Recognition

Tags

Advent, let the light in, O Come O Come Emanuel, radiant dawn, Samuel, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Today is the day on which we go to sleep in Advent and (if we are vigilant) we wake up to the coming of “the one for whom we wait.” We’ve been calling to him for weeks now: O come, O come, Emmanuel…so now we must attest to the fact that, by sunrise tomorrow, we will see the Radiant Dawn that is the presence of God in our midst. It seems clear that God is doing all the work. (See the conversation between the Lord and the Prophet Nathan, today’s first lectionary reading during which God recounts all that has been done for King David – and thereby the nation of Israel (2 SM 7–>8…16). All that is asked of King David is to recognize all that has been done for him and his kingdom. The pivotal moment in this reading for today, I think, is the line that reads, I have been with you wherever you went.

As we wait for the dawning of light tomorrow, let us again consider the wisdom of Br. James Koester, SSJE who writes today, “If you are looking to find where Jesus will be born tonight, do not stretch your hand out to the shiny, bright, and new. Look to those ordinary, ignored, forgotten, and hidden parts of your life, and the world, and there you will find him. Then, like the shepherds, kneel before him and know him to be Emmanuel, God with us.” In other words, just recognize that God has been with us wherever we have gone.

We have all day and into this night to search the corners of our hearts, letting the light in, until the radiant dawn of Divine Love overtakes the darkness and we welcome the long awaited Emmanuel. Do not miss this opportunity. Blessings on your search!

Dance to the Music

Tags

Advent, celebration, gift, rejoice, spirit, the greatness of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Since I sat down to write today, I have been accompanied in thought by a song that begins: My soul rejoices in my God; my spirit proclaims the greatness of the Lord. Holy is His name! Even if I mistake one or two of the words, the tune is there as is the meaning. It’s a very happy song and I’m happy to sing it. Probable cause? Likely the vaccine… Or maybe the electoral college vote (which should mark the end of the struggle toward election…) Could it be the impending celebration of high holy days for so many around the world, a celebration that has as much – if not more – to do with our inner lives as with outer expression?

It could be any of those things, or all of them. It could, on the other hand, simply be a little gift from God just for me, just so I know that God is here, that God is now, that God never leaves me comfortless. So I will listen and even hum whatever words come with the music…and maybe if I wake up enough, I will find myself dancing…I wouldn’t be surprised.

Still Waiting

Tags

Advent, Incarnation, power, pray, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, waiting, weakness

While I know that Advent is the season of preparation, of waiting: for Christmas, for the “coming of the Lord,” I’ve never encountered so many iterations of the same question to those whose are doing the waiting. My assumption always was that everyone knew the answer to the question, What are you waiting for? but this year people seem to asking for much more specificity in their seeking. This morning, in a great posting from Emmanuel Monastery sent to me by a friend, I read the following expansion with leading questions:

1. “What am I waiting for this Advent?” How will you recognize its coming?
2. We pray, “come in your power.” What would that look like for you?
3. We pray, “come in your weakness.” What would that look like for you?

The author invites us to go deeper in our pondering. Are you willing to consider both power and weakness in light of the Incarnation of Christ into the world?

Gaudete!

Tags

Advent, gaudete, joy, Kimberly Hope Belcher, rejoice, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I am always grateful for my four years of Latin class in high school with Sister Thomas Aquinas. Today, perhaps more than any other, I can hear myself and my comrades greet her as she sweeps into the classroom hoping for us all to jump out of our seats to respond to her greeting of: “Gaudete!” with gusto: “Salve, Soror. Gratias tibi ago!*” She was never disappointed because she was the reason for our joy. Her deep love of learning and of the joy she engendered in us from deep within her was the impetus for our own. This feeling of remembrance is akin to the sensation of what I read this morning entitled Joy Creeping In,** a description that I think apropos of what I am trying to convey today about Advent. Listen and ponder, please.

The joy proper to Advent is a clear-eyed joy. Advent calls us to look directly at the world’s brokenness, to see the plight of the hungry, the poor and the prisoner, and to cry out for the coming of the day of justice and salvation. Listening to the season and the Scriptures (as we have done for the last two weeks), we feel joy creeping in. As we become aware of what the world is not, of what the world ought to be, we begin to rejoice in our knowledge of God: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will also accomplish it.“

*”Thanks be to God!”

**Kimberly Hope Belcher, Give Us This Day, Liturgical Press, p.136

Slow Start

Tags

Advent, don't worry, Jesus

When you think you’re ready for something…like maybe a special season – Advent, for example (!) it can be frustrating when, on the first day of your determination to be participative in some way, you disappoint yourself or allow events to disappoint you! Has that ever happened to you? I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the times I have disappointed myself in that way! Lately, though, when this happens as it did yesterday and today, the strangest thing occurs. I begin to feel unhappy and frustrated and when I look up (sometimes from the inside of me) I have a strong sense of Jesus in front of me smiling and saying, “Don’t worry about it!” Tomorrow is another day!” I want to object and make excuses—often good ones—for why the day sped along the way it did, but Jesus just stays right there smiling as if I should not have a care in the world. It amazes me to say so, but I feel as if I am believing it’s all okay…and that tomorrow will, in fact, be better.

