When was the last time you pulled a sled up a snowy hill, jumped on it, and whooshed all the way back to the bottom? Do you remember what it feels like – wind whipping, snow spraying, the sound of the sled against the snow? How many times did you tromp up and fly down the white hill before it was time to go home? Can you remember the sheer joy of it all, or do you remember only the cold feet and hands, the chapped lips? If given the chance, would you grab a sled and do it again?
Of course, it doesn’t have to be a sled on a hill. It could be a tire swing in the back yard, a pile of crisp leaves, waves on the beach, a polished bannister. Floating sticks a la Winnie the Pooh works, or any number of other things. They offer us wonder and drop us into the mystery of this world and our own lives. And that is no small thing.
I suspect that it might be the most direct way most of us come to what is most sacred – the sheer joy that there is this creation, and the wonder that you and I are part of it.
Every year, Thom Nordquist created a new card. I’m lucky enough to have several of them. This is one that came in 2020 – a lovely piece of art and connection in a time of isolation.
Magi by Thom Nordquist
Thom created the Magi card for an Advent activity – mailing post cards of Advent travelers out into the world to connect the Christ Church community in Plymouth with family and friends near and far a la Flat Stanley.
After Thom’s death, his wife Ellen gave me framed editions of the originals. They are in my work space year round and in my living room during the holiday season.
I admire the artistry in these cards. Even more, I am touched by the effort and intention that went into their creation. They are reminders that love and kindness, regard and concern, can show up in many forms. Such blessings make their way though that holy gate commonly known as a mailbox.
Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 25:1-10; I Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36
Heaven and Earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Luke 21:33
The sun will burn out in about 5 billion years. As with other stars the size of the sun, our star will collapse on itself and die, emitting little to no light. Earth, of course, will die along with it. Though you and I will not be present for the death watch, it seems like an ignominious end to our beautiful blue and green orb we call home.
Our planet, as well as the rest of the universe, has been in continuous flux since the beginning. Data from the Webb telescope (which measures background radiation well beyond our solar system) confirms scientists’ suspicion that the universe exploded into existence billions of years ago. And the universe is expanding at unimaginable speed. Galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are hurtling through space and moving away from each other. The furthest galaxies are moving away from us faster than galaxies closer to us. As a friend once rhetorically asked me, “What is the universe expanding into?” It is indeed an exercise in courage to ponder such imponderables. As scientific discovery expands our knowledge base, forcing us to rethink the way we relate to the universe and our place in it, we might feel uneasy if not a little insecure.
Jesus, who himself lived through times admittedly much different from our own but difficult just the same, assured us there is a divine constancy that reaches out to us across time and space. “God needs man,” said the mystic Meister Eckhart. Evelyn Underhill put it this way: “It is Love calling to love; and the journey, though in one sense a hard pilgrimage, up and out, by the terraced mount and the ten heavens to God, in another is the inevitable rush of the roving comet, caught at last, to the Central Sun.”
This Advent may the whir of existence not drown out the singular message in Jesus’ words that “will not pass away:” God loves us.
Offered by Bryan Fredrickson, God’s beloved child.
We had only been in the renovated rectory a few weeks when this plant arrived – a welcome to your newly renovated space gift. It’s a Lotty Dotty Pink Hypoestes – cat safe and low maintenance. It matches my pink paper clips and push pins and makes me happy whenever I see it. It’s a thoughtful gift that adds beauty and life to my work space.
Animal friendly, low maintenance, not fussy, and bringing joy: it’s a good description of a human life well lived, too. And this plant as good an image of such a life as any other.
He didn’t paint it for me; my son painted it for my mother-in-law, Carol. From Colin’s earliest days, Carol would sit with him at her breakfast table and watch the birds flying in and out of the back yard. It meant enough to Colin that he asked her for a backyard bird guide when he was seven. Because Carol noticed the beauty of birds, Colin did, too. For Christmas a few years before Carol died, Colin painted this tile for her.
