First Week of Advent from the Underside: How Will You Prepare?

If you live in the US, you celebrate Christmas, even if you aren’t religious, or a Jewish or are Buddhist or are Whatever. Given our national obsession with making money at of the Birth of Jesus, even if you cover at work so your Christian friends can be with their families or eat Chinese food and go to the movies, your life here in the US is different in some way on the 25^th of December.

We are currently in the season of preparation for Christmas. If you follow the recommendations of the merchants, you are making shopping and gift lists and checking them twice and probably not caring a whit who’s been naughty or nice.

In the Christian Church this season of preparation and waiting for Christmas is called the Advent Season. During the four weeks preceding Christmas, Christians wait in hopeful expectation, prepare spiritually for the birth of Jesus. It is common for Christians to mark the days with spiritual practices intended to help them open their hearts and minds in new ways to receive the gifts of new life, hope, and salvation born into the world in the Holy Child of Bethlehem.

Whether or not you self-identify as religious or claim Christianity as your own,  you can still spend some time in this season of preparation for Christmas to prepare spiritually for the celebration on the 25^th.

 The birth of Jesus celebrates hope, love and joy born anew into the world.                                                           

                                                           

Preparing for Love: Identify and act on a concrete way you can increase love in your life this week. Or, perhaps you can reconnect with  friend you haven’t talked with in a while, give an extra dollar in the Salvation Army kettle, or try to be understanding in a relationship where you feel not all that understood….

Preparing for hope: Think back over your life to a time when you were faced with overwhelming odds that you overcame over time. What did you learn about own strength and resilience that you hadn’t know before. Now, spend some time  thinking about a difficulty you’re currently facing, recommit to that struggle with renewed hope in the reaffirmation of the depths and grace of your own resilience.  

Preparing for salvation: Think about the Holy, the Divine, God as you have come to know the Sacred in your life. Call to your mind’s eye an image that speaks to you of this reality. And, breathe. Relax into the Presence of grace and compassion, safety and peace. Breathe. Relax. Feel at home and be grateful. Be grateful for your day, for the big and little thing, for the people and pets, for the blessing of the good and the wisdom gained from the bad. Think about the Holy, the Divine, God as you have come to know the Sacred in your life. Be grateful and say, Amen.

The End is Always Near

                                                                                                

First Sunday of Advent 2015, from the Underside

Kintsugi Meditations for a Broken World 

Luke 21: 25-28:  “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

This is not an easy passage to preach, especially, when those in the pew are still recovering from a weekend of turkey coma, Black Friday shopping, initial Christmas decorating  and surviving annual visits with extended family. Hope is the liturgical theme for the first Sunday of Advent, but picture of hope here in Luke’s gospel is in the midst of distressing times filled with bleak struggle and fear. Not kind of thing we want bouncing around in our minds when we’re trying to pick out the fullest and most symmetrical White Pine on Boy Scout Troop 108’s lot before we head home to football on the couch….

But they are powerful words of hope for these days. Even on the couch in our own living rooms, we cannot avoid the intrusion of violence, and death, refugees and protests, a nation divided over race and power, privilege and the absence of hope. Human life is always filled with destruction and violence, Luke and, our difficult times lived early in the digital-age of perpetual news cycle sources all around us, simply call a reality, most of us do our best to avoid, into sharp focus. Luke’s assurance, is exactly what  we are needing to hear: when things seem the most hopeless, our redemption, our hope, is drawing near.

What can we do? The passage makes it clear, we are not to turn away, of faith with fear and foreboding. We are to raise up, to take a stand, to open our hears and lives to the hope that is our faith, to seek to draw near to our Redeemer even as he is drawing near to us.

What will you do this Advent to draw closer to our Redeemer, to be the light of Hope in the darkness of our world?  

Kintsugi Meditation for the First Sunday of Advent:

Invite Jesus, our Redeemer, to be present with you. Call to your mind’s eye an image that speaks to you of Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope.

Focus on your breath, sit silently, allow Jesus’ love and protection, grace and hope to fill you. 

Relax. Relax. Relax. Pray the Holy Spirit guide you and open your heart to the Still Small Voice during this sacred time.   

Pray Jesus keep you safe, well, happy and peaceful.

