By faith I say, "Hallelujah!"

It appears from my limited experience that sometimes there is darkness following a moment of light. This week has felt dark to me following my time of sharing in church last Sunday. It was a moment of vulnerability and joy that was followed by fear and sadness. Doubts have been flooding my mind. I don't want to give gifts to anyone or see people. I feel raw.

Why? Is it just the normal ebb and flow of life? Is it the spirit world? Why does God allow this to happen? Why can't I feel joy for any extended period of time. I would settle for 24 hours at least. This fallen world we live in sucks! I guess that brings it right back to why he came to this earth. To save us from darkness, fear, and anger; to shine light into our world.

"For unto us a child is born, his name is Jesus... Hallelujah!" I say this merely out of faith and not out of what I am currently feeling. I would be more pleased it it felt more exuberant but all the same I hope he is pleased anyway because deep down I believe it to be true.

The Mystery of Holy Night

"I don't have to tell you how greatly I long for freedom, and for all of you. But for decades you gave us such incomparably beautiful Christmases that my grateful memory of them is strong enough to outshine even this rather dark one. It is times like these that show what it really means to have a past and an inner legacy independent of the change of times and conditions. The awareness of being borne up by a spiritual tradition that lasts for decades gives one a strong sense of security in the face of all transitory distress . . .

"From the Christian point of view, spending Christmas in a prison doesn't pose any special problem. Most likely, a more meaningful and authentic Christmas is celebrated here by many people than in places where only the name of the feast remains. Misery, pain, poverty, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt have an altogether different meaning in God's eyes than in the judgment of men. God turns toward the very places from which humans tend to turn away. Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him at the inn: A prisoner can understand all this better than other people. It's truly good news for him; in believing it, he knows he has been made a part of the Christian community that breaks down all spatial and temporal frontiers, and the walls of prison lose their meaning."

The Mystery of Holy Night, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

This definitely gives Christmas the potential to look differently for me. Christmas should be about celebrating the coming of Christ and not about the celebration of earthy comforts. To be lowly at heart is perhaps to be first in line to find him... hmm!

(Excerpts from this Dietrich Bonhoeffer book can be read online at http://www.thetulsan.com/holynight.html)

Lighting the Joy Candle

Yesterday during church I lit the third candle for Advent, the candle of JOY. It is funny how God chooses to work; he must have a sense of humor. The middle of last week was not a very joyful time for me. I was feeling tension in several of my relationships. But a couple of years ago I decided that if I was asked to participate in a service that I should do it despite what I was feeling.

The truth is, I haven't felt much "joy" this year. I am now finishing up my 10th month of unemployment. I am starting to feel the panic of money, despite the extensions for my unemployment compensation. One major car repair or illness would likely deplete my dwindling savings.

After I agreed to light the candle, I began to search online for something that might spark some thoughts on joy. After reading several things, I began to wonder if the problem was really with how I was defining joy. I wondered, "What if joy has nothing to do with my happiness?"

I came across the Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote from my previous post and it really struck something deeper inside me. There is a deeper joy that cannot be touched by anyone but God. It is not dependent on my relationships being free of tension. It is not dependent on my finding a job or having money. It is not dependent of my circumstances changing.

True JOY comes from HIM! I long to have it come and seize my mind, soul and body. I long for it to spread and burst through the closed door of my heart.

God Dwelling Joy

With God dwells joy, and down from God it comes, seizing mind, soul, and body; and where this joy has grasped a human being it spreads, it carries away, it bursts through closed doors.

The Mystery of Holy Night, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Advent Thoughts

I found myself really intrigued by the Thomas Merton quote that Kathleen Norris uses in her discussion of the Annunciation. The thought that there is a part of me, an untouched virgin part of me that belongs entirely to God, is so mysteriously drawing to me. No matter how hard I work at trying to touch that part of my soul only He can come to know me there.

So what must I do to stay in the mystery of this relationship, “to be virgin” as Kathleen Norris puts it? Give up trying to control the circumstances of my life. Give up trying to see the bigger picture that I am obviously not privy to seeing. Like Mary I need to simply say, “Here am I” and then patiently wait for God’s glory to grow inside of me. As Loretta Ross-Gotta says, “Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.”

