Waiting

I seem to be doing a lot of waiting these days. The idea of spending my time waiting is a bit more enticing now that Advent is here. Before Advent waiting felt more like wasting time. And during some of my darker days waiting was really how I spent the day, going through the motions of cleaning, writing, talking, all the while waiting for the day to be over so I could go to sleep. Waiting to go to sleep to escape feeling and thinking makes waiting feel even longer. Waiting to go to sleep in order to find reprieve from situations in which nothing else can be done, except wait it out, "this too shall pass." This kind of waiting is one variation on the "dark night of the soul" spiritual crisis, where the darkness calls out like a gift from God. Succoming to the darkness has its merits. Giving in to the occasional reality - that every time one thinks that one is able to climb out of the hole the hole just gets deeper - brings a kind of submission, humility, serenity.Thankfully not all of my waiting is that kind of waiting.

There are other kinds of waiting that I do. Waiting for phone calls or emails or comments to things I've written and posted on blogs. Waiting to hear back. Waiting for the cake to bake or dinner to be ready. Waiting for my lunch date. Waiting for friends to arrive. Waiting until my husband comes home. Waiting to see the doctor/dentist/opthomologist. This kind of waiting fills entire days and often feels like wasted time, waiting. I have better things to do, than wait like this. But it too happens.

Most mornings I do a 20 minute yoga practice that includes a few minutes of meditation. Some mornings I go through the practice, go through the motions, waiting for it be over so I can check this off my "To Do" list. But on other mornings I allow myself to sink into the moment and let time wash over me unattended. On these mornings even the DVD moves too fast, guiding me through the postures too quickly, so slow do I desire to be, for time to pass. I sit in the silent meditation longer than usual. Breathing. Still. Peace-filled. Waiting for my mind to quiet, and yet, not waiting at all. Being. Simply being.

Advent is a time, a season that pulls on me in all these ways. Hurry up and wait. The long dark nights do call out to me, a luxury of silence, a cup of tea and a gentle fire flickering soft light. I love the night. True, I also love the long summer days, but I am willing to take each season as it comes and appreciate what it brings. Waiting. Wondering.

What will this season bring?

Advent Virtual Retreat

A meditation on the readings for Advent 2C for the RevGalBlogPals Virtual Advent Retreat:

Entering the Advent journey is an invitation to travel, intentionally, into the wilderness – the dark night of the soul. One hopes that the Church guides this journey offering opportunities to pray, ponder, stirred up, conflicted. John, the desert prophet, proclaims the burning chaff, the background to our Christmas shopping. Advent sings of incongruous images - new birth and end of life, the Alpha and the Omega, of oppression and freedom, of despair and ultimately of hope. The path is uneven and twisted, spiraling in to the depths of our being, certain we are lost. And then, quietly, the Spirit of God calls to us, “Awake, arise, my love, my dear one.” The early morning desert sun illuminates the way - through the valley to Jordan’s bank - our God is near. Awake and hearken, let each heart prepare a place for the Word to break in, a child to come anew, whispering peace into you and me. Come, our long expected One, come.

Within in our darkest night
A starless chill
Shudders
Calling, “Emmanuel
Where
Oh where, are you?”

Within our deepest soul
Astounding one
Voice
Cries in the wilderness
“Prepare
the way of the Lord!”

Within our darkest night
A still small spark
Kindled
Hark! The glad sound calls out
“Sleepers
Awake!” Jerusalem

Rise up and give walk in light
prepare
from darkest night -
Arise!
Our Daystar comes, the night

Dispelled, every valley filled,
every
mountain low, the rough made
smooth
A light, a light bathes bright

Discard the garment, sorrow
afflicted.
Arise! Put on the robe
Adorned
with love and mercy




Photos from the personal collection of Mompriest

Cross posted at the RevGalBlogPals blog.

RevGals Friday Five: The Crush!

Songbird over at the RevGals blog offers this Friday Five Meme:

1) Did you ever have a crush on a teacher? I had a mild crush on my red headed, very cool physics professor in college...he couldn't have been more than a few years older than me...

2) Who was your first crush? probably the adorable blond guy I went to prom with....

3) Have you ever given a gift to a crush?hum....not that I recall

4) Do you have a celebrity crush? (Around my house we call them TV boyfriends and girlfriends...) Kevin Spacey...is that just really weird?