Ask Jesus to keep you safe, to keep your heart safely within his own heart, to keep your mind safely within his wisdom. Pray that Jesus keep you safe.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus keep you well. That he would keep you from times of trial, from the despairs of suffering and grief, from the grasping for false idols in anxiety and fear. May Jesus keep me well.  

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray Jesus open you to happiness, that he open your heart and mind to the truth of your own divine wonder and awe, knit into you in the womb of your mother. Ask that you know the joy of living your birthright, the authenticity of the blessed beauty of who you were created to be.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

Pray that Jesus grant you the peace that surpasses all human understanding, that your heart and mind, that your entire being is so joined with his love and forgiveness that you are not dependent on the things or situations of this word for peace, hope and joy, but on Him.

Pausing….. Focus on your breath.

A brief prayer of gratitude for this time…. Our Father…. Amen. 

Being a Chaplain in a Psychiatric Hospital and not a parish pastor has led me to develop a bit of a niche adapting to the Spiritual But Not Religious seekers. With Thanksgiving just past and Christmas on the horizon, I was asked to develop a seasonal practice for a mother to share with her daughter to focus in gratitude and compassion.

Below, I’ve outlined a two part practice that based on an adaptation of Loving-Kindness Mediation combined with a focus on service and justice for them to share in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  

Part I. Nightly Loving-Kindness Meditation—I know this looks long on paper and can seem long at first but with regular practice it’s about 10 minutes. You can play Native American flute music or some other background music—youtube is full of music for meditation, find one you two like. You can also use chants, Christmas music…. Light a candle, have a little pine bough and flower in a vase, invite the dog…. Whatever makes it a Sacred and special time for you both.

              

Lead her in this guided breath meditation:

                                Have her focus on her breath…. In-out-in-out. Relax…. Relax… Relax…. Have her picture in her mind’s eye a person, pet, place or activity where she feels safe and compassionately held. Focus on your breath in this place of safety and compassion…. And,….. relax……

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be safe, may I be well, may I be happy, may I be peaceful.

                Focusing on your breath….. and…. Relax…..

May I be safe; safe in my own mind, safe in my own heart, safe in my own body, safe in my own life. May I be safe……

                                                (pause)

Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be well; may I be in healthy relationship with myself; free from suffering and anxiety, free from grief and fear, free from loneliness and pain. May I be well in my relationship with myself. May I be well.

                                                (pause)

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I be happy; may I know the happiness that is my birthright, the happiness that comes from living deeply from the most authentic part of my being. May I be happy.

                                                (pause)

                Now wish for yourself, or pray for yourself: May I know the peace that passes all human understanding; the peace that lies in the deepest and most silent recesses of my soul, that deep secret place where the Divine dwells.  May I know peace.

                

This pattern is then repeated calling to mind her family, loved ones, good friends (pets can be included too).

                Then the pattern is repeated for all those struggling and suffering in the world. You can name specific groups, like children living at Home of the Sparrow or PADS, children living in violence in the Westside of Chicago or among refugee families.

Part II. Called to Serve With Compassion and Gratitude.

                Find a focus for each week before Christmas (this time in the Church is called Advent, a season of spiritual preparation for the birth of Jesus)— children living at Home of the Sparrow or PADS, children living in violence in the Westside of Chicago or among refugee families. You will tie this into the loving-kindness meditation above. Just to get your started check out: http://www.rlcw.org/ Look up their “Ministries” tab. http://www.diaperbankni.org/events.aspx or, Woodstock Bible Church Food Bank and Soup Kitchen, http://www.woodstockbiblechurch.com/

               

  Hope this is what you had in mind. Hope you and all those you love are happy and well.

Take good care,

Inducto: Advent From the Underside

 

 

Advent comes from the Latin word, adventus, meaning coming. It is the season for the Church year when people of faith wait in expectation and hope to celebrate God to entering fully into our human existence. A Coming into the depths of human experience and existence  of God who chose to be born to a poor, pregnant-out-of-wedlock,  teenage girl on the margins of society rather than into the life of a properly married couple living a well-to-do life that included attending a respectable religious institution.  At the heart of this world changing, every-life changing event was a young family displaced by world events, struggling far away from the support of family and familiarity of home. A young family cast so low in the society of those days that their baby was born in a stable among the animals and cold. God chose to be born into a family from the underside of society and culture and religious institutions, to an uncertain young couple where, perhaps, even actual paternity of the baby born on the night we celebrate as Christmas lay as a shadow between the proud, overwhelmed, joyous new parents even as the wondrous events we still celebrate today were unfolding around them.