Much like Mary I have Christ inside of me. Obviously, I am not giving birth to human life, but I can birth life into others around me. Christ came to earth to redeem me and because I have been redeemed by his birth I can now help to birth redemption in the lives of others. In this way Christ’s birth continues to be a miraculous birth.

So this Advent despite feeling impatient and empty, I find that I really do long to stop and wait patiently in his presence, to stand in the mystery of God. I long to let go of trying to figure out why life isn’t what I long for it to be, especially in these hard days. I long to be a womb so that his presence can grow inside of me; I long to be virgin.

(See "To Be Virgin" entry below)

To Be Virgin

“… Thomas Merton, in Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, describes the true identity that he seeks in contemplative prayer as a “point verge” at the center of his being, “a point untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth...which belongs entirely to God, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point…of absolute poverty,” he wrote, “is the Glory of God in us.”

It is only when we stop idolizing the illusion of our control over the events of life and recognize our poverty that we become virgin in the sense that Merton means…”

“Mary’s “How can this be?” is a simpler response than Zechariah’s, and also more profound. She does not lose her voice but finds it. Like any of the prophets, she asserts herself before God saying, “Here am I.” There is no arrogance, however, but only holy fear and wonder. Mary proceeds—as we must do in life—making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead. I treasure the story because it forces me to ask: When the mystery of God breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it? Do I ask of it what it cannot answer? Shrugging, do I retreat into facile clichés, the popular but false wisdom of what “we all know?” Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a ‘yes” that will change me forever?”

Amazing Grace, Kathleen Norris

"Much bickering has centered on the word virgin…but I think the time has come for us to stop limiting this word to a descriptor of Mary’s body and to start considering the power of this word in describing us as the body of Christ. What must we be untouched by, unknown by, not pierced by, in order for Christ’s conception and birth to continue to be miraculous?

…we need to consider not only what this word means to us as a people of faith. After all Mary’s hope was not just for herself, it was for a nation of faith. Perhaps for us to be virgin we must be untouched by the disillusionment of the world—we must remain impervious to the tired cynicism that denies the possibility of something new or different or transformative. To be virgin is to heed our deep and painful longing to be the bearers of new life. To be virgin is for us to hold space for the life that is to come.

Advent is a season of longing, not a vapid, reasoned longing, but the passionate, heedless longing of the lover for the beloved, the desperate longing for the exile for her homeland. It is an embodied longing that is at once intimately sensual and deeply spiritual. The slow walk from Advent into Christmas is a movement from longing for transformation, to giving ourselves up to transformation."

Strength of Women Found in the Strength of Mary, Elizabeth J. Welch

“Jesus observed, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Yet we act, for the most part, as though without us God can do nothing. We think we have to make Christmas come, which is to say we think we have to bring about the redemption of the universe on our own. When all God needs is a willing womb, a place of safety, nourishment, and love. “Oh, but nothing will get done,” you say. “If I don’t do it Christmas won’t happen.” And we crowd Christ out with our fretful fears.”

“… what if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special? Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.”

Letters from the Holy Ground, Loretta Ross-Gotta

Uncle Dick's Funeral

I went to my Uncle Dick's viewing and funeral yesterday. It was strange seeing cousins that I haven't seen in a long time. Most of them were really my mom's first cousins. PJ, Rodney, Randy, Brian, Barry and Heather are all children of my Great Aunts and Uncles. Several of them I haven't seen since high school, in fact Randy started to call me Dede which I went by as a young child. It felt sad that I didn't get more time to talk with them. I would have loved more time to get to know Heather and Barry's children. Heather's son Quin took a liking to me right away. PJ's daughter Megan was also there with her 3 children; I didn't get much chance to talk with them either.

I didn't really know my uncle well. I didn't know that he had fought in the Korean War. I knew that he was a builder of homes and someone who loved the outdoors. I didn't know that he hated watching television and preferred to read. I didn't know just how much he loved his adopted children as his own.

The funeral itself was simple, the music was sung accapella. A bit was shared about my uncle's life by a pastor who hadn't known him at all. It made me feel grateful that someday at my own funeral there will be people that really knew me well and loved me despite my faults.