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.

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?

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.

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.

“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.

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.

“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
~Frederick Buechner

Somedays I am overwhelmed that I get to do the work I do. Yesterday was one of those days. Much of the morning was filled with the various preparations needed for the upcoming first Sunday in Advent. I have been a part of a group of people who have been hanging brilliantly colored stars throughout our worship spaces in anticipation of our theme of ‘Holy Darkness, Holy Light’. In addition to the stars, fabrics of blue hues, the liturgical color of Advent, needed to be collected and placed on tables, pulpits and other areas around the church. Advent wreaths needed to be cleaned up and taken to the worship spaces so they are ready to begin our walk toward Christmas. This kind of preparation is a joy for me. It helps to set the rhythm for my own spiritual noticing of the gifts of this season.

In the afternoon I had the blessing of visiting one of our members who is living in her 96th year. To say that this woman is an inspiration is such an understatement. A former teacher, she continues to learn and study every day. Her body has known some health problems but her mind is sharp as a tack and she exercise like an Olympic athlete. Every time I visit her I know fully that the visit is more for me than for her. She shared with me what she had been up to over the last several months. In her lovely apartment she has two computers, an IPad and a Kindle in addition to countless books. She uses them all to continue to research her many interests. This time she had been inspired to learn more about the Dust Bowl after having watched the recent episodes on PBS about this time in our country’s history. I marveled at her insatiable lust for learning and felt humble in its presence.

In the evening I joined with a group of people so dedicated to our church that I am always filled with gratitude in their presence. We dreamed and schemed the names of people who might be invited to serve in various capacities in the work of the church. There was laughter and serious conversation as we sought, as best we could, to create a balanced and thoughtful approach to inviting people even further into the life of the church. As names were offered someone might share something that was going on in that particular life, joys, tragedies, sorrows,celebrations, that would impact the invitation and the possible acceptance. It was holy work. Work that will have more far flung implications than even we might imagine.

Like most work, there are days that are less fulfilling than others. There are days when I long for the kind of work that sees instant gratification. The kind of gratification that I imagine construction workers have as they watch a building or highway appear through the work of their hands. Or any of the jobs where people assemble something visible. To be able to see, feel, or touch the fruits of your labor must bring a certain satisfaction, one I rarely experience.

Instead the work to which I have been called measures its time and and production in relationships and commitments and the blessing of traveling the life span with people. The paycheck comes in listening and heartache and the thrill of seeing someone light up with passion for finding a heart connection with another person or seeing someone live into a gift they never knew they possessed. It comes in walking with others through life stories that are unfolding in all their mundane and triumphant nuances. It comes in knowing that these stories and my own are held in the weave of the great faith story.

What is your work? How is it filling you these days? How is it inviting you to weave your story with a greater story? How is it inviting you to an even deeper sense of living? May you be blessed in your work this day, whatever it may be. And if the work for which you long does not come your way, may you be held in the hope of its arrival.

Blessed be.

“An unreflected life is like an unopened letter.”
~The Talmud

Yesterday I found myself in a warm and lovely room reflecting on my life. Or at least some parts of it. Meeting with a spiritual director as I do once a month, I had set aside time to find language for the emerging patterns I see in my thoughts, my days, my work, my relationships, my heart. All this is done with the understanding that someplace in all of this the Holy dances. Just coming off Thanksgiving and heading into the season of Advent, there was much to muddle through.

As I walked out the door, I noticed a small picture frame with the quote above printed in autumn colors to match the other fall accents scattered about the room. I repeated the words to myself all the way to the car until I could write them down. The framed version did not have any hint as to where it came from but an Internet search provided the answer. The Talmud, the book my Hebrew brothers and sisters refer to when searching out the wisdom of thousands of rabbis on a wide variety of subjects. It is a central text held alongside the Torah that guides a faithful life.

“An unreflected life is like an unopened letter.” Its wisdom felt like a challenge to me. I think of the number of days I move from task to task, from meeting to meeting, without really reflecting much on what I am doing. It is easy to fill my calendar with appointments and lists of to-do’s and come to the end of the day holding a piece of paper with many marks and little substance. This kind of mindless living held in tandem with the chores of the every day…..cooking, laundry, errands, cleaning….can be numbing and exhaustion producing enough to feel like living. But is it really? Is it what we were born to do?

When I look about me and ponder the world, I truly believe we are a people longing for reflected lives. Now I am also sure that this longing is one that is a privilege of those who know where their next meal is coming from, those who know that for the most part they are safe, that they have a roof over their heads. And it is also out of this privilege that the next important idea might spring that will bring comfort to those who live on the opposite side of such blessing. This is often the work of reflection.

This Sunday we begin the season of Advent, those four weeks which lead us into the celebration of Christmas. If lived in the way in which the season itself was fashioned, it is a time of reflection, a time of ruminating on the gifts of both darkness and light. Particularly for those of us in the northern hemisphere, these are our darkest days, days which invite us to stop the forward pull of life and to be still. To wait. To ponder what might be born.

More than any other time of year envelopes will soon begin arriving in our mailboxes. Cards and family newsletters will appear from people we have not heard from since last year. I know I will certainly open them with great anticipation of what news I might read. To leave them sitting, unread, would seem such a shame. Even those that may go on with too much enthusiasm about their successes will be savored for the gift they offer: someone’s time, inspiration and creativity given without thought of anything in return.

With the same care that I will open these letters, I hope to carve out moments to reflect on this blessed life. Though the days may be shrouded in darkness they are invitations to breathe deeply, to open to wonder, to find meaning in the everyday, to wait with expectation.

May it be so.