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Advent, Christmas, consciously, happiness, Holiday, love, love of Christ, One God, slowing down, Thanksgiving, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, travel

Today I sit staring at a blank page, feeling a bit empty, as happens sometimes on the Monday after an important holiday. While I was not counted in the millions of people who took to the road or the sky over the weekend to be with faraway relatives or friends (the return trip perhaps not concluded yet), the Thanksgiving holiday just concluded seemed to me to hold more energy than usual in the wishes of “Happy Thanksgiving!” shared sincerely among friends and strangers alike. Maybe we needed some distraction from all the distress of our country and the world that made us try harder to find the joy of sharing. Maybe it was just the slowing down and relaxing together that pervaded our household. Whatever the source, I feel the need to regroup today so that I will live consciously throughout the wonderful season of Advent leading to Christmas. As the world turns from another beginning to a conclusion marked by the calendar of feasting and celebrations, I am heartened and challenged by Thomas Merton’s words to wake up and get about this new day.

Let us live in this love and this happiness, you and I and all of us, in the love of Christ and in contemplation, for this is where we find ourselves and one another as we truly are. It is only in this love that we at last become real, for it is here that we most truly share the life of the One God…

 

 

 

 

 

O Key of David, Come!

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Advent, Christ, Christ the King, consciously, consciousness, David, Israel, key to life and living, keys, O Antiphons, physically, the shadow of death, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, unlocked the door

I recently had two experiences that taught me the importance of staying awake and always being sure my keys are on my person when I am around doors that could lock automatically unless I check the position of the locking device (i.e. pop the button or turn it as necessary to really unlock). Sometimes it requires more than ordinary consciousness to assure the position of that button, as I found out at a retreat center when I locked myself out of my bedroom at 2:30 in the morning. That mistake required a long walk to the front desk to find the guard who came with me and opened the door with a master key. On the second occasion, I was in a generally unconscious state because of too many thoughts running around in my head as I went into my office and dropped everything I was carrying on a table; everything, that is, except the food I brought with me that I then took to the refrigerator in the kitchen. Upon my return I realized that I had not done step two: turning the button on the center of the doorknob to the open setting. I was outside looking through the glass at my presentation for the evening, my purse that housed my phone, my computer and all my contacts and, yes, my keys. I was totally at the mercy of God, the downstairs phone and my memory which I was hopeful would be the key to remembering a phone number that could save me. God and the pastor of the Church were kind that day and all was soon restored.

It is an understatement to say that keys are important. Today our homes, our workplaces and even our churches are generally locked and unavailable to us without keys. Metaphorically, we need mental keys to understand difficult texts or to teach children ways of remembering important information, often in song. One that I always recall is M-A-DOUBLE S-A-C-H-U-S-E-DOUBLE T-S, boom, boom, boom, Boston, Boston, my hometown… (Kids from Oklahoma got a big boost when the Broadway musical of the same name appeared…but I digress.) The point is that it is important to keep our keys with us both physically and consciously, and today the liturgy points to Christ, the descendant of David as the key to life and living. And so, we are called to pray:

O Key of David and Scepter of the House of Israel, You open and no one closes; You close and no one opens. Come and deliver us from the chains of prison who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.

O Key of David, ruler of life, you unlocked the door to God’s kingdom. Come, pry loose the lynch pins of our hearts and open to us your advent.