Beyond the brimming ages Gabriel waits, his foremost message burning on his breath. Through time men slide, creeping through the gates of birth and out again the doors of death.
He sees kings rise and kingdoms fall to dust; he sees unnumbered souls unfleshed; to some he gives slight hints, but the full knowledge must wait, for his best words are not for them.
Then at last, coming from afar he sees, gleaming like a golden pin in time’s folds, Mary, rising like a star above the fretted seas of what had been;
bright hinge on which the gate of Heaven creaks, to her he turns, inclines himself, and speaks. ~J.C.Sharl “Annunciation”
Be patient and without bitterness, realizing the least we can do is make coming into existence no more difficult for Him than the earth does for spring when it wants to come. ~Rainier Marie Rilkefrom Letters to a Young Poet
And in all of this, nature is never spent; There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; And though the last light off the black West wind went Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs— Because the Holy Ghost over the bent World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”
Kings and kingdoms come and go, reduced to dust over time.
So the Word waited, like the earth waits for spring, for a golden point of light to overwhelm the dark.
She says “let it be”, not “no, not me, not now.”
Transformed, simply by accepting Him: a simple, but oh so difficult faith, like a tender shoot breaking through the crust of frozen earth seeking the Sun, needing now to bloom.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples,and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, “What are you seeking?” And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”
He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.
One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ).He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).
The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
Philip said to him, “Come and see.”
Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” John 1:35-51
I never knew what was going on.
He would say, “Let’s go,” and we would follow. “Follow” was his word.
And we would. Fools we were to let that take us all that way. Why we did to this day
I don’t know. Look how it ended. Look what it became. But what did we have
to stay for? Nothing. There wasn’t much work. Nothing much to do. There were no
stories left. Bread. Fish. So we ended up with more bread and fish. But we did find
stories and stories. Well, what else is there? I never did much along the way. Look it up…
I will say, though, that it was his words. Words!
Imagine. Words had never done what his did. I’d listen, and I wasn’t much of a listener. Then
later I would try to make sense of them. I couldn’t. But I could feel them. And maybe that was it, how
they got inside you and made you wonder and wrinkle. They got in my brain’s garden and made it seem like
the roots were above ground and all the flowers and vegetables, all the nourishing, were now below…
See? See how hard it is to explain this stuff? You just started seeing everything with a
new mind. You began to be drawn to a whole new world, and it was a world.
You might say, okay, whatever, and yet those words did become flesh, my flesh. And my flesh, my body, held
the kingdom of God, and if it’s a place that’s a place for children, then most of what I know really doesn’t matter.
Labor doesn’t, and money, and reason, and, well, you go make a list. He’d get me so confused. And then we’d
head off worrying about how we would eat and where we’d sleep. Our feet were filthy. My God, we were always
filthy. We stank. And then he’d go and point at birds or stalks of grain, even stop and have us kneel before a flower,
and then he’d smile. That haunts me still. That smile. And then he died. He brought out hate, not love. He had
a terrifying sense of justice. Nothing he said or did was impossible. Maybe that was it. It was all possible. ~Jack Ridl from “Bartholomew: Disciple”
What are you seeking? What are you looking for in your life?
Jesus asks the new disciples because He needs to know whether they are expecting a wise rabbi/teacher, or a prophesied Messiah come to change the world, or a mighty king who will liberate them from political oppression.
No matter what our expectation is, Jesus asks that we come to see what he is doing, following him to witness what will happen as he speaks, allowing his words to become our new flesh and skin.
He takes us to the threshold of heaven and throws the gate wide open. Nothing he says or does is impossible.
