Friday, December 21, 2012

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.  

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