The Season of Unpreparation

Scripture Passage: Mark 6: 7-12
⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts;⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.¹⁰He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place.¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.”¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent.

What do you mean we're not supposed to take anything with us?  This journey is hard.  There might be danger along the way.  We have to be prepared.  Admit it.  That's what we all think.  After all, this journey to the cross is hard.  We're not even halfway there--just sixteen days or so--and we've already encountered more than we really thought we could handle.  And now we're told to go out there virtually unprepared for what will come next.

Maybe that's our problem.  Maybe we mistake this Lenten journey as a time of preparing us for the Cross when, actually, we're being called to unprepare ourselves, to put it all aside and encounter the raw roughness of the road itself.  This season is not a season of preparation but, rather, a season to shake the dust off, to clear our minds of any baggage that we have brought to this place, and to leave empty-handed, open, ready to receive.

It's not something that we do well, this letting go, this allowing ourself to appear vulnerable, out of control, and unprepared.  I mean, we know that we have to walk this walk.  We know what's coming.  We know what we have to go through.  And so we don some sort of cross-cut suit of armor to protect us, to make it just a little bit easier.  But think what Jesus did at the beginning of this journey.  He went into the desert, unprepared, taking nothing.  He did encounter danger--the danger of his own needs, his own desires, his own vision of what his life could hold.  What he encountered was himself.  And then he shook off the dust and left, returning to the road itself.  St. Catherine of Sienna once said that "all the way to God is God."

This road to the Cross IS the road to which we are called.  It is the Way of God.  The challenge for us in this season is not to prepare ourselves for what is to come, but to clear the way. 

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

The First Day: And Heaven and Nature Sing!

Joy to the World , the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the World, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

(Isaac Watts, 1719)

The day has dawned!  Sometime in the night, God tiptoed into the world and made a home.  And the world will never be the same again.  Most of us barely noticed.  Most of the world wakes this morning and goes on with their lives.  That's OK.  If God had wanted fanfare, then I supposed God would have come with a bit more flourish and drama.  But instead, God enters as one of us, quietly slipping the Divine into our midst with as little noise as possible.  (Although I suppose it's hard to enter quietly with a multitude of angels in tow!)

When Isaac Watts first wrote the familiar Christmas carol "Joy to the World", he didn't mean for it to be a carol at all.  The words were originally written to celebrate the triumphant second coming of Christ rather than the birth that we celebrate this morning.  I think that's the reason it works, though.  God's coming into the world is not merely something that happened more than 2,000 years ago.  Today is not the celebration of the anniversary of Jesus' birth as if it is some sort of historic relic that we hold; rather, today--THIS day--IS the coming of God into our midst, the realization that even now, Heaven is spilling into our lives, making a home, and Heaven and Nature are singing together.

God comes quietly, tiptoeing into our lives each and every day of our existence.  A new Light has dawned and every day is Christmas!  So when the Holy and Sacred dawn in our life, are we called to join in loud acclaim, or are we called to silently open our our lives and let the Divine spill in?  With all respect to Mr. Watts, I'm not a big watcher of the "Second Coming" of Christ.  I don't know what that looks like and the Scriptures are not that specific about it.  I think the point of Christmas is that the Lord is come!  God came quietly into our world as the Christ child more than 2,000 years ago.  It was the First Day of the new dawn.  And the Light has been rising each every day since.  And for every heart that quietly opens and makes room for God to tiptoe in and make a home, the Light becomes brighter.  Rather than waiting for God's coming, let us see that God is here.  Let us see that every day is Christmas.  (And, along the same lines, perhaps every day is the triumphant coming for which we are looking until God's Kingdom and the recreation of all is complete!)  Joy to the World!  The Lord is come!

The Lord is come!  Let us now go and see this thing that has taken place!


On this First Day of Christmas, open the gift of the Holy and the Sacred, the gift of the Christchild and then open your heart that you might prepare room for God to come each and every day!

Merry Christmas!

Shelli     

So What, Exactly, Were You Expecting?

What were we expecting?  Well, of course, we were expecting someone obvious, someone  who would make himself known in the world, someone who is a little bit better than you or I.  We were expecting power and might and grandiose presentation.  But instead God walked into our very human existence.  God traversed time and space and the perceived separation between the sacred and the ordinary and entered our everyday world.  On some level, that bothers many of us.  After all, we are trying to do BETTER than this; we are aspiring to be more than human.  What in the world is God doing messing around in the muck of this world?

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said that "by virtue of the creation and, still more, of the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see."  So, perhaps God came into this very ordinary world to show us the holiness that has been created, the sacredness that in our worldliness, we were somehow missing.  Perhaps God steps into our lives to show us the depth that we haven't dared to dig into our lives.  Perhaps God came and walked with us not to show us how to be but to show us how to see.  But when it's all said and done, this practice we have of "looking for God" has been proven bizarre.  After all, it was never God that was lost!  We were never separated from the sacred; we just missed seeing it because it wasn't what we were expecting.  So, again, what were we expecting?  Maybe the the whole lesson is that God will come when and where and in the way that God will come.  But if there's a "pattern" to be figured out about this God who cannot be figured out, it's that God comes into the unexpected, into the unplanned, and into the unprepared places in our lives and lays down in a feed trough and patiently waits for the world to wake up and notice.

