny messages to us. Dark soul times often obscure our vision of the Holy, keeping us from connecting with the Eternal relationship that never walks out the door. And to this I say ‘God bless us’.

On this Advent day, may we be feel the release from whatever prison holds us. May we be blessed by the grace of stars and find rest in this place.

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Snow Pilgrims

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To say that making your way around the Twin Cities these past few days has been difficult is really an understatement. The snow that graced our presence on Sunday has wreaked havoc on the act of getting from point A to point B with any attention to time schedules. It seems the combination of snow, low temperatures, chemicals that need a certain temp to actually work and, perhaps, an attention to snow removal that was less than timely, has made for some of the slowest and painful commutes in recent memory.

Yesterday morning as I was creeping along the road, a certain nugget of wisdom that I learned on the Island of Iona a couple of years, came to mind. ” You can only move at the pace of the slowest pilgrim.” This caution was spoken to a group of folks I was traveling with just as we embarked on what became a nearly six hour Pilgrim’s Walk around the sacred places on this tiny island. This declaration ensured that we were attentive to one another, the pace each was able to walk, that no one was left behind, that no one rushed ahead.

Thinking of this way of walking as a pilgrim,my mind then jumped to something poet David Whyte said when he was here in October. Speaking of the many names and identities we wear during a lifetime, he asserted that the one that remains true throughout our living is that of pilgrim. We are always a pilgrim in this life. Traveling from one identity to the next, one year to the next, one day to the next, one breath to the next. We are always on some pilgrim path.

So as I traveled my pilgrim way yesterday, I was aware of a car several yards ahead of me. Moving at the snail’s pace in which we were all engaged, this particular pilgrim was unable to make it up the slight incline that had become an ice rink. His tires spun. His car slipped left, then right. I watched as the pilgrims between me and our slowest kin tried to decide what to do. Wait. Pass. Slow down. Speed up. Feel anger. Offer compassion. So many choices on the pilgrim path.

Eventually, several passed by this whirring pilgrim trapped in his metal container. Most did so with trepidation. His spinning could result in a face to metal experience of this fellow traveler. As we all made our way past him, something moved in my chest knowing that I had broken the cardinal rule of the pilgrim walk. We were leaving our slowest one behind. Traveling on without him. Leaving him to fend for himself.

Practicalities had to prevail on a day like yesterday. Decisions needed to be made about staying put or going on, about passing or taking the risk of not having enough momentum to make it up the hill myself. My heart still went out to this one whose name I did not know but who shared this identity as pilgrim with me.

Advent continues to unfold and we are pilgrims on the journey toward Christmas. The darkness continues its hold on us. More lights appear every day as people rail against the night by decorating their windows and walkways with lights that spill color and illumination. It must be done. For we are people who walk in darkness yet long for light.

This morning this Blessing for Courage by John O’Donohue seemed appropriate:

“When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside……
Close your eyes
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.” </strong>

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Lamplighters

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Advent again,
and the very stones are silent.
In the east, no star;
only shadows
and the threat of darkness.
We have run out of light,
and we wait in fear.
Still,
from the cosmic distance,
tentacles of brilliance probe,
seek us out, look for a dwelling place
among us.
~Caryl Porter

One of the truly wonderful and beautiful things about my work is that people often send me poetry, words they know I might enjoy or find helpful. A few times, and what a joy it was, someone has actually called me and read me a poem over the phone. It is at those moments, among others,that I pinch myself to think this is my work!

The poem above came to me last week from a dear friend and colleague. I read It over and over and felt the weight of it on my chest. Yes, Advent again. I have often said that the true gift of the seasons of the church year is the fact that, if we are blessed or lucky, we will have the opportunity to go at them once again. And the truth is I am different than I was last Advent. As are you. As is the world. The life experiences we have lived have made it so. Our hopes, our disappointments, what we’ve learned, how we have chipped away at our unknowing, has brought us to this place in the second week of December with, perhaps, recognizable faces but changed spirits. It will always be so.

Yesterday I sat with two friends and we talked about the fear that comes of darkness. Literal darkness and the darkness that threatens to overcome in what we are uncertain of, future and past. We talked of our own times of darkness when we faced illness, our own or of a loved one, what it means to grow older, our view of the world’s environmental changes that seem dark and foreboding. In those times, it is true that it seems ‘we have run out of light’ and ‘we wait in fear’.