Carol’s Gift
When Carol died, the painting came back – a reminder of love and time spent together appreciating the beauty and grace just outside the window. Such a simple, powerful, life-changing act, this giving. How immeasurably richer life is because of such things.
The group wanted to explore Celtic spirituality for Advent in 2019. David Adam’s The Cry of the Deer: Meditations on the Hymn of Saint Patrick provided the words and Debbie Hill instruction in drawing Celtic knots. Debbie is an artist and calligrapher, and adventurous enough to take on teaching a dozen of us how to use pencils, dot paper, and ink to create intricate patterns. The first knot took more than an hour to make – a simple square. By the fourth or fifth try, I could manage a basic knot without needing to look at the directions.
The following weeks brought thoughtful conversation on Saint Patrick’s Breastplate and increasingly more intricate knots – candles frames, and diamonds embedded with crosses. Pulling out the dot paper, pencils, and pens turned into a prayerful act; seeing a pattern emerge from a collection of dots and circles, imperfectly formed but still pleasing, became a way of clearing my mind and opening my spirit to God.
I’m not known for my artistic ability, and I’ve never found drawing satisfying or relaxing. But Debbie’s encouragement and creativity opened up a new way to pray that’s lasted years beyond the original Advent study. I’m still surprised by it, and profoundly grateful.
I met Mister Rogers in 1994 when he came to offer his television ministry experience to the seminary media department. He was in person as he was on television. It took him half an hour to walk across the quad because he would stop and listen to every person who came up to meet him – most telling him how much he meant to them when they were children. Many left in grateful tears, twice blessed because they got to say thank you for the kindness he had given decades earlier.
There was a quiet approachability about Fred Rogers that changed the air around him. He wanted good things for other people, especially the very young and vulnerable, and he spent his life working to bring those good things to fruition. He was that rare and rarely recognized person: a living benediction for all he met.
I remember that every time I see his likeness on my table – a gift from my own child.
I was looking for a focus for today’s words when Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers appeared in the movies we think you’d like line of my streaming feed. I’ve seen the movie already, but it brought to mind the Mister Rogers that keeps me company in my work space. I took this picture, planning to crop it down to just Fred:
Looking to crop most of this out, I saw in this image what I hadn’t noticed before – not when I began writing on gifts, not the twice weekly watering times, and not when I gathered and placed all these things on my sons’ repurposed side table: Mister Rogers is only one of seven gifts in this picture.
Come to think of it, one of eight. I’m going to include the gift of eyes to see what surrounds me as an eighth…
It’s a perfect collaboration – Cole Porter’s words and music, Ella Fitzgerald’s perfection in bringing them to life. Something comes into being that continues to be as amazing today as it was in 1956. Timeless and equally of its time. Words and delivery coming together in a way that heightens both. I’m more fully human because I’ve spent time with this music.
I feel the same thing every so often when someone standing at a lectern offers words of scripture, occasionally even singing them. Ancient words oft repeated, suddenly alive in a new way – and offering life to all who hear them.
Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve, 1956
It was a gift I didn’t request, didn’t really want, but received on Christmas, 1985. When I finally slipped the album out of the cover just after New Year’s and a day before meeting up with the person who gave it to me, I just wanted to be familiar enough with the songs to prove that I’d actually listened to it. But there was something about Brothers In Arms that kept me playing it over and over again. Walk of Life and Money for Nothing were instant favorites, but it’s the title song that haunts. I’d seen enough of pain, loss, and death to realize how little I knew of pain, loss, and death. Listening to Brothers In Arms, I understood the Vale of Tears, the Shadow of the Valley of Death in a whole new way – Biblical imagery wed to life. And that we cause the suffering and death ourselves far too often.
For this one song, it would be on my top ten list…but the rest of the album is amazing, too.
Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms, Vertigo Records, AIR Salem, Montserrat and Power Station (NYC),1985