 

“And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25: 40)

“Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own;  but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly  call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)

Several Advents ago, I was praying with Paul’s letter to his beloved friends in the church at Philippi for some months preceding. Somewhere in the small and subtle movements of life and faith, it came to seem important  that I prepare for the birth of God into human life and living in some way that took me beyond the grace and beauty, the joy of family and friends, the blessed Advent celebrations of my local congregation.  Grown into adult life, Jesus, fully-man and fully-God, told us we can come to know him by caring for the “least of these,” for our sisters and brothers on the underside of society.  It seemed well that Advent to heed Paul’s example of growth in faith and intimacy with Christ pressing forward beyond my own familiar comforts and customs “towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

From this, I came to prepare  that Advent for the birth of God among us through season of praying and coming to know the commonality of our human lives and our shared need for deliverance with those on the underside of our society--Advent from the Underside.  If Jesus would be born in these days and this place, he would be born to some among these people. How could I come to know him in the intimacy of love and trust, faith and joy that can only be known in the experience of the fullness of our need of him? What would he teach me about loving him and others as he loves us all? Advent from the Underside.  

Celebrating the birth of God among us in the year that the number of homeless children in the United States has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30

 

 

According to the Washington Post: “The number of homeless children in the United States has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation’s high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the effects of pervasive domestic violence….

“Child homelessness increased by 8 percent nationally from 2012 to 2013, according to the report, which warned of potentially devastating effects on children’s educational, emotional and social development, as well as on their parents’ health, employment prospects and parenting abilities….

“The report by National Center on Family Homelessness —part of the private, nonprofit American Institutes for Research — says remedies for child homelessness should include an expansion of affordable housing, education and employment opportunities for homeless parents, and specialized services for the many mothers rendered homeless because of domestic violence.”

 

All of which leaves me wondering and at prayer:  How shall we celebrate Christmas as a family this year?

 Perhaps, better for prayerful consideration: What do we want to teach our children this Christmas about who this baby Jesus really is?  What do we want to teach our children about how everyone of us can come to know him a bit better?  How can we help them come to know Jesus, resurrected, alive and well and walking among us?  What do we want our Christian lives of faith to say to our nation that, this Christmas, lies deep in error, pining? What do we want our Christian lives of faith to say to say about the birth of God, a year when child homelessness has raised 8%?  

How about this: This Advent, as we prepare for the birth of God’s Son among us, let’s ask our children and families to set a %, 8% would be a good jumping off point for the discussion, to set aside a % of the resources we spend on gifts and family celebrations to donate directly to homeless children and/or to organizations trying to remedy child homelessness through: expansion of affordable housing, education and employment opportunities for homeless parents, and specialized services for the many mothers rendered homeless because of domestic violence?

Isiah 9:6-7: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.”

#rethinkadvent

 

 

Earliest known image of Mary and Jesus: 3rd C image of Mary Nursing Jesus

Catacomb of Paiscilla, near Rome

 

Mary’s Song

by Luci Shaw

 

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest…
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.

His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by dove’s voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

Mary, theotokos, the birth-giver-of-God.

Bound

#rethinkchurch

Advent dawns holding tender promises before

the ice and cold settleing upon our shores.

1st Day of Advent
#rethinkchurch
"Go!"

..."you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming
at an unexpexted hour." (Matt. 24:44).

Meeting Jesus: Black Friday Shopping with a Buddhist Monk: Preparing for Advent on the Underside

This year, sister and brother Christians, evangelical, conservaive, liberal, progressive… have been bemoaning the cultural sacrilege of stores being open on Thanksgiving and the social-political-personal doom this portends. I did not shop yesterday and today’s shopping totaled $23 at the resale store (which was quite empty and offering 30%off). My friend Tyler took a Buddhist Monk Black Friday shopping and reflects on the experience here. What strikes me is how Jesusy he managed to make Black Friday Shopping with at Buddhist Monk. http://postsfromthepath.com/2013/11/29/a-spirit-filled-black-friday-survival-guide/


The thing I know best about Jesus is that he wasn’t so much about the rule book or ideas about how people should behave, rather Jesus was about meeting people right where they are in their deepest point of need and offering grace. While not ignoring the obvious really, really bad behavior of many, this grace is something Tyler seems to be able to notice, the grace of stores being open on Thanksgiving in the lives of people who sorely need the extra day of work and the double time holiday pay or the deep, deep discounts offered to afford some of the basics of life.

