Category Archives: Advent

Advent Reflection – Day 10

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This was my inbox this morning…

“It might be easy to run away to a monastery, away from the commercialization, the hectic hustle, the demanding family responsibilities of Christmas-time. Then we would have a holy Christmas. But we would forget the lesson of the Incarnation, of the enfleshing of God—the lesson that we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree. And we do this by being holy people—kind, patient, generous, loving, laughing people—no matter how maddening is the Christmas rush….”

– Fr. Andrew Greeley

Advent Reflection – Day 9

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The Gift

 

One day the gift arrives – outside your door,

Left on a windowsill, inside the mailbox,

Or in the hallway, far too large to lift.

 

Your postman shrugs his shoulders, the police

Consult a statute, and the cat miaows.

No name, no signature, and no address,

 

Only, “To you, my dearest one, my all…”

One day it fits snugly in your pocket,

Then fills the backyard like afternoon in Spring.

 

Monday morning, and it’s there at work –

Already ahead of you, or left behind

Amongst the papers, files and photographs;

 

And were there lipstick smudges down the side

Or have they just appeared? What a headache!

And worse, people have begun to talk:

 

“You lucky thing!” they say, or roll their eyes.

Nights find you combing the directory

(A glass of straw-colored wine upon the desk.)

 

Still hoping to chance on a forgotten name.

Yet mornings see you happier than before –

After all, the gift has set you up for life.

 

Impossible to tell, now, what was given

And what was not: slivers of rain on the window,

Those gold-tooled Oeuvres of Diderot on the shelf,

 

The strawberry dreaming in a champagne flute –

Were they part of the gift or something else?

Or is the gift still coming, on its way?

 

–          Kevin Hart

strawberry champagne

Advent Reflection – Day 8

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“Waiting is active. Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands. The bus is late. You cannot do anything about it, so you have to sit there and just wait. It is not difficult to understand the irritation people feel when somebody says, ‘Just wait.’ But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is THE moment. A waiting person is a patient person. The word ‘patience’ means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the fullest in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there.”

    – Henri Nouwen

“The Aged Simeon” by James Tissot

 

Advent Reflection – Day 7

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From “December 24, 1971”

Emptiness. But as soon as you think it

you see something like light out of nowhere.

kreileder sun against my eyes

As if knowing the stronger Herod is,

the more certain, the more inescapable the wonder.

The constancy of this relationship

is the fundamental mechanism of Christmas.

– Joseph Brodsky, trans. Jenn Cavanaugh

image: “Sun Against My Eyes” by Jürgen Kreileder

Advent Reflection – Day 6

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Christmas Green

Just now the earth recalls His stunning visitation.  Now
the earth and scattered habitants attend to what is possible: that He
of a morning entered this, our meagered circumstance, and so
relit the fuse igniting life in them, igniting life in all the dim
surround.  And look, the earth adopts a kindly affect.  Look,
we almost see our long estrangement from it overcome.
The air is scented with the prayer of pines, the earth is softened
for our brief embrace, the fuse continues bearing to all elements
a curative despite the grave, and here within our winter this,
the rising pulse, bears still the promise of our quickening.

– Scott Cairns in Compass of Affection: Poems New and Selected

This photograph was taken by Jim Peaco of the National Park Service 10 years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires  Lodgepole pine forests reestablish themselves amongst standing dead trees.

Advent Reflection – Day 5

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A little change of tempo for today’s reflection….

Dave Brubeck died yesterday, old and full of years. Today would have been his 92nd birthday. He was a jazz great who knew his classical stuff and a consummate performer to the end. He never planned to be a musician. He went to school to study veterinary science until the head of the program convinced him to transfer to the conservatory, even though he didn’t read music. He was ordered to form his first band while serving under Patton in WWII. Coming home from the war he decided “something should be done musically to strengthen man’s knowledge of God.” He joined the Catholic Church after a full orchestration of the Lord’s Prayer setting he was working came to him in a dream. Brubeck brought all the joy and freedom of his jazz stylings and innovative time signatures to bear in his sacred works. His wife handled the texts. Together they wrote one of my favorite Christmas songs. It’s much more a Christmas Day celebration than an Advent reminder to wait, but musically and lyrically it wells with the hope we’re invited to live into and celebrate this week.

The music in the video is actually two pieces from Brubeck’s La Fiesta de la Posada – the finale, called “La Piñata,” followed by “God’s Love Made Visible.” Some of the lyrics by Iola Brubeck:

God’s love made visible!  Incomprehensible! He is invincible!
His Love shall reign!
From love so bountiful, blessings uncountable make death surmountable!
His Love shall reign!

 

Advent Reflection – Day 4

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“Let’s not deceive ourselves. ‘Your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21:28), whether we know it or not, and the only question is: Are we going to let it come to us too, or are we going to resist it? Are we going to join in this movement that comes down from heaven to earth, or are we going to close ourselves off? Christmas is coming – whether it is with us or without us depends on each and every one of us. Such a true Advent happening now creates something different from the anxious, petty, depressed, feeble Christian spirit that we see again and again, and that again and again wants to make Christianity contemptible…. Advent creates people, new people. We too are supposed to become new people in Advent. Look up, you whose gaze is fixed on this earth, who are spellbound by the little events and changes on the surface of the earth. Look up to these words, you who have turned away from heaven disappointed. Look up, you whose eyes are heavy with tears and who are crying over the fact that the earth has gracelessly torn us away. Look up, you who, burdened with guilt, cannot lift your eyes. Look up, your redemption is drawing near. Something different from what you see daily will happen. Just be aware, be watchful, wait just another short moment. Wait and something quite new will break over you: God will come.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Advent Reflection – Day 3

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               Advent

The wind in the winter wood

Drives the snowflake flock like a shepherd.

A fir tree, sensing how soon

She will be lit with holiness,

Strains to listen. She stretches wide

Her branches to the white paths,

Braced to brave the wind, growing

Toward that glorious night.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, born this day in 1875,

     translated by Jenn Cavanaugh

Advent Reflection – Day 2

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“Hope” by Thiago Elias

“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons…. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

– Vaclav Havel

Advent Reflection – Day 1

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“It came to me, recently, that faith is ‘a certain widening of the imagination.’ When Mary asked the Angel, ‘How shall these things be?’ she was asking God to widen her imagination.

All my life I have been requesting the same thing – a baptized imagination that has a wide enough faith to see the numinous in the ordinary. Without discarding reason, or analysis, I seek from my Muse, the Holy Spirit, images that will open up reality and pull me in to its center.

This is the benison of the sacramental view of life.”

– Luci Shaw in Wintersong

“Numinous River” by Virginia Sandman