Come, thou long-expected Jesus, born to sety thy people free, from our fears and sins release us, let us find our rest in thee. Israel's strength and consolation, hope of all the earth thou art, dear desire of every nation, joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver, born a child and yet a King, born to reign in us forever, now thy gracious kingdom bring.
By thine own eternal spirit rule in all our hearts alone; by thine own sufficient merit, raise us to thy glorious throne.

(Charles Wesley, 1744)

In these final days of Advent,  we are all busy preparing for the day of God's coming.  But whether or not we get it done, whether or not the house is clean or the goodies are baked or the presents are wrapped, God will come and the world will never be the same.  Expectation is about moving into what will be rather than preparing to bring it into what is.
 
What are you expecting?  That's probably not it!  Give yourself the gift of being open to the way that God comes without expecting it to happen in a certain way!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

"Journey to Bethlehem"
Joseph Brickey, ca. 1973

So, what does it mean to say "God With us"?  The name, Immanuel, that the child is to be given is a symbolic name, a short Hebrew sentence.  We like the idea of God being here to pull us out of our next quandry in life in which we will find ourselves.  But isn't it more than that?  God has finally, after an entire history of generations of humanity, sought us out.  In essence, God put aside, if only for a little while, all God-liness, to come and join our little world.  God breaks into humanity not with a triumphant shout but into one of the lowliest, one of the most god-forsaken, one of the most human places of all.  Our image of this patriarchal God sitting on a golden throne somewhere up in the clouds looking down upon this struggling world just doesn't work anymore.  The God who we could not see, the God who we could not name, the God into whose face we could not look or surely we would die has just become one of us. So what do we do now?

When I was little, I used to lay in bed (when I was supposed to be asleep) and think about the notion of God being "everywhere".  Well that was something that I just couldn't get my head around.  I mean, there had to be limits.  There had to be a place where God could not see me.  So I would pull the covers over my head and try to figure out if God could see me there.  We all do that, if only figuratively.  Oh, we SAY that God is with us, we SAY that God walks with us, but then we try to find a temporary hiding place from this God who is "up there" or "out there" or wharever "there" we think God is.  After all, it's kind of like living with your boss, isn't it?   I saw a bumper sticker a couple of years ago that read "God is coming.  Look busy!"  Oh, we laugh, because it's way too close to the way we think!  I mean, we're all so wrapped up in our lives.  There's just so little time.  There's just too much going on!  And the world is changing so rapidly.  It's not like it used to be.  But we'll keep working to get to God.  Well, SURPRISE!  God came to us.  Not only that, God came WITH us, entering into the bottom of our house of cards that is our world.  So, it seems now, "getting to God" is really no longer necessary.  Maybe we just have to open our eyes, and hold out our hand, and, oh yeah, it helps if you don't have the covers pulled over your head!

Modern-Day Israel just outside of the Region of Galilee

Mary and Joseph are journeying toward Bethlehem, silently walking through the dust and sands.  This trip was not convenient but they had no choice.  It normally takes four days or so but it is difficult for Mary to travel.  The world is crazy right now, busy and spinning out of control.  Everything is changing.  There is talk of some unrest and some skirmishes up ahead.  This is not the time to be traveling.  This trip is dangerous.  But they have to keep going.  There's a baby coming!



O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O Come, thou Wisdom, from on high, and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show and cause us in her ways to go.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, O come, great Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times once gave the law in cloud and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Root of Jesse's tree, an ensign of thy people be; 
before thee rulers silent fall; all people on thy mercy call.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Key of David, come, and open wide our heavenly home.
The captives from their prison free, and conquer death's deep misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, thou Dayspring, come an dcheer our spirity by they justice here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death's dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

O come, Desire of nations bind all people in one heart and mind.
From dust thought brought us forth to life; deliver us from earthly strife.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

(9th century Latin, with translations by Laurence Hull Stookey; vs. 2 by Henry Sloane Coffin, 1916)

 
The time is almost here!  In this final week of Advent, give yourself the gift of pulling away everything that clouds your view that you might see the God who Comes.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

ADVENT 4B: 'Bout Time We Start Dancin'!

Lectionary Text: Romans 16: 25-27
Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.

In this Fourth week of Advent, we read this doxology along with the imminence of Jesus’ birth.  Read alongside the story of Mary as God-bearer, we have the sense that the full Gospel is starting to unfold.  This is in no way a “replacement” for the Law of Moses; it is that Law seen to its fulfillment in the new humanity, the new Adam, in Jesus Christ.  Gentiles have been “grafted” into a story that was already taking place, already in full swing.  This is nothing new.  It is, rather, the doxology.  For Paul, HIS gospel was the “unveiling” of something that had been around from the very beginning.

Scholars think that it is quite possible that Paul did not write these verses but that they were attached to the end of the letter perhaps AS a doxology, a statement of praise and proclamation.  But regardless of who wrote it, this is a statement of response.  It is, to use Paul’s words, an “obedience of faith.”  The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ invokes our response; otherwise it is virtually meaningless.  In Feasting on the Word, Cathy F. Young quotes Helmut Thielicke when he says, “Faith can be described only as a movement of flight, flight away from myself and toward the great possibilities of God.”  The whole gospel in its fullness is about our response.  It is our faith that moves it and opens up the possibilities that God envisioned.