He leaves me feeling a bit convicted, in that old, old evangelical sense of my own sin (that which separates me from Christ). I was struggling with these ideas in abstract in a group of other Christian women a few weeks ago who were speaking in a very “spiritual”, quite self-satisfiedly way about all this. I said nothing because I didn’t want to make a “problem.” So I came home and wrote this blog post to assuage my guilt.  http://listeningasthosewhoaretaught.blogspot.com/2013/11/approaching-advent-from-underside.html

Thanks, Tyler, the Word is flesh and blood, meeting real human lives in their points of deepest need. On this Black Friday, thanks, for giving life and breath to the baby whose birth we who struggle to be Christian await.

Approaching Advent From the Underside

Advent is soon here, though the stores seem to have it full throttle Christmas already with Thanksgiving dinners not yet prepared. It is easy for Christians to make ourselves feel holy and above it all by judging and criticizing the retailers and their love of money and those who are so spiritually vacuous that they are already buying Christmas.

But, this is not the truth of Advent’s coming . The truth of Advent lies in the reality of what is to come, in Advent we are waiting for the Cross—the cross of suffering and the cross of resurrection. Without them, Mary’s boy would have been just one more Jewish born to struggle against ancient infant mortality rates, perhaps surviving to become a man struggling to survive the tyranny of the Pax Romana and whatever fates consigned children born without benefit of wedlock in the 1st Century Ancient Near East. As we come upon Advent, we are waiting to struggle, once again, with just what it means for God to join with us, to make his presence in our hearts and minds and lives so real, so palpable, so intimate that we no longer need to judge ourselves and others.

This is so difficult. So foreign. It is so contrary to the habits and haunts of our hearts and minds. It is contrary because it begins with us. The baby, the cross of suffering and the cross of salvation ("sozo" in Greek, bring to safety, restore, get well) are for our lives. It is so Other. It seems too impossible to be true. Those old ingrained habits of thought keep our worlds organized and orderly, so we divide things up, us and them . All the while waiting anxiously for someone who seems never to come, like Vladimir and Estragon, in Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot.”

The difference is, of course, that the God we wait for is come. This baby we wait for broke down all those old barriers of our too frail and worn out human ideas about God out there and us down here, of us in here (the church) and those out there. Immanuel, God with us, is just that: God with us, and we are with God. There isn’t much else for us to do.

It is exactly the most simple and the most difficult thing in the world for us to truly believe that we are truly, deeply, intimately, dearly loved in Advent and on Christmas, and every day, with a grace so strong it would suffer and die for us, and with a hope so real it needs only for us to pray to open our hearts and minds to it in midst of the uncertainties and griefs, the differences and dissimilarities between us and the harsh realities of our living. Emmanuel will join us right where we are saving us, healing us into closer relationship with our Father, bringing us into that same compassionate connection with one another.  Amen

Advent from the Underside: The D Antiphon

¿Dónde está el Rey de los judíos que ha nacido? Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle. (Mateo 2:2)

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. We are using an interlinear Spanish/English, Nueva Testament/New Testament provided by the Gideons.  

My patient teacher makes me pronounce each word over and over until my pronunciation is correct enough.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. / ¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos. Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle.

The D Antiphon?

Around us, there is lunch and improvising decorations, incredible grace and kindness.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

I am grateful to see the old man in his grey maxi-skirt and dirty kicks. He taught High School mathematics for years before he lost the struggle to quiet the voices in his head with booze and when that stopped working, weed and stronger things. He somehow successfully dodged the draft and outwitted those sent to arrest him by coming north but President Carter’s pardon did not extend to schizophrenia. He is reading the New York Times and eating chocolate cake.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

Table decorations are being made from a discarded gift bag and silver and red garland from the pre-Christmas sale bin at Walgreens. They will stay in the kitchen, I am told because the weekend office worker spent her entire shift last Sunday hand making ornaments for the little artificial tree in the living room. It would be wrong to detract from her gracious gift by adding to it.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

 On the ground floor are five parents, four mothers and a father with young children. They travel from church to church every night so that they do not have to sleep outside. During the day, they can stay here. A board, slouch postured young teen watches something on the TV I don’t quite understand. There are no beds or couches. A preschooler girl sleeps hard on the tile floor wrapped in an old comforter, another in a long discarded stroller. There is a beautiful boy, about a second grader, with long wild curly hair telling his father numbers from a book. The women, I’ve been told, have been asking for blankets for the children.

