Happy feast of St. Lucy!
We celebrated Christ’s Light this morning (a day early — oops!) with candles, sweet buns, and a joyous time with our church community.
Read Moreadventures in faith, home, & keeping the earth
Musings in making and finding Home in this wild and wonderful world.
We celebrated Christ’s Light this morning (a day early — oops!) with candles, sweet buns, and a joyous time with our church community.
Read MoreAh, the splendor of the season.
I’ve been fussing at myself for the half decorated tree, the half box of untended decor, etc. I should rearrange the den again to see if we can get some space by the tree. I need to pick up ALL THE LITTLE THINGS that end up on our floor (every day — hOw?!?!).
Read MoreSt. Nicholas morning brought us invitations to prepare for Jesus. It brought invitations to wait with awe and wonder, to play and to make a way.
We remembered brother Nicholas’ legends and how they point to Love Incarnate in the world.
We ate pancakes, read Narnia, and built with Legos. Henny tried on the nightgown St. Nicholas brought to help her get ready for St. Lucy’s day next week, too.
The Light shone bright.
Set out your Christmas stockings. Maybe fill them with a note or small treat each Sunday until Christmas.
Donate to fair labor organizations.
Do one thing to prepare for the Christmas season, practical or spiritual: finalize plans, light candles, carve out time to pray, go outside, make up with someone, etc….
Drop off secret blessings to whomever the Lord brings to mind.
Allow the needs of others to guide your holiday gift practices.
Bake sugar cookies and think of how sweet it is to be loved by Jesus and his people!
St. Nicholas and his tool-toting toddler made my heart swell three times its size tonight at Morehead’s Hometown Holiday. Them, impromptu caroling, and every smiling face I saw.
Read MoreTonight at the Hanging of the Green I watched my daughter worship God by twirling in the sanctuary.
It ended with a big thump on the side of a pew and big, big tears.
Read More“Let heaven and earth praise him” (Ps. 69:34).
Here in Advent I feel an emphasis on that “let.” As in, allow. Permit. Do not hinder.
We humans face an important and urgent decision. Will we live into our primordial call to be keepers of creation, or continue to allow profit to plunder us dead?
Read MoreStir Up Sunday should be featured on an episode of The Great British Baking Show: Masterclass (please tell me you’ve seen these; Aaron and I are obsessed).
On the last Sunday of the church year traditional liturgy rises in a cognate with Psalm 80:2: “Excita, quæsumus, Domine…,” “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord…” While hailing the divine, this liturgical invocation has also summoned many a British homemaker, cook, and baker to stir up their Christmas pudding so that it has time to mature before the big day.
I find the tradition charming and have embraced the fun injunction this Advent season through Sunday bakeathons.
But that phrase, excita , has stuck with me. Three out of the four Advent Sundays also begin with excita, calling congregations deep into the active wait for Christ.
What does God’s might look like? What am I really asking?
Read MoreIt is not every day that a conservative evangelical gets my attention. This week one such person did. Author and speaker Beth Moore wrote all of social media…
And great rejoicing ensued.
If Beth Moore is radicalizing—“rooting” in the embodied, incarnational love of God—then perhaps there is hope for the rest of us white, well-to-do people of faith.
We are probably the most difficult to reach.
Our ears are so stopped with comfort and luxury; it is easy to forget the naked and hungry.
Our shoulders are so heavy with the expectation to perform, achieve, and get ahead; it is hard to distinguish between the cultural, shame-induced patterns of white upper-middle class church folk and the radically nuanced gospel that is really worth of our lives.
Beth Moore sounds like John the Baptist to me this week.
Read MoreWe are coming up on the last push of Advent.
Now is the time when perhaps waiting seems most impossible. Indeed, for some families, gatherings with grandparents, cousins, great-uncles, etc. will begin in a matter of days. Church musicals and special services are whipping to a frenzy. And maybe our hearts are burning, just a little, with the strain of the wait.
Good. This is probably a safe indication that Advent is well at home with us, in our bodies, minds, and spirits.
Keeping Advent in this space is possible and worth it. This could be the time in which it matters the most.
Read MoreZechariah, the husband of Elizabeth and the father of John the Baptist, was a priest. He was kind of a big deal, really. Only descendants of Levi could be priests and he was one of them.
We do not know very much about his economic status or learning, but we do know that he had responsibilities in the Temple—a turn to touch the holy.
That is always a big deal.
The lectionary tells the story this week of John the Baptist. Starting with Malachi we learn that God is sending a messenger to prepare the way; “The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts” (Malachi 3:1b). But this will not necessarily be an easy coming. It will be something to be endured like a “refiner’s fire” and “fullers’ soap” (Malachi 3:2). The messenger’s coming will require transformation of us all, but especially, Malachi says, of the descendants of Levi.
How interesting that John the Baptist’s own father was one such person.
Malachi believed that the all-male religious leadership he knew would especially feel the effects of the messenger’s coming—and that the well-being of the entire people would depend upon their heeding that transformation.
Fast forward a few hundred years and we see Zechariah tending his duties in the Temple. Along comes the angel Gabriel with good, good news. The messenger is coming, he says, and through your partnership with your wife!
Zechariah’s response, Say what? How will I know that this is so?
And the angel promptly strikes him mute.
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