But just as quickly as we painted these pictures of dark and stormy nights, we began also to speak of the people who held the lamplight for us. Those who, often through very small acts or a well turned phrase, allowed us to not let the fear debilitate us. It was as if there was some miracle of light that illuminated the darkness, making it holy.

Today I am thinking of all those for whom this may not be the case. People are living through life situations and doing so in very lonely ways. Those with a chronic illness or chronic job loss. Those who suffer from the darkness of depression or the effects of loss of sunlight. Children seem lost. Parents are aging and need more help than any child can offer. The cold has surrounded and there is no bed, or home, or friend to walk beside.

And yet, here we are, me writing and you reading. From what I know of the faith story, of all sacred scriptures, we are imprinted with the tendency toward goodness, kindness, and love, by the One whose very Breath caused us to be. That breath of never-ending Life,probes the darkness and asks to breath through us. We are the lamplighters. We are the tentacles, dim as we may be, whose acts of hope have the power to change the world. Or at least one life. On one day. In the cold, dark days of December.

So be it.

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Advent Shadow

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When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The past two Sundays have provided interesting sources of reflection for the walk in Advent. December 6, Advent 1, was shrouded in fog as people headed out to church. Yesterday, Advent 2, provided us with our first snow storm of the season. Driving to church in the pre-dawn hours, I was peppered by fine, feathery snowflakes that made the drive doable if speed was not a goal. By the time most people were arriving for worship, the storm had settled on us in earnest. Looking out the windows, it looked like we were being held within an enormous snow globe. Shake! Shake! Shake! Visibility……very narrow.

While I am completely aware of the dangers of both kinds of driving conditions, I have to say the ways in which they both contributed to the experience of Advent was very satisfying. Waiting? Check. Anticipation? Check. Reflection? Check. Slowly down? Check. Both fog and snow contributed to what is needed for a true Advent practice. (I am smiling right now.)

Yesterday nearly everything in the afternoon was cancelled. Those that still soldiered on happened later than advertised and offered grace to those who arrived late. How perfectly Adventy! Instead, today people I have spoken with told me about all the ways in which they stopped what they had planned, made alternative plans or no plans at all, simply sat in the comfort of their homes and watched nature’s wonderland form before their eyes.

As I drove to church in the falling snow on Advent 2, I listened to one of my Sunday morning rituals: Naturalist Jim Gilbert giving the news of what is going on in the world of weather, sky, earth. Keeping my eyes firmly ahead of me, hands clenching the steering wheel, I heard him say that in December our shadows are longer than at any other time of the year. The December light does that to these dark days. I remembered how tall I had seemed to myself on a recent walk, my shadow making me appear much more statuesque…..and thinner…..than I actually am. In that moment I loved the December light for this illusion.

Fog. Snow. Shadow. These three kings of light and dark are doing their part to lure us into being, really being, in Advent. They are trying with all their might to keep us from the baubles and glitz that want to make us jump too quickly to Christmas. When something, or someone, is waiting to be born the time of not-yet-knowing adds to the excitement and celebration once the day arrives. When a gift that has been longed for sits unopened, anticipation fuels the joy that can grasp our heart.

If you are out traveling about the snowy, icy streets today, be safe. Go slow. Breathe. Notice the shadows. How tall you seem. Advent is emerging in its own, sweet, metered time.

And aren’t we blessed?

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Suspended

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In this strange season when we are suspended between realization and expectation, may we be found honest about the darkness, more perceptive of the light.
~Jack Boozer

The wonderful thing that happens when a theme is chosen for a season like Advent, a theme around which a community centers itself, is that that theme begins to pop up in places not necessarily associated with that community. Or at least that is what happens for me. When our faith community established a theme like ‘Holy Darkness, Holy Light’, these words, or some related phrases begin to come into my view in the oddest of places.

Take yesterday morning for instance. I took the box of oatmeal out of the cabinet to prepare breakfast. As I was watching the water boil and after I had poured the oatmeal into the cup ready to go into the water, I stood staring at the box marked ‘McCann’s Irish Oatmeal’.There on the side of the box were these words: May you have warm words on a cold evening.A full moon on a dark night. And the road downhill all the way to your door. I smiled at this blessing for the darkness of night. From a box of oatmeal no less!