Advent is about letting ourselves envision what God envisions and then moving toward it.  Because into this world that often seems random and meaningless, full of pain and despair; into this society that is often callous and lacking of compassion, directionless and confused; into our lives that many times are wrought with grief and a sense that it is all for naught; into all of it is born a baby that holds the hope of the world for the taking.  We just have to be open and willing to take it.  The great illustrator and writer, Tasha Tudor said, “the gloom of the world is but a shadow.  Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy.  Take joy!”  This is what this doxology says:  All of this that has been laid out for you, all of this that has been created; all of this that has for so long been moving toward your life, take it.  Take joy!  Tomorrow will be your dancing day!

I love Christmas Eve at St. Paul's.  I actually don't know how to explain it.  It's magnificent; it's magical; it's mystery.  It's like nothing you've ever experienced before. It moves you into someplace that you have not been before.  It takes you out of yourself and gives you a glimpse, albeit a tiny, tiny glimpse, of what it's all about, of why we're here, of that to which we journey.  This will be my eighth year to participate in the processional that winds through the nave, encompassing everyone who is there in music and candlelight and incredible joy.  I say processional because, even though it comes toward the end of the service, it leads us to something more.  It leads us to our response.  It brings me to tears.  (I will say that in these last seven years, I have been brought to tears each year--six because it has moved me beyond myself and the seventh because, I have to tell you, Gail caught Emily's hair on fire with her candle and had to hastily put it out with her bulletin.  Thankfully, Emily had very little hair product on her hair that night!  We were laughing so hard we couldn't even see where we were going!  (See, you just don't know what will happen when you let us loose!)

But the point is that this is our way of taking joy, of connecting to the mystery of the God who came and comes. Often, our choir will sing an Old English carol that I have grown to love (in fact, let it be known, that I want it sung at my funeral!)  because it is a song of joy, a song of deep abiding love.  It is the song that we should all be singing.  It is our invitation to joy.  The song itself is more than a carol.  It has additional verses (although some are extremely anti-semitic).  It tells the story of Jesus' life, the Gospel, the Good News--the birth, the life, the death, the life.  It is the Song of Joy and our invitation to join in!      

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day; I would my true love did so chance

To see the legend of my play, to call my true love to my dance;

Sing, oh! My love, oh! My love, my love, my love, this have I done for my true love.

Then was I born of a virgin pure, of her I took fleshly substance

Thus was I knit to man’s nature, to call my true love to my dance.

(Refrain)

In a manger laid, and wrapped I was, so very poor, this was my chance
Betwixt and ox and a silly poor ass, to call my true love to my dance.

(Refrain)

Traditional English Carol

OK, the time is not here yet, but don't you think it's 'bout time we start dancin'?  Somehow our world has taught us to hold back, to not "count our chickens before they're hatched", to be reserved.  But God?  God just wants us to start dancing so that everyone else will join!

 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of taking joy, of realizing what God holds for you, of dancing the dance to which you've been invited!  Let tomorrow be your dancing day!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Putting On Shoes



God became human.  Well, sure, God can do that if God chooses, but why?  Why would the Divine CHOOSE to become human, CHOOSE to live a life that includes suffering and fear, CHOOSE to live in this imperfect world?  It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  I suppose it's part of that mystery thing.  And the truth is, we struggle with it.  We try to justify it.  You've heard it all before:  "God was the perfect human," "God was only posing as a human," or "It was part of God's plan."  Really?  God PLANNED to be born into poverty, PLANNED to be born into an oppressive society, PLANNED to struggle, PLANNED to be disliked, and PLANNED to die?  I don't really know if that was all part of God's plan or not.  Is it so hard for us to accept that God just CHOSE to be one of us?  After all, part of being human is being subjected to a certain randomness of order, to a life that, as hard as it is for us to imagine, is beyond our control, and to not only the free will of ourself, but also the free will, the choice to do right or do wrong, that others around us have. Being human means that not all of life is a predictable pattern, not all of life is planned.  But, nevertheless, God became human.  After eons and eons of trying to get our attention, God put on shoes and walked with us.

"Incarnate" literally means "taking on flesh."  It means becoming tangible, real, touchable, accessible.  It means becoming human.  It means putting on shoes. In the book Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr calls it God's "most dangerous disguise."  After all, taking on flesh, becoming tangible, becoming real, touchable, accessible also makes one vulnerable and that is incredibly dangerous.  God put on shoes to show us how to be vulnerable, to show us how to give up a piece of ourself and open ourself to the Divine.

The Shoe Heap, Auschwitz, Poland

More than a decade ago, I had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, Poland.  I expected to be appalled; I expected to be moved; I expected to be saddened at what I would fine.  I did not expect to become so personally or spiritually involved.  As you walk through the concentration camp, you encounter those things that belonged to the prisoners and victims that were unearthed when the camp was captured--suitcases, eye glasses, books, clothes, artifical limbs, and shoes--lots and lots and lots and lots of shoes--mountains of humanity, all piled up in randomness and namelessness and despair.  This is humanity at its worst.  This is humanity making unthinkable decisions about one another based on the need to be in control, based on the need to be proved right or worthy or acceptable at the expense of others' lives, based on the assumption that one human is better or more deserving than another.

And yet, God CHOSE to be human.  God CHOSE to put on shoes, temporarily separating the Godself from the Holy Ground that is always a part of us, and entering our vulnerability.  God willingly CHOSE to become vulnerable and subject to humanity at its worst.  But God did this because beneath us all is Holy Ground.  God came to this earth and put on shoes and walked this earth that we might learn to take our shoes off and feel the Holy Ground beneath our feet.  God CHOSE to be human not so we would learn to be Divine (after all, that is God's department) but so that we would learn what it means to take off our shoes and feel the earth, feel the sand, feel the rock, feel the Divine Creation that is always with us and know that part of being human is knowing the Divine.  Part of being human is being able to feel the earth move under your feet, to be vulnerable, to be tangible, to be real, to take on flesh, to be incarnate.  Part of being human is making God come alive.
  