He shows us what is possible simply by asking us what we hope for.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year or so. Each week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
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Like Mary, we have no way of knowing… We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there. ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
Aren’t there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes. ~Denise Levertov from “Annunciation”
This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There’d have been no room for the child. ~Madeleine L’Engle “After Annunciation” from A Cry Like A Bell
Dawn again and the birds of oblivion sing of all hungers
Each day I wake to a pillar of light kindling the room into being once more
A crease in the rug, someone’s future stumble
The pale melt of bedclothes at my thighs
Mine is not the face of peace but of the found-out
The lamp’s diminutive thorn of light sharpens at my bedside— a whole world waiting
The Annunciation by Henry Tanner, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Mary’s response to this overwhelming event is a model for us all when God is leading us over a threshold into the unexpected and unknown.
Even though she is prepared, having studied God’s Word and His promise to His people — she doesn’t understand: “How can this be?”
Articulating it in the song she sings as a response, she gives up her so-carefully-planned-out life to give life to God within her.
Her resilience reverberates through the ages and to each one of us in our own multi-faceted and overwhelming troubles: May it be to me as you say.
May it be. Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise – all embodied within me.
Let it be, even if I don’t understand how it can be.
Even if it pierces my soul as with a sword so that I leak out to empty; you are there to heal the bleeding wound by filling it with infinite light.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
The angel Gabriel from heaven came His wings as drifted snow his eyes as flame “All hail” said he “thou lowly maiden Mary, Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!
“For known a blessed mother thou shalt be, All generations laud and honor thee, Thy Son shall be Emanuel, by seers foretold Most highly favored lady,” Gloria!
Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head “To me be as it pleaseth God,” she said, “My soul shall laud and magnify his holy name.” Most highly favored lady. Gloria!
Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ was born In Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn And Christian folk throughout the world will ever say: “Most highly favored lady,” Gloria
(Jesus said) I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! Luke 12:49
Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning from “Aurora Leigh”
It is difficult to undo our own damage… It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. ~Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk
Nine Kinds of Blindness 1. The one where your eyes do not work to see anything. 2. The one where your eyes do not work to see everything. 3. The one where your eyes work, but you cannot see what you have never seen before. 4. The one where your eyes work but you cannot see what is inconvenient. 5. The one where your eyes work but someone is keeping you from using them. 6. The one where your eyes work but you are angry. 7. The one where your eyes work but you are afraid. 8. The one where your eyes work but there is no light. 9. The one where your eyes work but there is nothing but light. ~Paul Pastor “Nine Kinds of Blindness” from Bower Lodge
I need to turn aside and look, blinded as I am, to see, as if for the first and last time, the kindled fire that illuminates even the darkest day and never dies away.
We are invited, by no less than God Himself, through the original burning bush that is never consumed to shed our shoes, to walk barefoot and vulnerable, and approach the bright and burning dawn, even when it is the darkest midnight, even when it is a babe in a manger who kindles a fire in each one of us.
Only then, only then can I say: “Here I am! Consume me!”
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. Within our darkest night, you kindle the fire that never dies away, that never dies away. ~Taize
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And as you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens. ~Stephen Graham from The Gentle Art of Tramping
That great door opens on the present, illuminates it as with a multitude of flashing torches. ~Annie Dillard (in response to the Graham’s quote) from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
There is a second or two each day (and some days I must watch hard for it) when there is a moment of illumination like a multitude of flashing torches, when I can see just beyond what is here and now to heaven’s open door.
It is a liminal promise pointing me to where I didn’t think to go.
If I miss it, this opened door that is not a door~ too busy to notice- too blinded to see- having turned my face away, nevertheless it still happens – just without my witness.
It gladdens my heart to know that God always offers up the open door again and again, until I see.
My 2025 Advent theme: On the threshold between day and night
On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord— with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light. Zechariah 14:6-7
So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid. ~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk
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People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch with awe as it unfolds. ~Carl Rogersfrom A Way of Being
Once I saw a chimpanzee gaze at a particularly beautiful sunset for a full 15 minutes, watching the changing colors [and then] retire to the forest without picking a pawpaw for supper. ~Adriaan Krotlandt, Dutch ethologist in Scientific American (1962)
There is much about this life we cannot control. We like to think we can. We even try.
