A New Year . . .

The Welcoming Prayer (by Father Thomas Keating)

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me today
because I know it's for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions, persons,
situations, and conditions.
I let go of my desire for power and control.
I let go of my desire for affection, esteem,
approval and pleasure.
I let go of my desire for survival and security.
I let go of my desire to change any situation,
condition, person or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God and
God's action within. Amen.



 Standing at the Gates of the New Year

 Sacred Mystery,
 Waiting on the threshold
 Of this new year,
 You open the gates
 And beckon to me:
“Come! Come!
 Be not wary of what awaits you
 As you enter the unknown terrain,
 Be not doubtful of your ability
 To grow from its joys and sorrows.
 For I am with you.
 I will be your Guide.
 I will be your Protector.
 You will never be alone.”
Guardian of this new year,
 I set aside my fear, worries, concerns,
 I open my life to mystery, to beauty,
 To hospitality, to questions,
 To the endless opportunity
 Of discovering you in my relationships,
 And to all the silent wisps of wonder
 That draw me to your heart.
 I welcome your unfailing Presence
 And walk with hope into this new year.
From: Out of the Ordinary by Joyce Rupp


Turning Points

Time turns
taking us
where we would
not choose to go.
Suddenly
we pass a point
we will never pass again.
Turning points interrupt us . . .
there must be some mistake!
Looking back we see them
for what they are:
bittersweet raw reality
breakthrough to beatitude
bedrock that gives us courage
to give ourselves away.
The less we struggle with turning points
the greater the strength
to return and turn again. Author unknown

Lessons on Life

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.

The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.
When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen.

The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.
The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life.
He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.
If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall.

Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest.
Don't judge life by one difficult season.
Persevere through the difficult patches
and better times are sure to come some time or later   
Author Unknown

Merry Christmas

 

 

 

Light looked down and saw darkness.
“I will go there,” said light.
Peace looked down and saw war.
“I will go there,” said peace.
Love looked down and saw hatred.
“I will go there,” said love.

So God,
The God of Light,
The Prince of Peace,
The King of Love,
came down and crept in beside us.
(Rev. John Bell)

 

 

It is the Season of Gladness

I’d like to share with you two selections from authors who speak to us of this holy feast of Christmas that we celebrate this evening.

In her Christmas poem, Amazing Peace, author and poet Maya Angelou offers to us her poem as a gift for people of all faiths and encourages us to celebrate and embrace the promise of hope, peace, and unity during this holy season. I present a small section of this poem. . .
Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes and lightning rattles the eaves of our houses. Into  this climate of fear and apprehension, Christmas enters.  Streaming lights of joy,  ringing bells  of hope. We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.  It is the Season of Gladness ~  a halting of hate time.  At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Promise of Peace.

Writer and storyteller, John Shea tells us what Christmas is all about through the eyes of a child.  And so he shares this story: 
 “She was five, sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word  was revelation.  She said, ‘They were so poor they had only peanut butter and jelly  sandwiches to eat and they went a long way from home without getting lost.  The lady rode a  donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady.   They had to stay in a stable with  an ox and an ass, but the Three Rich Men found them because a star lighted the roof. 
 Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them.  Then the baby was borned.   And do you know who he was?’  Then her quarter-shaped eyes inflated to silver dollars . . . as  she continued.  ‘The baby was God.’   And she jumped in the air and whirled around . . . which  is the only proper response to the Good News of the Incarnation.”

Yes, it is Christmas time; it is the Glad Season time; a halting of hate time and an awakening of peace time.  It is a time when truces are called, old hostilities are set aside and the night sky is scanned for some sign of a star coming to rest over our homes, -- over our world.

At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus the Christ; we celebrate the Promise of Peace.  We celebrate this awesome mystery; an incredible, unfathomable, infinite kind of Love that is difficult to wrap our minds around, much less our hearts! 