¿Dónde. Está. el Rey. de los. judíos.

When the Spanish lesson and our kitchen decorations are done, I retrieve the bag of blankets I have in the car.

Porque vimos su estrella en el oriente y hemos venido a adorarle.

Amen.

The Underside of Advent: Longest Night

From the Underside of Advent, the Longest Night, sharing prayer, hymn, meditation and Eucharist with Episcopal friends and neighbors, bringing strips cloth, upon which we've written our deepest longings for the frail, vulnerable God who we will welcome soon, laying them upon the empty, waiting manger.  We prepare for Him a place amid the only gifts we possess this night, or any other, our own sufferings and trials. They must suffice.

The bread, His body, is broken. The wine, His blood, is poured. His frailty and suffering, His vulnerability and trials are before us; they are for ours, if only we bring them. He is with us this long night, real, risen among us, in the bread and wine, in the Word, in our offering poor gifts, in the gathering of faithful, hopeful hearts gone now home each their own way into the cold and deep darkness our way perhaps a little better prepared to welcome the One who is to come.  

Advent from the Underside: "Mary and the Midwives"

Advent 2011

Barbara Marion

from the Feminism and Religion blog

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Romans 8:22 (NIV)

Ancestral midwives kneel in shadows

bringing aid and comfort
witness giving
to the pains and crying out and pushing,

Sister-mothers,
...prepare the way,

For birthing
in a gushing
mess with cries of gratitude and joy,

As water holy turned
to blood in breaking open paths and sacks
that spill out life
and milk and bread
from deepest springs of hope ferocious.

Beyond the burning ropes
and rapes
and silence, neglect and jailings all of them passed over
stories buried
never heard of more nor seen nor named for eons
but now we care and picture them and her with them and us.

And tell how even Sister-Mother-Midwife Allah
gave a tree bent down to shake
to give her fruit
and water in a rivulet
to bathe her tears and terrors.

And now we know that tales of her alone with no one near
are told from fear of what might be
with women’s arms around her.

To this very day they warn “You dare not, Women,
think of that. She’s not like you for were she that

God would never come through you.”

But sister, mother, holy one, around you waiting now as then
we sisters, mothers, holy ones are here with you to aid and comfort
wait with you and witness to
the work and spirit in you ready here and now is God.

And when we breath with you and help you with the birth
we bring it all
to life among us
all a’groaning to be saved and free
and all in all, Good Women,
in you, with you, for you all
in God’s good healing time.

Emmanuel.

Featured image: "Mary and the Midwives." " by artist Janet McKenzie. commissioned by Barbara Marian.

Advent from the Underside: 3rd Sunday in Advent, Longing for Light

The land in deep darkness. There seems none among us not seeking Light with at least some small sense of desperation.  With horaó, inward spiritual perception, the ancient Magi followed the light mile after mile, through untold nights of deep darkness to the Light which shines in the deep darkness which the darkness cannot overcome.  From this dark underside of Advent may we all glimpse the Light.  

Advent from the Underside: Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent

The only words, "I'm sorry." The only thing shared grief in silence, "so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. " (2 Corinthians 1:4b)

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence, 
and with fear and trembling stand;”

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:22)

Advent from the Underside: Saturday before the 3rd Sunday in Advent

“Sin pan.” “El ruido.” My patient teacher, who does not do art, articulates carefully and slowly. I write in Spanish and in English in blue paint upon the news print sheet employed to make clean up go faster. And upon careful questioning, he tells of his child’s long desert journey with his father and the coyote towards the promise of a better life.  

German constriction paper Christmas Bells remembered from a 5^th grade teacher. The grateful story of a  6^th grade teacher who could see the considerable gifts of intellect and empathy in the shy, quiet girl; the same teacher who struggled to maintain order with the active, talkative boys. Hot dogs and diet coke along the third baseline at Wrigley.