We are mere witness to changes wrought by the Creator, how He reaches deep in a person or how He paints in the skies.
Watch in awe.
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He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:2-5
Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heav’n: to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen. ~John Donne – a prayer
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 4:6
It seems impossible that God could be contained within the darkness of a womb.
The Creator, who made the heavens, went deep into His vast inner universe of atoms and sub-atomic particles. He hosted tiny cellular nuclei within His body, instead of the heaven-flung massive nebulae in distant galaxies.
And He chose to do this. Out of His love and goodness, He became Light in the darkest space of the human body, to be birthed to illuminate a world bent on destruction.
From radiance to ribosomes, from cosmos to cytoplasm, from galaxies to Golgi apparatus, from moons to mitochondria, from utter darkness to “let there be light.”
And there is Light. God is there, coming from above and coming from within.
I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year. Once a week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.
Lyrics: Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! From darkness and from sorrow of the night To morning that comes singing o’er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to thee, Who art the love of love, the eternal light of light!
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You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink. ~G.K. Chesterton
Norman Rockwell’s 1951 painting Saying Grace
Chesterton has it right. No matter what I embark on, I should say grace first. Even my breathing, my waking, and my sleeping. Even the brilliance right outside my back door.
Continual and constant thanks and praise to the Creator for all things bright and beautiful, and helping us through the dark times.
Instead I am plagued with inconstancy and inconsistency, with a stubborn tendency to take it all for granted.
As I “dip pen in ink” this morning, join me in saying grace:
He is worthy. Amen and Amen.
Even more so. Ever more now.
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The world does not need words. It articulates itself in sunlight, leaves, and shadows. The stones on the path are no less real for lying uncatalogued and uncounted. The fluent leaves speak only the dialect of pure being…
The sunlight needs no praise piercing the rainclouds, painting the rocks and leaves with light, then dissolving each lucent droplet back into the clouds that engendered it. The daylight needs no praise, and so we praise it always– greater than ourselves and all the airy words we summon. ~Dana Giola from “Words”
The words the world needs is only the Word itself; we exist because He breathed breath into us, saying it was good.
Whatever we have to say about His Creation pales compared to His it is good
But we try over and over again to use words of wonder and praise to express our awe and gratitude and amazement while painted golden by His breath of Light.
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Love means to learn to look at yourself The way one looks at distant things For you are only one thing among many. And whoever sees that way heals his heart, Without knowing it, from various ills— A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things So that they stand in the glow of ripeness. It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves: Who serves best doesn’t always understand. ~Czeslaw Milosz “Love” from New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001
Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass, And look at light reflected by the ground. There he will find everything we have lost… ~Czeslaw Milosz from “The Sun”
It’s not easy to subdue the needy ego and let the life-giving soul take control, even though doing so saves us grief and serves the world well. So if you see me on the street one day, quietly muttering, “Only one thing among many, only one thing among many…,” you’ll know I’m still working on it, or it’s still working on me. ~Parker Palmer “The Big Question: Does My Life Have Meaning?”
It is always tempting to be self-absorbed; since my heart stent placement nearly 8 months ago, I tend to analyze every sensation in my chest, fuss over how many steps I take daily, and get discouraged when the scale doesn’t register the sacrifices I think I’m making in my diet.
In other words, in my efforts to heal my physically-broken heart, I become the center of my attention, rather than just one among many things in the days/months/years I have left. I need to look at myself from a distance rather than under a microscope.
It is a skewed and futile perspective, seeking meaning and purpose in life by navel gazing.
Instead, I should be concentrating on the ripeness of each day. I’ve been given a second chance to recalibrate my journey through the time I have left, focusing outward, gazing at the wonders around me, sometimes getting down on my knees.
I don’t fully understand how I might serve others by what I share here online, or what I do in my local community with my hands and feet. I now know not to miss the moments basking in the glow of loving those around me, including you friends I may never meet on this side of the veil.
May you glow in ripeness as well.
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