We, too, need to consider transforming our eyes to silver dollar size and jumping in the air and twirling around because we have heard the Good News!

Our God has truly entered the human condition, a human condition that is not all clean and lovely, warm and welcoming as Christmas cards would have us believe.  As one author reflects,
“Our secular, consumer society has usurped much of the wondrous mystery of it all from under us. Have we not, as well, sanitized the whole scene?  Have we not softened the rough straw with Downy,  sprayed a fragrance to cover the smells of the animals; silenced the cries of Mary in childbirth; tranquilized Joseph in his fear as he heard the first cries of this baby boy?

Jesus came into the world to homeless refugees, into abject poverty, on the outskirts of a brutal empire.  Christmas celebrates not just the birth of a baby meek and mild, but a life of one who was perfect and total Love, perfect and total nonviolence, perfect and total peace.  

Jesus was Word Incarnate whose words took flesh as well.  His words were of compassion, healing, encouragement, and empowerment.  Jesus not only spoke of a God of mercy and forgiveness, but also extended that forgiveness to all whom he encountered. 

Jesus not only spoke of God’s Reign of justice, but also stood in solidarity with the poor and the outcasts.  He not only spoke of a God who longs for our wholeness, but also touched a leper so that his skin would be made clean; he even stooped to straighten the woman bent over by the law.  And to the hungry crowd, he fed the bread of compassion and truth to satiate their emptiness.

Truly the nonviolent Jesus was a presence that disturbed.  He was the thunder in the mountain passes.  Into this climate of fear and apprehension our God entered.  Jesus taught by his way of life - for Jesus was the Word that both stabilized and destabilized; that comforted and discomforted. He was Wonder-Counselor, the Prince of Peace who filled our world with majesty, mystery, and meaning.

A life of peace is both an inner journey toward a disarmed heart and a public journey toward a disarmed world.  However, we are not to lose heart. “We were made for these times,” writes Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  “People everywhere are concerned and deeply bewildered about the state of affairs in our world.  Ours is not a task of fixing the entire world all at once, (she continues) but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.  Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely.”

Choosing to live a life of peace is a difficult balancing act between the inner work and public work, a high wire trapeze walk that requires calm, patient, step-by-step mindfulness and heartfulness toward a specific purpose, hope, and vision.  

Yes, we are made for these times, and as a people, a church, a nation, a world, we need generous, creative, imaginative people whose zeal can be ignited by the vision of a daring and not quite rational undertaking. 

In our nation of abundance, let us not forget that 16 million children live in poverty and 1.3 million public school students are homeless.  And in comparison with other industrialized nations, we have more high school dropouts, more violent crime among youth, more poverty among the elderly, more medically uninsured citizens, and the widest gap of income between the rich and the poor. 

Unlike the little girl in our initial story, we need to recognize and address the real facts that call us to ponder the scarcities and the inequities of our social system.  Yes, we are made for these times – and we must dare to become imaginative, creative, and generous so as to confront the dark forces that keep our minds and hearts hostage.

Yes, now is the time for hope to be born again in the faces and hearts of our children and where we all stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before us as pillars of passion, heralds of hope, and voices with vision, where it will spread around the earth, brightening all things.

Yes, we are made for these times and we are called, invited, chosen, and challenged to not only speak peace but BE peace.

We are made for these times to stretch out and to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.  Together, let us look at our world and speak the word Peace aloud.

Together, let us commit ourselves to listen carefully as it gathers strength. We will hear its sweetness.  It will be loud; louder than bombs.  It will halt all hate time.

Together, let us see, acknowledge, and honor each other, and then ourselves, looking into our hearts with the knowledge that to find peace, we must first find God.

Together we will say without apology or any hesitation:
Peace, my friend; Peace, my sister; Peace, my brother; Peace, my neighbor. Peace to all who are strangers. Peace, to all the least, the last, and the lost.
For at this Holy Moment; at this Holy Instant, we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ; it is the Season of Gladness, the Season of Amazing Peace!
(Based on Lk. 2:1-14) Christmas Eve 2014

The Word was made flesh . . .