5) Have you ever been surprised to find yourself the crushee? Yes...and that lucky guy got to marry me! (And, me him)....(and it's been 24 years of crusheeism)

Happy Thanksgiving

Most gracious God, by whose knowledge the depths are broken up and the clouds drop down the dew: We yield thee hearty thanks and praise for the return of seedtime and harvest, for the increase of the ground and the gathering in of its fruits, and for all the other blessings of thy merciful providence...And, we beseech thee to give us a just sense of these great mercies, such as may appear in our lives by a humble, holy, obedient waling before thee all our days....Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, page840)

Wishing everyone a blessed day of Thanksgiving.

Still

The light slants from the south
casting shadows in its wake
startling the afternoon
- a breath of brilliance
before the final
sigh -
and the sun falls
into darkness

Daylight comes late and leaves early
dark more than light,
Advent,
and yet,
Christmas
busyness takes over
calling out You must!

while inside
my soul whispers
be still
for just a
moment
be still.

It's Coming Around Advent

Advent
Endless indigo
beckoning inward
dark night, soul

Expect
another dawn
anticipate warmth
new light life

Wait, pause
Slow down, take time
let the moment
resonate

Finding Beauty in a Broken World

I am trying to prepare the discussion for this book, which will appear on the RevGals blog on Monday. I have over three pages of quotes....

and a sermon I wrote about refugees from Rwanda and preached on Pentecost 2008.

Here are a few quotes from the book:

Page 264: It is so easy to spiral into fear toward paranoia. We become the terror that possess us.
Page 253 Compromise is fine on anything that is not essential, but you cannot compromise your principles. You cannot compromise the dream or the dream dies, and you suffer spiritually.

Page 249: The full range of emotion: A bag of skulls, a bag of potatoes, both tilled from the same fields.

Page 248: I I hear William Coffin’s voice: “The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.”

Page 228: If you do violence to me, you do violence to yourself because we are all human beings.

Page 167: I close my eyes. Two images emerge: one man spitting on the prairie dog on the side of the road and Sarah pressing her lips against the dying prairie dog baby’s lips as she gave him mouth to mouth resuscitation.

Page 155 Never postpone gratitude. Ingratitude robs of enthusiasm. Albert Schweitzer

Page 88: If you take away all the prairie dogs, there will be no one to cry for the rain.

Page 18: I believe in the beauty of all things broken.

Page 6: A mosaic is a conversation between what is broken.

The Mullygrubs: A RevGals Friday Five (LOL)

The Cure

Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I'm not really asleep
when my sister calls
to say she's just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bed ridden.
Aunt Bert says
it's snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She's been suffering
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.

--Ginger Andrews (from Hurricane Sisters)

So this Friday before Thanksgiving, think about Aunt Bert and how she'll celebrate Thanksgiving! And how about YOU?

1. What is your cure for the "mulleygrubs"? If I wake up with a strong case of them, which I have prone to do, Strong coffee followed by my exercise routine (ab work and arm weights) followed by yoga followed by a vigorous bike ride followed by a shower. Then I make myself get dressed in something other than sweats and I put on make up. After all of that I take myself out to eat. In other words I get moving.

However, on other days I indulge in those mullygrubs and drink coffee for hours while readin blogs, in my yoga attire, AS IF I were going to do the above...

2. Where will you be for Thanksgiving? For over a month we have been planning to go to a friends house. They came to our house for last year and so we are going to their house this year. However now our son is staying with some friends in the 5th largest city in the USA and they want us to come for Thanksgiving. What to do? What to do? Break out plans with our friends here in order to be with our son there? (which would include 6 hours of driving and my husband works the day before and the day after Thanksgiving)...sigh....unresolved at this point in time...

3. What foods will be served? Which are traditional for your family? We will have the traditional Turkey with mashed potatoes and gravey, salad, green bean cassarole, pumpking pie...I am to bring some other kind of dessert and am thinking a homemade apple pie. But I also have a ton of lemons picked off our lemon tree and am wondering if I could use those in some way? Unresolved at this point in time...

4. How do you feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday? I like it. I like to get up and watch the parade, prepare the meal (Usually I have been the hostess), eat a lot, enjoy some good wine, and then collapse at the end of the day when everyone has gone home and watch an old Christmas movie. The next day I like to go to a movie and put up my Christmas tree.

5. In this season of Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for? Lots of challenges lately in my life and in the lives of my family. Grateful we all keep going.

