I am so grateful to be in Christmastide after a challenging Advent! Break forth. O Beauteous Heavenly light!and welcome in the morning! As the twelve days of Christmas roll by, I am savoring the Light that has been increasing over these days, with our celebration of the coming of the Christ. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not... Read more
Within hours after I posted my last entry with a call to sing and rejoice, the entire nation was felled with the news of the slaughter of innocents in Newtown, Connecticut. Once again there were no words adequate, and there were too many inadequate ones. In my grief I felt catapulted ahead in the church calendar to Dec. 28, the day of remembering the slaughter of the innocents, those little ones, just mentioned just once in the gospel, who somehow... Read more
More light dawns in this Advent III week! One more candle on the wreath, and the texts from the lectionary begin to rejoice! Some traditions call this Sunday Gaudete Sunday or Rose Sunday, when a pink candle is lighted. For me, Mary, the mother of Jesus, while she retreats with her cousin Elizabeth, exemplifies of this movement of Advent: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” Far from the crowds, far from the dramatic and apocalyptic... Read more
Advent begins in the dark, but if we attend to the candles in our wreaths and the narrative in hope, Light appears, a little at a time, in the promises and in the reality. Zechariah, father of John, who will be called the Baptist and a surprise to both his parents, somehow was able to identify the Light that would be carried by his baby son: By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will... Read more
Today I am confused about Advent. I mean I know what the lectionary tells me it is, I know what the sacred reading tell me it is, but I am not altogether sure how to embody its observances and practices into my life. I do know that it starts in darkness…and part of my world has been dark these past few weeks, with the expected but never welcome, loss of two women who have been exemplars and friends to me.... Read more
Book Review for A Season of Mystery by Paula Huston, now featured at the Patheos Book Club A fresh voice is added to the chorus of writers who are helping those of us in what we are calling the “second half of life” find our spiritual moorings. Paula Huston in A Season of Mystery uses her own stories of walking with others through their years of aging, with a keen self-awareness that she is on the cusp on that process herself.... Read more
It is coming on to evening; I became aware last night at a concert of Monteverdi’s “Vespers,” that I long to close my evenings with attention to and from the Holy One, as the evening office of Vespers does. I need to ground my evening and my sleep in a sense of Holy Presence whether it be in song, in meditation on sacred text, or in my own prayer, silent of spoked, shared or alone. This Psalm was sung last... Read more
I am very grateful for so many thing this season, and right at the top of the list is the cloud of women witnesses who have nourished my faith from birth. I come from a strong Southern matriarchal family, a grandmother named Mary, a Bible teacher par excellence, and my mother and her three sisters–formidable, hospitable, always at work in the fields of the Lord. There were three missionaries on the bunch, one of whom pastor’s wife, which in those... Read more
We could not travel far in Ireland without running into signs, locations, references to the Big Name Saints: Patrick, Brigid and Brendan, followed by others like Kevin and Cieran. However, traveling with some prayer reflections about and from Irish saints in our hands, we discovered the presence of St. Gobnait of Ballyvourney in County Cork. Our very cosmopolitan innkeeper in Kinsale let us know that the very name “Gobnait,” was almost a derogatory name, since it wasn’t heroic or mellifluous... Read more
I get bumped off the journey with regularity. This week was rife with what seemed like spanners in the works, bumps along the road. When I was traveling in Ireland a few weeks ago, being stymied by a flock of sheep in the road seemed like a lark, an interesting happening on the pilgrimage. Here at home, I am less sanguine about things that get in my way–both on the daily rounds and in my spiritual journey. This week it... Read more
A Musing Amma
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