Month: December 2014

Awaiting His Arrival: From Frantic to Fear Not

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hydrangea1127An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.
Luke 2: 9-10

 

We forget that God is right there, waiting for us to turn to him, no matter how dire our situation.  And we forget the reassuring words of his messengers: “Fear not.”   If we really trusted in God, these words would never seem empty.  Instead, they would remind us that God always seeks to draw close to us– even, as the Psalmist writes, in the depths of hell.
….the ability to hear the angel’s words, “Fear not!” can only be given to a surrendered heart, one that knows itself to be held in the palm of God’s hand.
~Johann Christoph Arnold from “Be Not Afraid”

Awaiting His Arrival: From Decay to Dawn

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We live in a time where the groaning need
and dividedness of humankind
is especially to be felt and recognized.
Countless people are subjected to hatred,
violence and oppression which go unchecked.
The injustice and corruption which exist today
are causing many voices to be raised to protest
and cry out that something be done.
Many men and women are being moved to sacrifice much
in the struggle for justice, freedom, and peace.
There is a movement afoot in our time,
a movement which is growing, awakening.

We must recognize that we as individuals are to blame
for every social injustice,
every oppression,
the downgrading of others
and the injury that man does to man,
whether personal or on a broader plane.…
God must intervene with his spirit and his justice and his truth.
The present misery, need, and decay must pass away
and the new day of the Son of Man must dawn.
This is the advent of God’s coming.
This is the very essence of Christmas:
that he comes to make all things new and pure,
that he comes to establish his kingdom here on the earth
~Dwight Blough (written in 1965)

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,”
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away
Rev. 21:5

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Poverty to Abundance

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He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty. Luke 1:58

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look Down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

~ Oscar Romero

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Hidden to Known

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So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
Luke 2: 16-19

 

Her fate seizes her and brings her
down. She is heavy with it. It
wrings her. The great weight
is heaved out of her. It eases.
She moves into what she has become
sure in her fate now
as a fish free in the current.

She turns to the calf who has broken
out of the womb’s water and its veil.
He breathes. She licks his wet hair.
He gathers his legs under him
and rises. He stands, and his legs
wobble. After the months
of his pursuit of her now
they meet face to face.

From the beginnings of the world
his arrival and her welcome
have been prepared. They have always
known each other.
~Wendell Berry “Her First Calf”

 

Lambs that learn to walk in snow
When their bleating clouds the air
Meet a vast unwelcome, know
Nothing but a sunless glare.
Newly stumbling to and fro
All they find, outside the fold,
Is a wretched width of cold.

As they wait beside the ewe,
Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies
Hidden round them, waiting too,
Earth’s immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
What so soon will wake and grow
Utterly unlike the snow.
~Philip Larkin “First Sight”

Awaiting His Arrival: From Shadow to Light

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photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten

 

…the rising sun will come to us from heaven
 to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
~Luke 1:78-79

 

…yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.
~John Donne

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Dross to Gold

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But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears?
For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
Malachi 3: 3-4

    Now burn, new born to the world,
      Doubled-naturèd name,
   The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
   Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;
      Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”


Awaiting His Arrival: From Doing to Being

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Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking,
“What then is this child going to be?”
For the Lord’s hand was with him.
Luke 1: 66

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What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special?
Be a womb.
Be a dwelling for God.
Be surprised.
~Loretta Ross-Gotta from “To Be Virgin”

Awaiting His Arrival: From First to Last

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 rainjewels
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Revelation 22:13
Of the Father’s love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega;
he the source, the ending he,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see,
evermore and evermore!
~Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

Here is the message of Advent: faced with him who is the Last, the world will begin to shake. Only when we do not cling to false securities will our eyes be able to see this Last One and get to the bottom of things. Only then will we have the strength to overcome the terrors into which God has let the world sink. God uses these terrors to awaken us from sleep, as Paul says, and to show us that it is time to repent, time to change things. It is time to say, “all right, it was night; but let that be over now and let us get ready for the day.” We must do this with a decision that comes out of the very horrors we experience. Because of this our decision will be unshakable even in uncertainty.

If we want Advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the great question for us is whether we will come out of the convulsions of our time with this determination: Yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. a waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them.
~Father Alfred Delp, written in a Nazi prison in 1945 shortly before he was hanged for treason  “The Shaking Reality of Advent”

 

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Silence to Time Suspended

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trumpetersclose

 Immediately his (Zechariah’s) mouth was opened and his tongue set free,
and he began to speak, praising God:
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
~Luke 1: 64, 78-79

 

Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice
There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball,
Frozen hard, its white
identical with the untrodden white
of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face—
Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s
Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced,
Weary, immobile. Black water traced, behind it,
An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes
Fell and fell. Silence
Deepened, deepened. The short day
Suspended itself, endless.
~Denise Levertov “Swan in Falling Snow”

And we are silenced too by our questioning the motives of God, by trying to be God ourselves, and so sit suspended, immobile, in the darkening quiet, waiting, waiting.
We are met by the tender mercy of His light illuminating our deepening, raised to the eternal, suspended, forgiven endlessly.

 

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Fearful to Unafraid

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“Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.“
 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”
Luke 1:30, 38

 

As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was — he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works: as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if one day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room
~Luci Shaw “Virgin”

 

and she
looked up at him, their looks so merged in one
the world outside grew vacant, suddenly,
and all things being seen, endured and done
were crowded into them: just she and he
eye and its pasture, visions and its view,
here at the point and at this point alone:-
see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Annunciation to Mary”