BONUS: Describe Aunt Bert's Thanksgiving.I suspect her thanksgiving would include a house decorated in vibrant reds and oranges. The food would be traditional except for a fancy homemade cranberry sauce and an unusual sweet potatoe dish. My mother used to make a different sweet potatoe dish every year. One year she mashed the sweet potatoes and added brown sugar and cinnamon, then formed the mashed sweet potatoes into a ball around a marshmellow and rolled the ball in corn flakes, then baked them until the marshmellow was melted. I don't remember if I liked them, but I do remember them.

A Prayer by Gertrude of Helfa

Lord, in the presence of your love, I ask that you unite my work with your great work, and bring it to fulfillment. Just as a drop of water, poured into a river, becomes one with the flowing waters, so may all I do become part of all that you do. So that those with whom I live and work may also be drawn to you love.

Gertrude of Helfa, Germany, 1256-c.1302

Gathering Of Leaders: Christian Formation for the Missionary Church

The highlight for me of the Gathering of Leaders was a presentation offered by The Rev. Dr. Christopher Beeley, professor at Yale Divinity School (in Patristics, I believe). Christopher spoke from The Works of John Newton, "Grace in the Ear" from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Mark (the parable of the Sower), letter XI. John Newton is the author of the hymn known as "Amazing Grace." He was a ship owner and slave trader before becoming a priest in the Church of England. He went through a mighty conversion, worked to end the slave trade and spent his last years as Rector of united parishes of St. Mary Woolnoth and St. Mary Woolchurch in London.

Beeley focused his presentation on a three step process of faith formation offered by Newton and developed from a reflection of Newton's on the parable of the sower. The first step is "Desire." A person wanders into a church one Sunday morning because....and we were asked to offer up a variety of reasons a person might wander in and HOW they would feel. A person might feel "elation" and "joy" or "relief." The sense of desire propels one into church with a sudden surge of awareness of God's grace and love. This first phase is like the Hebrews freed from Egypt, it brings with it a sense of elation. While the sense of desire and God's love persist they also change with time leading to the second phase.

The second phase is "Conflict." This is the "dark night of the soul" phase where one wrestles with God, with faith,and often faces challenges that were not experienced in the first phase of Desire. If Desire is marked by elation like that of the Hebrew freed from slavery, this phase is marked by a sense of being lost, the Hebrews wandering in the desert for 40 years. One might think upon entering the phase of Desire that all one's problems are over, but in fact, they may just be beginning. This is a time of growing more dependent on God and deepening our trust as we travel through one challenge after another.

The second phase leads to the third phase. Newton is careful to spell out that one is not necessarily a better believer or person in one phase or the other, rather one's sense of dependence on God increases through each phase. To me this phase sounds a bit like what the Buddhists call "Detachment." This phase is marked by a shift in emotions where one becomes less emotionally engaged in the challenges and more able to view them with some distance, having put one's trust in God.

For more information on The Works of John Newton go here. You will find his ideas on these three phases beginning on page 171, "Grace in the Blade."

Our group felt strongly that these phases, A, B, and C were not linear but perhaps a spiral that repeats over and over through life.

The point of Beeley's presentation was to spur a conversation and our thoughts on how to provide Christian Formtion programs in our churches that address where folks are along the spectrum of these three phases. What kind of programming and or ministries can we offer those who are in the state of "Desire" - thinking more clearly about what newcomers might really need? And then what kind of ministries and programs can we offer to those in the "Conflict" phase or the third phase of "Contempltion?"

It left me thinking about how individuals go through these phases, but I also, I think congregations do too. Some congregations are mostly in one phase or another at any given point in their life....and if so what does that mean for leaders? More on this idea later.

A Friday the 13th Friday Five

From Sophia over at Revgals comes this Friday Five:

1. How is this Friday the 13th looking for you? It's is a rare cloudy, blustery day here with hints of rain, although that won't happen...a few sprinkles, maybe. It's a day off for me and my husband, but no plans yet.

2. Have you ever had anything unlucky happen on Friday the 13th? I suppose one could say that I've had lots of "unlucky" things happen in my life - but I don't think any of them are related in any way what so ever with the 13th of the month falling on a Friday.


3. Did your family of origin embrace or scorn superstitions? Not really. I had a great grandmother who was a Christian Scientist, and she had a deep belief in the power of prayer. My mother had no belief in prayer. This despite her deep love and affection for the grandmother. So, I suppose I could say that prayer was embraced by some of my family and scorned by others. And, so for some, prayer was like a superstition.


4. Are there any unique or amusing ones from your family, region, or ethnic background? No, none I can think of.


5. Do you love or hate horror movies like "Friday the 13th"? Hate.