So here I am at 7:30PM on Tuesday of the first week of Advent saying to myself, “While it’s true that you have no Advent blog post written, no spiritual reading done, no religious service attended or other good deed to point to…it is true that tomorrow is another day and that God is just as close as God was yesterday, and that —in itself—is enough!”
I’ll see you, God willing, tomorrow!

Stay Awake!

Tags

Advent, be ready, stay awake, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The song that is repeating in my mind this morning is a favorite one of the young children (all grown up now) every Sunday in religious education classes throughout Advents of long ago: “Stay awake! (clap, clap) Get ready! (clap clap) You do not know the hour when the Lord is coming! Stay awake! (clap, clap) Get ready! (clap, clap) The Lord is coming soon!” The claps were, I suspect, the actual wake-up call for sleepy heads.

This is the perfect kind of day to look out the window, then turn over, pull up the blankets over yourself and go back to sleep. We had a hard frost in the night…the first really hard one of the season. But it’s Advent now and if we go back to sleep today, what will happen on all the coming Advent days? Where and when will the Lord enter in? How will we hear his footsteps on our hearts?

So turn up the thermostat and put on a sweater, grab a cup of coffee and sit in the quiet…Listen. “The Lord is coming soon.”

Down to Earth

Tags

Advent, Book of Revelation, existence

The images in the Book of Revelation often alert us to the time when God will “make all things new.” It seems that we have been waiting for a long time now for things to change, for the world to be transformed – or at least to “go back to normal.” But then I think of the quote from Scripture that sees us like a breath, our days “like a passing shadow” and wonder how it is that our existence is so brief…The goal is to wake up and make it count, I guess.

As we sit today and tomorrow on the verge of Advent I am called to pay attention by a quote for today in my Living Faith magazine. Commenting on that first reading from the Book of Revelation, the author says: “We don’t have to float above reality to find God. Already, he has come down to us and made all things new. He brings fulfillment and life as it was meant to be…” So maybe it’s up to us, after all…

It’s getting late. I’d better get going on a concrete plan for Advent.

Complexity

Tags

Advent, hope, potential, signs, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

After a first reading from the Book of Revelation today, my ears pricked up and my insides were warning: “Uh-oh!” because the “one like a son of man with a sharp sickle in his hand” was coming. I felt a shift, however, with Psalm 96, exhaling a long breath to hear that “He (the Lord) has made the world firm, not to be moved; he governs the peoples with equity.”

I know that we are coming swiftly into the season of Advent. I love this time of preparation and although it seems that it will be different this year, there have been intimations of hope. There are three vaccines now that seem to have the potential to slow the spread of the virus that runs rampant everywhere. For Americans in the USA, the 16-day stranglehold on the presidential election is finally over and we need not wait any longer for the transition to begin. Already in the first day, we can see civility and wisdom returning to life in these United States. But it is only a beginning. What has begun by decree from the new administration in Washington has to be accepted throughout the land and that will necessitate a monumental effort.

But that’s why I love the Season of Advent. It speaks of the time that is coming but has yet to appear. We cannot see but only feel what is happening underground, pulsing in the earth and in our lives. The signs are faint but soon to be seen. The potential is within. We have to look more deeply to perceive it.

The quote for today is from Alfred Lord Tennyson: Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, “It twill be happier.”

Do It Now!

Tags

Advent, Eckhart Tolle, possibility, present moment, St. Paul, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, waiting

It appears that I was correct when I “woke up” (read: “was shaken out of my lethargy”) yesterday about the possibility, the inevitability of never going back. I should have known when I read Eckhart Tolle’s Present Moment Reminder earlier this morning. He said this:

Give up waiting as a state of mind. When you catch yourself slipping into waiting, snap out of it. Come into the present moment. Just be and enjoy being.

It took the Sunday lectionary readings from the U.S. Catholic bishops to recognize how late it is. Did you know how soon the season of Advent is upon us? With all the consternation about the danger of traveling for Thanksgiving, have you even thought about readiness? Internal readiness, I mean…

St. Paul reminds the Thessalonians today that “You, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness…for all of you are children of the light. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober.” It’s as if he is saying, “There has been enough hand-wringing and lamenting about the state of our country and the world. It’s up to each one of us to take charge of our situation because the healing will come from the inside.” It is true that we are in a season of distress, the like of which most of us have never seen before, but if we wait, let it be in a state of active waiting. Give up passivity and step into possibility and trust. Love as you have never loved before – not just for your own well-being but also for that of those who walk with you. Be here now and love the opportunity to BE!

While We Wait…

Tags

Advent, Christmas miracle, expectation, kingdom of God, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, waiting

I’ll be on the road today before the sun is up, long before I reach my destination. I’m reminded of an old description of how some people used to describe a visit to their doctor as “Hurry up and wait!” Not at all the same meaning however…

I hope to be in my car and on the road to the Dominican Retreat and Conference Center in Schenectady, N.Y. where “While We Wait” is the title of the Advent retreat day I’ll be leading. We’ll be talking about expectation and how it feels if we truly get into the spirit of Advent and make our waiting for the in-breaking of the Christmas miracle truly worth our effort during this brief, 24-day season. We do it every year but how does it change us? How does the coming of Jesus make us closer to a Christ-like example of what Jesus came to teach? What should we be living of his message as we celebrate his incarnation? Here are a few reminders that he left us.

The reign of God is in your midst…The kingdom of God is within you…Love one another as I have loved you…Love your neighbor as yourself…

That should be enough for now.