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of being human, being vulnerable, and knowing the God who is Divine. Take off your shoes and feel the earth move under your feet.  God is coming!  The earth is beginning to move!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli



    

ADVENT 4B: The House of God

Model of the Temple
Museum in Jerusalem, Israel

Lectionary Text:  2 Samuel 7: (1-5a), 5b-7, (8-9) 10-11, (16)
Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?”...And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evedildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house.

This text wraps up the promise that God made to Abram in Genesis 12.  The people have a land that they can claim as their own and they can live in peace.  And David's reign as king has been pretty much legitimized. Things seem to be going well.  And so David envisions now a more permanent structure to house the ark of the Lord.  In other words, David now desires to build a temple in Jerusalem.

But that night the Lord intervenes by way of Nathan with a promise not necessarily of a permanent “house” but, rather a permanent dynasty, an everlasting house of the line of David.  David has risen from shepherd boy to king and has apparently felt God’s presence through it all.  He now sits in his comfortable palace and compares his “house” to the tent that “houses God” in his mind.  So he decides that God needs a grand house too.  God, through the prophet Nathan responds by asking, in a sense, "Hey! Did you hear me complaining about living in a tent? No, I prefer being mobile, flexible, responsive, free to move about, not fixed in one place." God then turns the tables on David and says, "You think you're going to build me a house? No, no, no, no. I'M going to build YOU a house. A house that will last much longer and be much greater than anything you could build yourself with wood and stone. A house that will shelter the hopes and dreams of your people long after 'you lie down with your ancestors.'" God promises to establish David and his line "forever," and this is a "no matter what" promise, even if the descendants of David sin, even if "evildoers" threaten.  
The truth is, we all desire permanence; we want something on which we can stand, that we can touch, that we can “sink our teeth into”, so to speak.  We want to know the plan so that we can plan around it.  Well, if this was going to make it easier to understand God, go ahead.  The truth is, this is a wandering God of wandering people.  This is not a God who desires or can be shut up in a temple or a church or a closed mind.  This is not a God who desires to be "figured out."  This God is palatial; this God is unlimited; this God will show up in places that we did not build.  (and sometimes in places that we really wouldn’t go!)  This God does not live in a house; this God dwells with us—wherever we are.  This God comes as a traveler, a journeyer, a moveable feast.  And this God shows up where we least expect God to be—in a god-forsaken place on the outskirts of acceptable society to a couple of people that had other plans for their lives.  This God will be where God will be.  And it IS a permanent home.

In this Advent season, we know that God comes.  That is what we celebrate; that is what we remember; that is what we expect.  After all, this God we worship is the one that is with us, Emmanuel.  But have we planned too much?  Have we somehow convinced ourselves that God can be directed or choreographed or planned into being?  Have we forgotten what it means to simply build a house in which God can live?  Are you the one to build me a house to live in?  Go ahead, build it.  It will be magnificent!

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of building a house of God.  There is no blueprint; there are no plans.  It has no walls, no ceiling, no floor.  It is open to the God who comes.  And know that God will come.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli
      

Open Season

"...who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary..."

We say those words every Sunday.  We stand and we look at the cross and we say with all our heart that we believe these words to be true.  Now, the "conceived" part we get--conceived, thought up, breathed into--Jesus was God's way after eons of breathing Creation into being of finally breathing the very Godself into the world.  The Divine has come to walk with us.  But this Virgin Mary thing?  What is that?  Jesus, born, born as a human, born as a baby.  As unromantic and "un-Nativity-like" as it may be, Jesus was fussy and colicy.  The Son of God, in all likelihood, messed up his first-century diaper.  (I've never been accused of being overly-reverent!)  Mary and Joseph were probably sleep-deprived.  And as time went on, Jesus, like all of us, had to learn to walk and talk and be.   He had to grow into who he was. But when's the last time you held a newborn baby?  When's the last time you held a baby that was only hours old? It's just like holding the entire hope of the world in your arms.  There are no preconceptions; there are no agendas; there is no one to impress or keep from disappointing.  There is only a pure and undefiled openness to what comes next, to what God holds.  There is only hope.  You can smell it.  Maybe it's the smell of birth.  But maybe it's the smell of the Divine.

So does it really matter?  We get so wrapped up in whether or not Mary's virginity was literally intact when Jesus was born.  Again, does it really matter?  Does it really matter when you are holding the hope of the world?  Does it really matter when you are holding the world's salvation in your arms?  Think about it.  Jesus was born, Son of God and Son of Humanity.  Jesus was born to Mary, the mother of the Salvation of the World.  Perhaps the translators of the writing by the writer known as Matthew had it right and Mary was a virgin in every sense of the word--pure, undefiled, and open to receive.  But, more importantly,  Mary was a virgin in the spiritual sense of the word--pure, undefiled, and open to receive what comes next, open to receive whatever God held for her life.  Mary opened her heart and her life that she might birth God into this world.

