Month: November 2008

November 29, 2008

Audacity and Advent

Walking home today, it struck me that Advent is the most audacious season of the church year.  Even Easter invites us to witness to a past event–one we strive to witness as present as well:  the resurrection of Christ, and all it signifies both backwards and forwards in time.  But in Advent, we remember the first coming of Christ in a manger in order to anticipate the second coming–one we envision as coming from the skies, or as breaking apart all injustice in our world.  While there is a penitential, minor key, reflective spirit during Advent, the most striking feature of Advent may be our boldness in petitioning Christ to come again. Continue Reading

November 22, 2008

Prayer for Random Souls

Perhaps this happens to you, too.  You are going about whatever you are going about doing, when suddenly the image of a very particular person, place, or moment pops into your mind.  The person, place, or moment may or may not be of deep emotional significance to you–and the image of the person or place might vanish rapidly, unless you pause and attend to it. Continue Reading

November 20, 2008

An Open Letter–to everyone

Over the past few months and weeks I have been alternately thankful and dismayed to read, on the one hand, articles and letters calling for unity of spirit, even when we cannot agree on specific issues, and, on the other hand, writing which underscores, and at times even seems to increase, the deep divisions in our society and in the Church. Continue Reading

November 20, 2008

140 or so people

It was a sunny day today and not too cold.  There were new faces among the volunteers and there were many, many new faces in the line of those asking for a bag of food at the Clare House Food Pantry.  I especially see in my mind and heart two women in their early twenties who were at the front of the line.  Usually the first two in line have been old regulars who start lining up at 9 in the morning, maybe because they don’t have much else to do.  I took the time to talk a bit with these two women and so they’ve become part of my prayer today.  I’ve been handing out food at the Pantry for 18 years now and it still softens my heart  each time. Continue Reading

November 15, 2008

God's Open and Closed Hand

Ever since my days of reading the chilren’s nature magazine, Ranger Rick, I have responded to the sweeping love of creation found in Psalm 104:  the rain fleeing the thunder of God’s rebuke by pouring down to earth, the rock badgers hiding in crags, thirsty wild donkeys, the stork nesting in the highest branches of the cedars of Lebanon, the lions savagely “claiming their food from God” by night, then “going back to lie down in their lairs” as “people go out to work” by day.  The psalmist is clearly awestruck by both the grandeur of wind and mountains and sea, and in love with the particularities of innumerable creatures.  Today that psalmist would undoubtedly be an environmentalist. Continue Reading

November 11, 2008

Looking toward Christmas

Blessed Virgin

I’m a church choir director, so Christmas inevitably begins in August for me. This year one piece is giving us fits, a new setting of Anglican priest (and later bishop), Phillips Brooks,’ “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It’s not dissonant and doesn’t appear difficult at all, but no musical material ever recurs. The similar harmonic treatment from verse to verse gives the illusion of a constant melody, though no actual repeating “tune” ever emerges. The effect is glorious, but it doesn’t make the singers’ lives easy. So in trying to help them to get a handle on this brand new music, I’ve tried to dig deeper into the familiar words. Here’s what I find, a very Benedictine essay on radical interior transformation.
Overall, the constant theme is the invasion of the interior life by the historical event of Jesus’ birth in the world–our transformation into a new Bethlehem. Continue Reading

November 7, 2008

Forgiveness by Colleen McCulla

Forgiveness

In Ephesians 4:32 it says “And be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ.  These last words of the Epistle speak of forgiveness.  In Luke 6:37 it is written, Stop judging and you will not be judged.  Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.  Forgive and you will be forgiven.  This is also the major premise behind our most universal prayer “The Lord’s Prayer”. . .”Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”  It is, if you will, a two way street.

When I was three I made my Grandma cry.  I loved my grandma more than anyone.  She was kind and so loving and she would let me brush her hair for hours.  I would stay with her overnight and as a treat we would walk from her house downtown and go to Woolworth’s or Kresge’s and sit at the lunch counter where I would spin around in circles on the stools and have ham salad sandwiches and a coke. Continue Reading