Category: Advent/Christmas

Be born, sweet Child

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

Advent Summons

Come forth from the holy place,
Sweet Child,
Come from the quiet dark
Where virginal heartbeats
Tick your moments.

Come away from the red music
Of Mary’s veins.
Come out from the Tower of David
Sweet Child,
From the House of Gold.

Leave your lily-cloister,
Leave your holy mansion,
Quit your covenant ark.
O Child, be born!

Be born, sweet Child,
In our unholy hearts.

Come to our trembling,
Helpless Child.
Come to our littleness,
Little Child,
Be born unto us
Who have kept the faltering vigil.
Be given, be born,
Be ours again.

Come forth from your holy haven,
Come away from your perfect shrine,
Come to our wind-racked souls
From the flawless tent,
Sweet Child.

Be born, little Child,
In our unholy hearts.

~Mother Mary Francis

O Emmanuel

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
Malcolm Guite

Christmas Card

Sr. Dorcee, belovedLeave a comment

(This is a previous post, but it’s just worth reposting every year . . . )

I don’t usually post Christmas music videos before Christmas.  (Trying to keep Advent Advent.)  But this one is special.  And it’s for all of you who are having a hard time during this Advent season, finding it hard to be joyful like all of those around you.  This one’s for you (from Steven Curtis Chapman).

And here’s his story behind the song.

Now, go back and listen to the song again, written just for you.

“When you can’t find the Merry in your Christmas”

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When You Can’t Find the Merry in Your Christmas

by  • December 19, 2016

It’s here whether we like it or not—Christmas.

For many this season is filled with the fullness of family togetherness. The turkey with all the trimmings. It is the time for unwrapping the red-ribbon-gift we placed first on our list. It is the season of sparkly lights and the steady fragrance of evergreen. Cut trees dressed and centered in our homes displaying ornamented memories and present day mementos of our own Christmas present and pasts.

For others—like us— it will be the first without our most cherished loved one (R.I.P Dad Brown). It is the season of skipping to pay the rent in order to afford to put something under the Christmas tree. The homeless among us will seek to find a warmer cover, an even hotter cup to grip away the cruelty of the cold.

Christmas can fill you with joy and wonder and Christmas can make you feel marginalized and alone.

I’ll never forget the Christmas Mommy and I were all set and packed to visit my Grandmother Patricia in Kalamazoo, Michigan for the last time. It would be the last time because cancer… well,  cancer said so. “Gabby” had battled hard and surrendered even stronger to the fight. She was still trying to hold on for us though. Mommy and I had our tickets ready on the dining room table. We were sad but excited to have the opportunity to say our final good-bye. We were flying out of Portland bright and early the following morning, but we didn’t make it in time.

Just a few hours before “the call” I sat in our family living room, wrapped in the strong arms of my brand new fiancée. My then boyfriend of two years had popped the question and presented the ring on Christmas Eve. The same ring I was staring at when down the hall I heard my mother scream. Her daughter-griefed-weeping followed, and I knew Gabby was gone.

The sparkle of my new ring and the glare from my streaming tears were both there at that moment, right there at the same time.

Christmas can give you your most desired longing, and it can deliver your greatest heartbreak.

This season, once again I feel like I’m holding a little bit of both possibility and grief. Possibility in that this same Jewish baby Jesus who made His way through oppression, homelessness and rejection will continue to find rescue, covering and favor for me. Grief in knowing that I can’t control the timing of death, the depths and disgust of man’s broken humanity or the schemes and snares of our raging enemy.

But like my ring and my tears I will continue to hold both. This tension of both possibility and grief are calling forth a deeper vulnerability in me, a deeper desperation to both be cherished and rescued.

This Christmas I am desperate to find true meaning in both the unwrapping and the grabbing hold of our Immanuel—God with us, God with me. I’m being drawn to get closer to the Christ child and not Christmas, the holiday. You don’t have to find the “merry” in your Christmas if it’s not there. Just draw near to Him.

Jesus of our possibilities.

Jesus acquainted with our grief.

Jesus of Christmas who knows each of us—that Baby from the manger who knew just how to “be.”

Originally published here.

Tenth Month

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Tenth Month

Advent

Those heavy days, the Child cramped
within you and girding his limbs,
your lungs squeezed breathless-high,
the ordinary, unnerving simmer
of black waters within, Woman,
what did you think?