In this season of Advent, we are called to do the same.  14th century theologian, Meister Eckhart said that "we are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born."  We are all called to be virgin--pure, undefiled, and open to receive.  We are all called to birth God into this world.  How open are you to what comes next?  How open are you to what God holds for your life?  This is the open season.  This is the season when we shed all the preconceptions of what we think God is.  This is the season when we let go of our need to explain God's coming into the world and be open to what comes next.  So does it really matter?  You bet it does.  It is the Hope of the World that depends on it.
 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of being open to whatever it is God holds for you and birthing God into your life.  Be virgin.  Be a womb for the hope of the world.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli



      

A Call to Revolution

Scripture Text:  Luke 1:45-55
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord,and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

It's called The Magnificat or the Song of Mary.  It is a young girl's realization that life will never be the same again, her affirmation that God has called her to be a part of something that will turn the world upside down.  Our Christian tradition has probably overly-domesticated the image of Mary a bit, giving her characteristics of one who is young and meek and downtrodden, a scared young girl that became the mother of Christ.  But these words are not meek; in fact, they are downright radical for the first century and for us today.  It is a call to take those who are on top--the rich, the haughty, the successful, the powerful and bring them down.  It is a call to elevate those who are poor, hungry, the very bottom of our society.  Who are we kidding?  In our burgeoning political climate, this is NOT the way to get elected.  This is NOT the way to gain support.  This is anything but politically correct.  In fact, this is a call to revolution.  I'm betting these words will not show up in any of the 584 presidential debates (doesn't it seem like there are about that many?) between now and next November.

E. Stanley Jones calls The Magnificat, "the most revolutionary document in the world".  It is said that this document terrorized the Russian Czars.  In fact, for a time during the 1980's, the government of Guatemala banned its public recitation.  After all, if someone actually paid attention to this stuff, who knows what could happen?  Why, this might be downright dangerous to our acceptable of way life!You know, I think that's the point.  We are called to DO something. We are called to pay attention. We are called to no longer accept society's "acceptable" way of life.  The Christian movement did not begin as a comfortable and affirming religious tradition of the majority.  Just like we have domesticated and calmed our image of Mary, we have done the same with our tradition.  You see, Christianity began as a revolution, a revolution against the way the world rewards money and status and power, against the way the world leaves behind those that do not have the resources to care for themselves, and against the way the world sets up standards and rules for the way things should be.  It is a revolution against a world that has lost its sense of grace and compassion and justice.  It is a revolution that followed the Way of Christ.  After all, if someone actually paid attention to this stuff, who knows what could happen?

In this Season of Advent, we are becoming more and more aware of the mystery of God's Presence and God's Love that is even now breaking into our way of being.  God With Us, Emmanuel, was not born into our little world to tell us what a stupendous job we are doing!  God came, born as one of us, to show us the Way to something different, to call us into revolution.  Where are you now?  How full do you feel today?  How can you be ready to birth God into your life when you are so full of this world?
 
In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of answering the call to revolution, of being hungry enough to be filled with God.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli


   

ADVENT 2B: The Beginning of the Story

ADVENT 2B Lectionary:  Mark 1: 1-8:

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Admit it...John the Baptist scares us a little bit--a wilderness man, a wild evangelist, wearing a suit of camel's hair and making a meal of locusts and honey.  Really?  Why couldn't the messenger have been someone a little more traditional, someone a little more easier to be around?  But, then again, have you ever known God to stay within the boundaries that we've drawn?  Maybe that's the whole point.  I mean, here is a messenger, paving the path, preparing the way for the coming of the Lord.  No Mary and Joseph, no baby, no stable, no shepherds, no magi, no angels…just…boom…the One is coming that will baptize you with the Spirit of God…the One is coming who will change your life and change your ways and change the world from what we know it to be…the One is coming who will bring us all into the Reign of God.  Hold on…get ready!

The writer of Mark’s Gospel leaves us suspended in time, waiting, rather than living through the whole story together.  Many spiritual writers call that a state of liminality, a point of being betwixt and between, the moment between what is and what will be, a place in which the old world is left behind but we’re not sure what the new one looks like just yet.  It is a point between two times that intersect and become one.  So, are you ready? Well, if you’re not, you need to get that way.  Because in this Gospel, the good news has already begun, whether we’re prepared or not.

Throughout this version of the Gospel, there is a sense of urgency, a sort of abruptness, that somehow compels us to get on board with it, to not tarry with things that do not matter and do not prepare us for the coming. The writer of Mark cuts to the chase:  humanity has waited and prepared itself for this for centuries.  We are reminded of that as the passage pulls in the words of Isaiah, the foretelling of that time when God would come and be among us, when God would come and save us.  Now is the time.  The Christmas celebration for all its splendor and all its beauty and all its twinkling lights is first and foremost the fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation.  This IS the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  This IS the beginning of our story.

But there is another implication here.  In this Advent season, as we wait with expectant hope, we are also reminded that our expectations are limited by our own lives.  God has so much more in store that what we could ever fathom.  Maybe that’s why the writer of Mark quickly takes us to the wilderness and wilds of our lives (and to the bizarre wilderness man!).  You see, God will not be plunked down in the middle of the bustling city of Jerusalem.  God will not come in the way that we plan or imagine how God will come.  Rather, God will emerge in the wilderness of our lives and we will realize that God has been there all along.  We do not have to go to Jerusalem or prepare a grand entry to encounter God.  God comes to us.  We just have to be open to whatever God’s coming is.  And we have to be willing to enter a new beginning.  What we are living is not the prelude; it’s the beginning of the story.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of the wilderness--those wild and untamed places in your lives where you might just experience the coming of God anew.  In other words, all this planning and preparation...forget about it!  Just open yourself to the coming of Christ!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Announcing the Beginning

The Anunciation
Icon at St. Catherine's Monastery

Christmas is coming!  We live this Season of Advent as if its purpose is to point to the beginning (or the "re-beginning").   We prepare for the coming of God!  But think about it.  Something happened nine months before.  This human Jesus, like all of us, had to be grown and nurtured in the womb before the miracles started.  March 25^th—The Feast of the Annunciation—is for some traditions the turning point of human history.  It is in this moment that God steps through the fog into humanity and, just like every human that came before, must wait to be fully birthed into this world.