This season of Advent is a time when we are ‘suspended between realization and expectation.’ We have a sense of the expectation of what births might be possible but they are not realized yet. We know the story and how it turns out but it is not the time to reveal the fullness of it yet. Instead we give attention to the rituals that take the steady, ordered steps in its telling. There is a sweetness in this time honored unfolding. The light of the Advent wreath does not go fully ablaze but is slowly illuminated.

To practice this ‘not yet’ quality of the path toward Christmas requires a certain honesty about darkness. The darkness of these hovering winter days. The darkness of our own ever changing understanding of this story of birth of the Christ Child and of ourselves. This practice requires not moving too quickly through darkness for fear we might miss an important detail we have not noticed before, one that has been hiding in the shadows waiting for just the right time to appear. To move too quickly through the darkness might make the light blinding to our eyes instead of allowing the gradual flicker to become the soft glow that leads us……to what?

On Christmas Eve, as we sing Silent Night, one person will light a candle and pass the light through the waiting darkness of those who hold their breath for want of it. Slowly one light becomes another and another until……..but I get ahead of myself, ahead of our story.

For now it is time to be honest about the darkness. Suspended between realization and expectation.

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Lead Kindly Light

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Lead kindly light, amidst th’encircling gloom;
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home;
Lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene, one step enough for me.
~John Henry Newman

This morning I listened to these lyrics sung by three Irish singers whose voices blend so beautifully the music pulls at your heart strings. The words of this hymn written in 1833 fit the mood in which I walked and they gave me comfort on the path. Though the darkness had lifted from the night before, I felt as if I was still walking in a shadow that was difficult to shake. And so I walk in it, tried to learn from its wisdom.

Yesterday had handed me a few lumps of coal. Their imaginary black, shining roughness was still tucked neatly into my pockets much as the real ones of my childhood could often be found in hidden places after a visit to one of the many Southern Ohio coal tipples. Their darkness was weighing me down and I was trying to make sense of them. A phone call with a frightened young mother dug into my hip. Was I able to say any thing at all that was helpful? Another call in which I learned of ways I have disappointed pressed into my thigh. Several colleagues were struggling with other challenges and I felt the weight of their fatigue. Another jab.

It is often easy to hold up the darkness as holy, as we are in our faith community in these Advent days, when it is simply a metaphor. As if metaphors were ever simple! But when real darkness threatens as it does those who struggle with depression and the affect of little sunlight, this holy darkness it is something that has a life of its own. How to hold those places where people are flailing in the darkness that threatens to overwhelm?

Shuffling along as I did this morning with this two hundred year old hymn as my soundtrack, I thought of all the kindly lights that walk with us. These words do not offer laser light shows but a simple, soft illumination that leads us when we feel far from what we know to be home. It is a walking meditation of sorts, isn’t it? One foot in front of the other. Step. Pause. Step. Always held in a soft glow that only illuminates just enough of the path to keep us firmly anchored in the present moment. Which, after all, is all we can be sure of. Who holds this light for you? How are your feet being led on the path?

As I walked, Light kindly leading me, I offered prayers of peace for the young mother and those I am blessed to share with in ministry. I also asked for greater humility to recognize that disappointments are a part of living and I would need to find a way to make it right. Soft, kinder light often is the path partner of the humble walker.

As a child I loved to go to my grandmother’s house and have sleepovers. In her tiny living room stood a brown stove that heated the main floor. Beside the stove was a card table with a jigsaw puzzle always ready to entertain. Sitting by this stove, fueled by coal, we ate homemade peanut butter fudge and brought tiny pieces together to make a larger picture. That coal brought both warmth and light. And comfort. And a sense of knowing where I belonged, that I was loved and that darkness gives birth to light. I could not have imagined nor seen the life that would unfold for me.

It is a distant scene of memory led by a kindly light to illuminate a new day. One step at a time.

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Stay Awake!

