A fuller meaning of Christmas

A handful of our brave staff and volunteers ventured out to the soup kitchen for our Christmas dinner this afternoon amidst some pretty hazardous driving and weather conditions. While the snowfall isn't too deep here yet, the wind and the chill are dangerous. I am grateful to those organizing and running our city's shelter, especially during these days.

I am always amazed by the faithfulness of the Emmaus community, but I shouldn't be; they always show up. Whether it was the height of the pandemic when so much about our safety and wellbeing was uncertain, to a rather serious and extended Christmas storm today, so many are selfless when it comes to living the gospel in the daily.

I recently stumbled upon this reflection from Old Monk in her book, A Monk in the Inner City. The reflection is titled "Yuletide Carols," and it captures so wonderfully why we wait in hope for the coming of our incarnated Savior.

______________________

The Advent season is especially meaningful this year. The snows are heavy and deep and comforting. It is easy to pray with Isaiah,

Though your sins be red as crimson,
I will make them white as wool.

And there is such silence. City noises, encased in yards of white swaddling, are muffled. Cars, concrete sidewalks, and other hard objects lie buried under the soft snow.

We are forced to slow down—walk carefully so we don’t slip; drive cautiously so we don’t skid. We can spend more time indoors reading, listening to music, and praying. We prepare. For soon, “when the earth is in peaceful silence, and the night is in the midst of its course, your almighty Word, O Lord, will leap down from heaven.”

It’s easy to get sucked into thinking that this is what Christmas is all about.

Thank God for the soup kitchen. Is there a lonelier place on earth as Christmas nears? The guys start drinking in the middle of the month so that by Christmas week they can’t even hear the words “I’ll be home for Christmas” blaring on the radio. It’s their only defense. We try to make it less sad. But even handing out brightly wrapped socks and scarves and lotions, or having a party and singing Christmas carols and drinking hot chocolate doesn’t ease the heartbreak.

I’m grateful for both experiences—quiet confident joy at the coming of the Savior, tempered by the harsh reality of human suffering. Together, they capture a fuller meaning of Christmas.

______________________

Thank you, Old Monk. And Christmas blessings to you all! May you be incarnated love each day.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Mary graces our Emmaus office, also waiting hopefully.

The tree graces chapel, and the photo doesn't do it justice.
It's from our woods, and it's totally magnificent.

The liminality of Advent and Christmas on display.

Pizzelles: A Perfectionist's Perspective

Everyone gets on my case about being a perfectionist. And while it causes undue anxiety and tension in my life, there are times when it's helpful. And there are also times when others come out to play the game with me!

Pizzelle night is one of those moments.

A yearly tradition at the monastery, everyone looks to make the *perfect* circle with the pizzelle irons, getting just the right amount of batter at just the right location for just the right amount of time. And when they do, they want everyone to know. And we all rejoice in those satisfying shapes.

Marilyn, responsible, for the operation, gives us all pointers before we start, elevating the hope that the perfect circle is within our reach!

You can see many of my attempts above...Maybe not perfect, but they certainly offered an opportunity to appreciate diversity!

Many joined in on the fun!

Here was my best attempt of the evening!

But, of course, when they aren't perfect, we have to cut off the extra ends...and eat them, too! Maybe imperfections aren't so bad!

The anise and vanilla cookies are all boxed and ready to savor on Christmas Eve after Liturgy... Anticipation!

Let us walk in the holy presence.

To Be of Use: More on Advent

One of my favorite scenes at the monastery these days can be spotted in our courtyard. Each Advent one of our sisters decorates with lights. It used to be just the magnolia tree, but now it has extended to the bushes on the west side of the courtyard. And this year, another extension! Look at Mary herself!

Salve Regina!

It makes me think of a Marge Piercy poem I love.

To be of use

Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Mary wants to be of use, too.

We know Mary isn't the passive young mother in the way history has portrayed her. No, she was fully submerged in the task of being the Mother of God, and she is a model for us today. She, too, is an incarnation of God's love in our world—teaching us mercy, compassion, resiliency, and courage. No wonder God opted for incarnation; we, too, are here to be put to use.

+++

My friend shared with me a most beautiful rendition of the first lines of Isaiah 54 from the group Sweet Honey in the Rock—Sing Oh Barren One. It's worth the 12 minutes, I promise!

+++

I just finished a book called lighter by yung pueblo. The cover has the appearance a self-help book, which can be off-putting to me, but I found it to be one of the most profound books that I've read about doing inner work, i.e. making it an appropriate and beautiful Advent read.

In between his prose, yung pueblo (It's a pseudonym meaning "young people" and signifying that "humanity is entering an era of remarkable growth and healing, when many will expand their self-awareness and release old burdens.") intersperses some short, thought-provoking poetry.

It's that inner work, or as monastics would call it—conversatio—that allows us to more fully express the truth of incarnation.

Here's an example of these poems, one which I think is also fitting for this liturgical season:

we allow ourselves to love because it's worth the risk

even though there is the chance of loss or hurt

we take the leap again and again

because love is one of the best parts of being alive

we don't do it because it's easy

we do it because connection makes everything brighter

Let us keep taking the risks of love—even when it doesn't feel useful, even when we feel barren.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Advent: A Different Perspective

On the first day that we heard Isaiah proclaimed at morning prayer our sister read with such conviction those dreamy, yet possible passages of hope, light, and promise. 

It must be Advent! And how good that is...

... because Advent offers us an opportunity to hope and dream of what it might look like if we took more seriously the reality of incarnation, the truth that we are embodied love.

It's a perspective we could really use these days. (Isn't that the kind of stuff we say each Advent?!)

I love this poem by Jan Richardson because it gives us a different perspective on the Annunciation. Of course we ponder for ourselves how insurmountable it might have felt for Mary to say "Yes" and hope we might muster up the courage to give a real, heartfelt one ourselves at least once in our lives.

But, how must it have felt to bear the news to Mary, to have to be the one to tell her about God's big ask? No wonder it took an angel!

I hope you love the poem, too.

Let us walk in the holy presence.

Gabriel’s Annunciation

Jan Richardson

For a moment

I hesitated

on the threshold.

For the space

of a breath

I paused,

unwilling to disturb

her last ordinary moment,

knowing that the next step

would cleave her life:

that this day

would slice her story

in two,

dividing all the days before

from all the ones

to come.

The artists would later

depict the scene:

Mary dazzled

by the archangel,

her head bowed

in humble assent,

awed by the messenger

who condescended

to leave paradise

to bestow such an honor

upon a woman, and mortal.

Yet I tell you

it was I who was dazzled,

I who found myself agape

when I came upon her—

reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,

I cannot now recall;

only that the woman before me—

blessed and full of grace

long before I called her so—

shimmered with how completely

she inhabited herself,

inhabited the space around her,

inhabited the moment

that hung between us.

I wanted to save her

from what I had been sent

to say.

Yet when the time came,

when I had stammered

the invitation

(history would not record

the sweat on my brow,

the pounding of my heart;

would not note

that I said

Do not be afraid

to myself as much as

to her)

it was she

who saved me—

her first deliverance—

her Let it be

not just declaration

to the Divine

but a word of solace,

of soothing,

of benediction

for the angel

in the doorway

who would hesitate

one last time—

just for the space

of a breath

torn from his chest—

before wrenching himself away

from her radiant consent,

her beautiful and

awful yes.