We Protestants sort of skip over the Anunciation.  And then we start with Christmas and count back nine months.  After all, it's just a bunch of waiting, right?  OK, that works.  Nine months before Christmas...But March 25th is traditionally regarded as the first day of Creation. (Now, really, I don't even BEGIN to say that THAT is a real date!  But, it's as good as any, right?)  So, let's go with it.  March 25th is the beginning.  The Anunciation...the announcement of the coming of Christ, the coming of God, into our little world...IS the first day of Creation. (You know, "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was...")  So, begin at the beginning and count forward...to the birth of God into the world. Like Creation, the coming of Christ was the Light pushing the darkness away.

But the world, like any expectant parent, had to wait.  Advent teaches us to wait.  Advent teaches us that birth does not appear in a flash.  Rather, birth, like all things that matter, is a process.  And, it is definitely worth the wait. 

God will come when God will come.  But we don't want to miss the process of the birth.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of being a part of the process of birthing the world into being.  But part of it means that you have to wait until it's ready to be.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

ADVENT 2B: Something Incredible is About to Happen

ADVENT 2B: Lectionary: Isaiah 40: 1-5 (6-11)
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.  A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

First of all, with all due respect to Mr. Handel's presentation, this passage was probably not originally written with us or our tradition in mind!  This really is talking about the people of Israel.  It really is talking about bringing comfort to a people who have wandered in the Judean wilderness.  Probably written toward the end of the Babylonian exile, this writing offers a vision where a highway (a REAL highway) through the wilderness will be made level and straight.  If, as most assume, this part of the book that we know as Isaiah was written after the exile, it would have been soon after 539 BCE when Cyrus of Persia conquered the Babylonians and, not really caring whether or not the Israelites stayed, allowed them to return to Jerusalem.  So imagine a highway that, typical of the ancient world, would have originally been built to accommodate royal processions.  And so God is depicting a highway made for a grand procession led by the Almighty.

The just-released exiles are returning.  But to what?  Their city and their way of life lay in ruins.  They can't just go back and pick up where they left off.  They have to feel that God has deserted them.  They are looking for comfort.  They are looking for solace.  They are looking for God to put things back the way they were before.  But God has something different in mind.  Rather than repair, God promises recreation; rather than vindication, God promises redemption; and rather than solace, God promises transformation.  God is making something new--lifting valleys, lowering mountains, and ultimately, when all is said and done, revealing a glory that we've never seen before.

In this Advent season, we are given the same vision.  We are not promised solace.  We are not promised that Emmanuel, God With Us, is coming to put our lives back together.  In fact, can you feel it?  The world has begun to shake.  The valleys are rising; the mountains are leveling.  Something incredible is about to happen.  The light is just beginning to dawn.  Life as we know it will never be the same again.   Soon the fog will lift and we will see that the road does not lead back.  It instead leads us home.  But we're going to have to be willing to leave what we know.

In this season of Advent, give yourself the gift of not going back so that God can show you the Glory that is about to be revealed.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Taking Care of Busyness (but not all!)

I just returned back to work today after a couple of days off.  It was wonderful!  It was what I guess they're calling a "stay-cation".  I just stayed at home and sort of "piddled".  I got some (but not all) of the planting done, some (but not all) of the organizing done, some (but not all) of that "to do" list done,  In my "but not all" times, I wandered through shops that I kept saying I wanted to visit, sat on the porch, and walked the dog.  I bought an old concrete yard ornament that is a weather-beaten rabbit who has two (but not all!) of his ears.  The antique dealer sold him to me for $18.00 and he's in my front flower bed in front of the porch.  His name is now Chester and he has a home (which is the reason that the dealer agreed to sell him so cheaply!).  And I went and bought fresh (I mean REALLY fresh) fruits and vegetables from a neighborhood market and then made up things that I could do with them.  And, to top it off, I lost weight!  Maybe "but not all" is a good thing on several levels!

We are a busy people!  To tell the truth, even my "stay-cation" was wrought with emails and calls that were "work related".  But they were important--so important, in fact, that I need to check emails and messages while I'm doing my self-prescribed "piddling"!  So I was able set up some meetings and agreed to do another mentoring gig.  Really?  Am I THAT important?  No, not at all.  I think on some level I just don't want to lag behind the world.  I'm letting the world and it's busyness lead my life.  So what do you do?

I think you change the way you do things.  You alter the route of your life.  I was watching something on TV during my time off.  (Truthfully, I don't know what because I just had it on in the midst of the "piddling".  Again, I watched some (but not all)!)  Anyway, their was a test question asked as to whether one can improve his or her memory more by memorizing something or by changing one's route to work or some other place.  Interestingly enough, the answer was by changing one's route.  I think it's because it makes us look at things differently.  It doesn't mean that we don't arrive at the place that we would have anyway; it just means that we got there a different way and probably paid more attention to what was along our path. Now don't get me wrong.  I am a BIG ritual person.  That is not what gets us in trouble.  It's not the ritual of it.  It's the rote of it.  Look up "rote".  One of the definitions is "from memory, without thought or meaning."  "Without thought or meaning"?  That's pretty scary.