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“Stay awake therefore, for you do not know on what day God is coming.”
~Matthew 24:42

The morning walk came early today. Before sunrise. Three shadows moved along the street. One tall. One shorter. One with four legs. The chill of the morning air, though not as cold as it should be, was still cool enough to begin the waking up process. The final jolt was to come from the coffee we would pick up toward the end of our walk at our local coffee haunt.

Arriving at the coffee shop we found its owner bustling about with intention. One man, in business attire, waited patiently. We watched as barista and customer began to load two large coffee urns and all the needed cream and complements to go out the door. We joked at the sheer volume of caffeine. “It’s going to be some day!” the customer exclaimed. My husband responded quickly, ” Stay awake!”

Stay awake. It is a greeting that is a familiar one in Advent. This past week’s scripture urges for wakefulness, for being on guard for the ways in which God breaks into our days, our lives. Many find these texts confounding, troubling, not very ‘Christmasy’. And in truth they are not. Their intention was to remind people of times that were yet to come and they did it in ways that were filled with language that meant things to the early listeners that gets lost on our 21st century ears.

But staying awake is a good practice for Advent. In the darkness and cold that surrounds we can be inclined to hunker down and keep our gaze very narrow. The journey of Advent urges us to do otherwise. Stay awake! The Holy is going to show up, is right before your eyes. Stay awake! Something amazing is going to happen and it would be a shame if you missed it.

Staying awake can be particularly difficult in the frenzy that can masquerade as holiday spirit. Being present in the moment, taking time to rest and connect with your own breath can seem impossible in the pursuit of what ‘needs’ to be done. But ‘stay awake’ is the message we receive at the beginning of Advent, whether it is convenient or not.

So, how might you stay awake in these days? How might a practice of being watchful for the in-breaking of God be on your Christmas list? How might it be possible to slow down the pace enough to be awake if, when, the Holy comes to call?

Might I suggest getting a nice cup of coffee and sitting down at some point of the day and begin staying awake? Who knows what might happen? There just might be a visitation by an angel, or a wise one, or a wonder beyond imagination.

Amazing things happen when we are awake.

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Beginning the Journey

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Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await,
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit………

~John O’Donohue

On Saturday morning I was cleaning up one of the several stacks of books I have built around our house. In that cleaning up I came across this blessing of John O’Donohue, someone whose words never fail to leave me breathless. I was struck with the invitation of these words not because I am going on any trip literally but because they spoke to me of this time of Advent which we in the Christian household began an observance of yesterday. These four weeks which lead up to the celebration of Christmas are some of my favorite days in the entire year. They are not so special to me because they are filled with the hustle and bustle of malls and shopping, the electric weariness that can accompany the count down of days left to purchase gifts. No. Instead these days of Advent are actually an invitation to do the very opposite. They are an invitation to the journey of rest, reflection, darkness, waiting, expectation. The outer world seems to so willingly provide the backdrop for this journey. Days are short. Darkness is our nearly constant companion. Winter is creeping in like a thief and we are powerless over its arrival.

Today marks the six year anniversary for me of writing this daily reflection I chose to call Pause. Its beginning those years ago was humble and spontaneous really. I made the commitment to post a daily meditation for members of the faith community I serve. They would be moments when people might ‘pause’ in the course of their daily lives and connect with their breath, take a moment to check in with their spirit, to remember this journey of days that unfolds toward new birth. I never dreamed it would still continue over these six years. I have met people through this space, people I would never have otherwise. Out of these words have come conversations, prayers, disagreements, friendships and a book. It was a road that took me to a ‘world I had never been in before’.

The fact that this surprises me only shows my own dim-wittedness. Isn’t this what Advent is supposed to do? Take us on roads we have never traveled before? Toward places we have not yet known? To meet people who will surprise us, challenge us, show us the face of God? To open us to new birth?

I mean just think of this story, this very big story, which we will tell over these dark days. Angels visit. Unimaginable claims are made. People go on journeys to places they had not planned to go. Places that proved dangerous and welcoming. Strangers offer shelter. People are struck dumb with wonder. Babies are born. Many drop whatever they are doing to be a part of it all. Gifts are given.

Advent. It is not for the faint of heart. What is this Advent season holding it to you? Are you watching and waiting for the surprises? Are you allowing the darkness to be a womb where something new might be born?

John O’Donohue offers these words as blessing:

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

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