Or was thought
all prayer—trust in the buds
of epiphanies, the unquantifiable
blood to be let. But Mother,
those unspeakably swollen days,
olives combed out of ashen leaves,
or wine leeching out its vinegar smell,
did you feel the tug of split hearts,
in city streets, at tabernacles, in bars?
As your belly drew down, drawn
by hormones and truth, did you weigh,
too, the clumsy imploring down all
our bloodlines, for this saving parcel of flesh?

Sally Read

God loves to light little lights

Sr. Dorcee, beloved2 Comments

Last night we lit the last of the Twelve Days candles.  Most folks I know are done with Christmas, but not in our house.  We will soon take down most of the decorations, but we leave our lights up until February 2–40 days after Christmas.  Every year I reblog the post below to remind you why I think it’s such a good idea.  Join us!

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When I found out that St. Peter’s keeps their Christmas tree and crèche up in the square until February 2, I decided we would keep our crèche in the chapel and all our Christmas lights up until then as well.   I always felt gypped that there were not 40 days to celebrate after Christmas as there are after Easter.  Then I discovered that February 2, the Presentation of the Lord (Candlemas), is indeed 40 days after Christmas.  So, to me, it makes total sense to keep those Christmas lights lit.  If you drive past our house right now, you will still see our candle lights in the windows. I personally love clusters of little white lights. When we begin the Salve Regina at the end of night prayer, the guitarist dims all the lights in our chapel.  During this season, that leaves only the Christmas lights and the sole candle lit before the icon of the Mother of God. Yet the chapel still seems bright.

In the beginning of his Christmas message, Pope Benedict spoke of how God “loves to light little lights.”  I found that particularly encouraging as I thought of all of us who are desiring to be God’s witnesses to hope.  May it encourage you as well, and may you call it to mind whenever you see Christmas lights and candles:


THE LITURGY OF THE MASS AT DAWN REMINDED US THAT THE NIGHT IS NOW PAST, THE DAY HAS BEGUN; THE LIGHT RADIATING FROM THE CAVE OF BETHLEHEM SHINES UPON US. . . .
AT FIRST, BESIDE THE MANGER IN BETHLEHEM, THAT “US” WAS ALMOST IMPERCEPTIBLE TO HUMAN EYES.  AS THE GOSPEL OF ST. LUKE RECOUNTS, IT INCLUDED, IN ADDITION TO MARY AND JOSEPH, A FEW LOWLY SHEPHERDS WHO CAME TO THE CAVE AFTER HEARING THE MESSAGE OF THE ANGELS. THE LIGHT OF THAT FIRST CHRISTMAS WAS LIKE A FIRE KINDLED IN THE NIGHT.  ALL ABOUT THERE WAS DARKNESS, WHILE IN THE CAVE THERE SHONE THE TRUE LIGHT “THAT ENLIGHTENS EVERY MAN” (JN 1.9).  AND YET ALL THIS TOOK PLACE IN SIMPLICITY AND HIDDENNESS, IN THE WAY THAT GOD WORKS IN ALL OF SALVATION HISTORY.  GOD LOVES TO LIGHT LITTLE LIGHTS, SO AS THEN TO ILLUMINATE VAST SPACES.

May we allow God to light each of us,

The pulling of my soul

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reblogged from The Mudroom

The God Who Waits

by  • December 9, 2015

rsz_leonardo_da_vinci_-_annunciazione_-_google_art_project

Advent is a season of waiting:
for calendar chocolates, promised presents, Santa’s steps.
Advent is a season of longing:
for life, and light, and hope beyond this world.
In Advent, we think we are the ones who are waiting.
But I think of the annunciation,
in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Italian colours:
Mary is surprised, her left hand curled into a question mark,
but it is Gabriel’s head that is bowed low,
The Archangel holding his breath for her answer.
All heaven was waiting on a human word
before the Word would be made human.
Before God became incarnate,
God waited for human assent.
***
God was in the waiting,
the liminal moment when heaven held its breath.
I wonder about the waiting;
As my body groans and yearns for an eternal home,
the pulling of my soul towards heaven;
Could it be that God is waiting for my words—
Could it be that God’s soul is pulling too?