You know, we've seen this theme before.  Think about it.  The Scriptures are big on wildernesses.  There are lots of accounts of people just wandering around until they found where they were supposed to be.  Maybe the point is not that they were lost but that they had found a different route!  I think ritual connects and points us to God.  But being open to changing the way that we walk may allow us to see the God who walks with us along the way. 

So, here's what I think.  I don't think iPhones are bad.  I don't think ritual is bad.  I don't think work and staying busy is bad.  I don't even think that one's inability to say "no" once in awhile (but not all) is really all that bad.  It's the WAY we do it.  Each of our lives is a work of art-in-process.  Each step is a brushstroke filling the canvas with color and texture.  And eventually, that bright white light that you see is the blending of all of those colors.  White is the most brilliant color of all.  Without color, without contrast, the world is dark.

So, how do we take care of busyness?  Maybe it's only a matter of loosening it up enough to follow a different route.  Maybe some (but not all) busyness isn't all that bad.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

Have a wonderfully busy week...just drive around a different block once in awhile!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

   

WALK TO JERUSALEM: The Announcement

St. Catherine's Monastery, Egypt, 12 century

Scripture Reading:  Luke 1: 26-38
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Most of us good Protestants seldom talk about The Anunciation at all, let alone in the middle of the season of Lent.  The Anunciation literally means "announcement".  The word itself probably holds no real mystery.  But it is the beginning of the central tenet of our entire Christian faith--Anunciation, Incarnation, Transfiguration, Resurrection, that cycle of holy mystery that with each turn draws us closer and closer to God as God reveals the very Godself more and more to us.  For us, it begins the mystery that is Jesus Christ, the mystery that will take us to Jerusalem.  For us, the fog lifts and there before us is the bridge between the human and the divine. 

In December, we usually speed past this reading, eager as we are to get to "In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus..."  We want to get to the beginning of it all.  But think back.  Jesus was human and just like all humans, something happened nine months before.  And whether or not you take the notion of a virgin birth literally, there was something remarkable that happened.  It is in this moment that God steps through the fog into humanity, that the great I AM reveals the Godself to all of Creation, and, just like every one of us must do, waits to be birthed into the world.  It is not just this young girl's womb that is suddenly filled with child, swelling with expectant life; it is all of Creation that now waits for Light to be born.  The world is with child.


Can you imagine what Mary must have thought?  She was young, she had plans, she had her whole life ahead of her.  "How can this be?" we read.  In today's vernacular, it would read, "Are you kidding me?"  And so as everything she knew and everything she planned toppled around her, she said "yes" and entered the mystery of God.  Now, I have to admit, I don't get so wrapped up in needing Mary to be a literal virgin. (In fact, I don't care enough about it to need to prove it or disprove it, so you can stay anywhere you are on the issue.) After all, would it really change what happened?  Would it really change who God was or what God has done?  Would it really change that this was the moment when the Light of God came into the world, when the Divine suddenly spilled into the womb of the world.  And that the one who held the birthing of God in her hands said yes.  Now, THAT, my friends, I think is important. 
 
Think about it.  What exactly does it mean to be "virgin"?  It means undefiled, pure, ready and open to receive.  Mary, the virgin, was open to receive God unto herself.  The most scandalous part of the whole story has nothing to do with whether or not the birth was "proper" in terms of our world; the scandal is that the great I AM, the holiest of holies, the One whose name could not be said, suddenly enters humanity with all of its violence and corruption and despair and the reordering of our existence begins.  All that we know and all that we plan is beginning to topple around us.  The Anunciation is the anouncement of hope for all of us.
 
If God's incomprehensibility does not grip us in a word, if it does not draw us into [God's] superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths...we have misunderstood the words of Christianity.  (Karl Rahner)
 
So, in this season of Lent, what does it mean for you to be open to receiving Jesus Christ into your life?  Because, you see, that is the way to Jerusalem...
 
Grace and Peace,
 
Shelli

Patiently Waiting

Today's Lectionary Scriptures:
         Joshua 5: 9-12
         2 Corinthians 5: 15-21
         Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32

Today's Gospel passage is a familiar one.  The story of the two sons and their father is one of our favorites.  It reminds us that no matter how prodigal we may be, God always welcomes us home.  We like this story.  It gives us an assurance to which we can cling even in the most distant countries of our lives.  We take comfort in its themes of forgiveness and reconciliation no matter what we do.

But I want to back up a minute.  Today's prescribed lectionary starts at the beginning of the fifteenth chapter of Luke and then it skips several verses.  I think those verses are important for the context of our story.  First Jesus tells of a lost sheep and the rejoicing of the master at its finding.  Following that is the account of a woman who loses a coin.  And now this...a father loses his most precious thing--his son and then rejoices at his finding.  But notice that the father does not go in search of the son the way the other two did.  When a coin is lost, the owner searches for it to bring its home.  As important as it obviously is to the owner, it is still an inanimate object.  The coin cannot choose to come home.  And the sheep, while a living being, does not possess the gift of free will.  The sheep will follow when its master comes to find it.  But the son is different.  The father does not stop what he's doing and leave the older son and his property and home behind to chase after him.  The son, as opposed to the coin and the sheep, must choose to come home.