A mixed-media Santa with a white glitter nose and matching left thumb sliding down a pink and purple crayon chimney carrying in his acrylic paint sack a purple teddy bear.

“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.” (Zephaniah 3:14-20)

Advent fragments gathered the Saturday before the 3^rd Sunday in Advent:   Advent from the Underside. 

Advent from the Underside 1

A rosary ? Why, yes. Despite my deep Protestant roots, literally centuries deep, decades of chaplain training have made certain I always have a few in the glove box in the car. 

What exactly does a Menorah look like? Let me google it on my phone and we can look at a picture together.... Half an hour or so and several sheets of construction paper later- an almost perfect representation if the Wikipedia pic. 

The hope of divine compassion real in human life. Light overcoming darkness. The comfort of familiar ritual- centuries proved. Human suffering knows no bounds, cares not for doctrine or belief. It seeks only the blessing of relief, the strength beyond strength of hope amid overwhelming grief, suffering and unrelenting pain. 

At a shelter for the homeless, unmedicated mentally ill: Advent from the underside. Come Emmanuel, come soon.

Alternative Advent Calendar

I have been a very, very negligent Blog momma. With the beginning of Advent just a bit away it seems a good opportunity for a bit of penitential blogging. An Alternative Advent Calendar is not my idea, but trying to come up with creative daily alternatives to small chocolate animals or tiny color pictures of Bible scenes seemed its own meditative practice. 

Day 1: Count the coats in your closet. Donate a dollar to a local shelter or outreach for homeless persons for every coat.

Day 2: Make a list of things that you are grateful for today.

Day 3: Remember the kindness shown to you the past year.

Day 4: Read and meditate on Isaiah 40:1-11.

Day 5: Call someone you have not talked to in a while.

Day 6: Send a Christmas card to someone who you have dropped off your list.

Day 7: Having lunch or dinner out? Donate an equal amount to help feed hungry children.

Day 8: Having lunch or dinner in? Donate the cost of the meal to your local Meals on Wheels program.

Day 9: Make a list of everyone you feel you might want to forgive. Purchase and begin read Dr. Fredrick Luskin’s, Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness.  Begin to be more forgiving—feel better.

Day 10: Saturday. A good day to volunteer your time. Consider a local food pantry, family shelter or teen outreach.

Day 11: Read and meditate on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24.

Day 12: Going shopping? Pick up a gift for someone who might not otherwise receive one this year.

Day 13: What time did you get up this morning?  Donate that amount (i.e. 7:15 am = $7.15) to improve water quality in your area.

Day 14: Count the number of electronic devices you own. Donate that amount to improve water quality in a developing nation. (i.e.: 1 iPhone + 1 iPad + 5 TV’s +2 Wiis +1 BlueRay + 1 wireless router + 1 printer + 2 desk tops = $14)

Day 15: Write a holiday card with a note of thanks to some service person (i.e. dry cleaner, gas station attendant, grocery store stock person) whose work impacts your life in a positive way. Hand-deliver it.

Day 16: Baking holiday treats? Make extra. Share the sweetness with someone you do not particularly like.

Day 17: Saturday again. Going to a party tonight? Try to pay an honest compliment to everyone you talk to.

Day 18: Read and meditate on Luke 1:26-80.

Day 19: Only five shopping days left! Last minute gift ideas: Cows, sheep, pigs, chickens—a donations in someone’s name to Heifer International.

Day 20: The first night of Chanukah. Light a candle and read the story of the Maccabees, you will need a Bible with an Apocrypha. The story is a bit long and complicated. A Children’s Bible might be better—even for adults. 

Day 21: The longest night of the year. Reach out to someone who is grieving this holiday season. If you are grieving, let someone reach out to you too.

Day 22: What was the favorite Christmas Carol of your childhood? Sing it with that same love to a favorite child.

Day 23: Make snow angles. No snow? Be an angle—practice a random act of kindness. Got snow? Be kind anyway.

Day 24: Light a candle in the darkness. Listen to “O Holy Night.” Pray with family and friends that on this night, and every night, Christ is born into your heart, giving light to the darkness of your life so that you may be such light in the darkness of other lives.

Day 25: Open presents, enjoy food, family and their good fellowship. Pause: read and meditate on John 1:1-18. How will you receive Christ anew into your heart? How will you use the power of such grace in the coming year?