Storytellers speak of a custom in the Middle Ages.

At that time, monks and most of the populace could not read or write, but every morning in monasteries and chapels many of them would meet around a Bible.

It would be opened, and in silence they would wait for the Word to be spoken and read aloud. The one who could read would slowly tell the story of God’s words in the world, reading a single passage clearly so all could hear. He would finish, stand in silence before the book, bend in homage, and then back away from the stand with the book, standing at a slight distance.

After a period of quiet, he would approach the book again and read the same passage. He would do this again and again, until all had departed and there was no one to listen to the Word of God.  Each monk or visitor left when they had secured what they needed to reflect upon for the day.


The Word invaded their minds, hearts, and bodies, and they took it with them into their work, study, and interactions, as well as their prayer.  With the Word within them, they were ready to live in the Spirit and let that Word transform their own flesh and blood.    
(Re-told by Megan McKenna)

May we be filled with the Word and live in the Spirit!

 

A Christmas Blessing . . .

 

 

 

Poem: "Christmas blessing" by Joyce Rupp

May you give and receive love generously.
May this love echo in your heart like
the joy of church bells on a clear December day.

May each person who comes into your life
be greeted as another Christ.
May the honor given the Babe of Bethlehem
be that which you extend to every guest who enters your presence.

May the hope of this sacred season settle in your soul.
May it be a foundation of courage for you
when times of distress occupy your inner land.

May the wonder and awe that fills the eyes of children
be awakened within you.
May it lead you to renewed awareness and appreciation
of whatever you too easily take for granted.

May the bonds of love for one another be strengthened
as you gather around the table of festivity and nourishment.

May you keep your eye on the Star within you and trust
this Luminescent Presence to guide and direct you each day.

May you go often to the Bethlehem of your heart
and visit the One who offers you peace.

May you bring this peace into our world.

Welcome Winter . . .

The Agreement

As the Earth revolves around the Sun, we travel in an endless circle of Endings and Beginnings: end of Autumn–beginning of Winter; end of the longest nights–beginning of longer days; end of one cycle–beginning of the next. Winter Solstice is a pivotal moment, a touch-point in time: a betwixt and between. ‘Tis the final death knoll of the past growing season while holding the kernel of birth of the new. It heralds the return of the Light that tiptoes imperceptibly toward Spring. It disregards the petty or profound differences of the Earth’s human inhabitants. Instead, it reminds us of our Connections:
That we are bound together by the same seasons,
 The same Light,
 The same feelings of grief and pain,
 The same celebration of joy and peace,
 The same yearning for Love in all its forms.
 It is a place in Time of Agreement.
(Ulu Ola)

A Winter Solstice Prayer

The dark shadow of space leans over us. . . . .
We are mindful that the darkness of greed, exploitation, and hatred
also lengthens its shadow over our small planet Earth.

As our ancestors feared death and evil and all the dark powers of winter,
we fear that the darkness of war, discrimination, and selfishness
may doom us and our planet to an eternal winter.

May we find hope in the lights we have kindled on this sacred night,
hope in one another and in all who form the web-work of peace and justice
that spans the world.

In the heart of every person on this Earth
burns the spark of luminous goodness;
in no heart is there total darkness.

May we who have celebrated this winter solstice,
by our lives and service, by our prayers and love,
call forth from one another the light and the love
that is hidden in every heart.
Amen.by Edward Hays from Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim

Glad Tidings

 

God is soaked
in our world.
God’s Spirit
lives and breathes
in and though
all that is.
We are lost
only when we
do not understand
that God
is already with
and in
each one of us.
Our task is recognition
of God’s initiative
to be at home in us . . .
acceptance
of God-With-Us.
Then we cannot but
be glad.
Author: Edwina Gateley