 Perhaps the point of this familiar story is not simply that God forgives us; perhaps the point is that we must choose to come home.  After all, God's forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love are always there for us whether or not we choose to claim them.  Our journey of faith is not about God finding us but, rather, about our return to God.  I don't think these are three related stories of loss and finding.  I think that instead the first two point to the third.  God's deepest desire is that we are indeed all found.  But God, filled with love and compassion, is patiently waiting for us to decide once and for our deepest desire is to return home.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Believing in Trust

"Trust" and "Belief" are interesting terms.  Are they the same?  If not, what is the difference?  We are told to "just believe", as if that will make everything alright, as if that will somehow make us worthy or deserving of God's attention.  What does that mean?  Believe in what???  Believing is an odd thing.  It moves us beyond where we are, beyond ourselves.  Believing in God means that we realize that God exists, that God is part of our lives, that we need God.  And yet, believing, in and of itself, means that on some level, we have systemitized our understanding of God (or, for that matter, whatever it is in which we claim that we believe).  Once we "believe", we have in some way locked in our understanding of something.  So, for us God-believers, God has become our own doing, our own creation, our own imagining of how God works and who God is.  In some way, to say "I believe...." is to affirm, yes...to confess, yes...and to claim it as part of who we are, yes.  But saying those words also means that we have in that moment boxed God in to who we think God is.

Why can't we just trust in God?  Why can't I just trust in however and whoever God manifests Godself in my life?  God is God.  Why is that so hard to trust?  You see, when you get right down to it, God is not really something that can be defined, or systematized, or limited to my belief system.  Sure, God is comfortable and reliable and one on whom we can count to set our lives on track.  Thanks be to God!  But, God is also wild and unfathomable, unpredictable and imaginative and one on whom we can count on to throw our carefully-cultivated and perfectly-planned lives into a complete and unadulaterated tailspin.  Thanks be to God!

You see, there is a difference between believing in who you think God is and trusting in God who is.  God is beyond who we can imagine in our dreams.  God is beyond who we can claim as our belief.  And God is beyond what we have planned and cultivated and saved for the certainty in our lives.  God is God.  Nothing else.  Why is trusting in God so hard?  Because to trust in something, we have to surrender to the idea that it's more than what we're capable of conceiving.  Trust in God...and be surprised at what you find!  Trust in God...and find that in which you should have always believed.

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Picture:  Jerusalem, Israel, 2010

Expecting Surprise

This morning I was standing at the back of the sanctuary waiting to process for the last of the three services. The building was packed. Behind me in the Narthex amidst the sound of excited voices waiting for the service to start and some trying to set up chairs in the Narthex, was the rustling of the huge ribbon banners that are the first things in the Easter Festival Processional. There was a little girl standing on a chair in the very back. She turned around and saw the glorious white ribbons rustling in the breeze of the open doors and exclaimed, "Mommy, I think we're having a party!"

Well, of course we're having a party! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed!

Expectations are good things. They make us pay attention; they keep us awake; they keep us excited about life. But when expectations get in the way of our noticing and welcoming the unexpected, we need to let go of what we expected. The women who first encountered the tomb were expecting a tomb. They were not expecting it to be open, not expecting it to be empty, not expecting Jesus to be gone. Mary broke down, weeping over her loss, until Jesus surprised her. Jesus was present after all. The unexpected had happened. Christ was indeed Risen! She had expected anything but a party, but here it was happening anyway!

Easter is about encountering the unexpected. Everything that was expected, that was planned, has gone by the wayside. The Season of Lent prepared us for this by emptying us, by making room for what was aobut to happen. Now is the Season to embrace the unexpected and let it fill your life.

Well, of course we're having a party! Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed!

So go forth in this festival season and expect to be surprised!

Happy Easter!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli

Becoming Human

The time is almost here. In just a few hours, the door to the Divine will swing open and God and all of heaven will burst into the world. If you stop and listen, just for a moment, you can hear the eternal harps in the distance as they approach our lives. Oh, sure, it's happened before. But can't you feel it? Doors opening, light flooding in, the earth filled with a new vision of peace eternal. Maybe, just maybe, tonight will be different.

The child in the manger is, of course, no ordinary child, but God Incarnate, the Word made flesh. God took the form of a human--just an ordinary human--a human like you and me--and was born and dwelt with us--still Divine, but in every way human (because you see God in all of God's wisdom and all of God's mystery can do that!) This Holy Incarnation was not meant to show us how to be Divine but, rather, how to be human. We see ourselves as "only human", as if that excuses us from being who God called us to be. But the point is that God calls us to be human, made in the image of God (not like God, but in the image--a reflection of God, Incarnate). Jesus the Christ was born human so that we would know what being human means. And when, like Jesus, we become fully human, our hearts are filled with compassion, connecting us to one another; our eyes are filled with a vision of what God made this world to be; and our lives become holy as they are shaped in the image of God Incarnate. And we, even as humans, can reach out and touch the Divine now that God has burst forth into this world.

On the eve of Christ's birth, let us open our lives to receive this holy child and open our hearts and our eyes that we might finally know what we are called to become--human, made in the image of God, a reflection and an incarnation of God here on earth. This Christmas, let Christ be born in us. This Christmas, let us become fully human.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

(Phillips Brooks)

The time is almost here. The door is opening and we see heaven beginning to pour in. Go forth and become human, become who God called you to be.

Grace and Peace on this Night of Nights,
Shelli