Christmas Eve: Her name is Christina

Christina Rossetti

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love Divine,
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and Angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love Incarnate, Love Divine,
Worship we our Jesus,
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.


I'd planned to write a reflection for each day of Advent this year, but it seems that life has intervened, and writing was not to be. I've been without internet service since last week, and it's provided a lovely respite from the world except as it presents itself in flesh and blood humans. I haven't missed it as much as I thought I would, except for all the drafts I've got for Advent reflections that will patiently wait for me to play with them next Advent.
Last night I sang a bunch of tunes, including Britten's Hymn to the Virgin, tomorrow morning I'll play trumpet and sing the Lauridsen O magnum Mysterium, and tonight I'll sing a ton of stuff, including this little lovely by Christina Rossetti.

It makes me smile every time, and especially so this year, with three Christinas in my life to show me love as token over and again. Christina No. 1 - priest, artist, mom, friend of many years, happily okay after winning a round with breast cancer. Christina No. 2, also artist and mom, kindly cooking dinner with Charlotte (5 and a half) for those of us who need to bring home the bacon by working this holiday; and the newest, Christina No. 3 - kind enough to welcome, feed, and house me while I was on the road a couple of weeks ago. You have all blessed me with your sweetness even in the midst of your crazy busy lives.

We don't have to look very far for sacred signs, they're all around.

Advent Reflection XIII: Fragility and Intention

The death and destruction department in Life's Little Reality Shoppe has a way of preempting everything. Last week, two sick parents and the death of my friend Deb cast a long shadow, until Friday's mass murder in CT.

How do people endure the unendurable? I've seen it happen, but it takes a huge toll, and many years before those left standing feel able to stand, let alone thrive. How is resilience even possible with so much energy spent trying to hide our fragility? What if God is as fragile as we are, and needs us to protect it? I know. We're fucked, right?

Maybe not. I suppose if we're to be God for one another (which I advocate regularly), the time is now. I've got plenty of faith, and some to spare, but I need to remind myself daily. Poetry, prayer, music, and small conversations - these feed me. The media frenzy that feeds the information junkie in me can drain my spirit. I'm susceptible to the repetitive stories of tragedy, mayhem, and trauma, so I turn them off. Better to wonder, sing, and pray; then go feed someone else.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow, thou art with me. Repeat all day. It might be better to call another friend, though, because some days that God looks mighty frail, and we need strong bodies to lean on.

I wonder what will help society to be kinder and more gentle? I wonder what it will take to make it as easy to get mental health coverage as it is to buy a gun? And, I wonder how can I not harden my heart? I've been singing In paradisum deducant te angeli... I've been praying Denise Levertov's Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus. Here's the last half of the Agnus Dei:

God then,
encompassing all things, is
defenseless? Omnipotence
has been tossed away, reduced
to a wisp of damp wool?

And we,
frightened, bored, wanting
only to sleep till catastrophe
has raged, clashed, seethed and gone by without us,
wanting then
to awaken in quietude without remembrance of agony,

we who in shamefaced private hope
had looked to be plucked from fire and given
a bliss we deserved for having imagined it,

is it implied that we
must protect this perversely weak
animal, whose muzzle's nudgings
suppose there is milk to be found in us?
Must hold to our icy hearts
a shivering God?

So be it.
Come, rag of pungent
quiverings,
dim star.
Let's try
if something human still
can shield you,
spark
of remote light.

Advent Reflection XII: Intimacy

Jesus, whom now veiled, I by faith descry,
What my soul doth thirst for, do not, Lord, deny,
That thy face unveiled, I at last may see,
With the blissful vision blest, my God, of thee.

Around the time I was learning to play this hymn, I read about seeing Christ in everyone you meet along the road. Not long after that, I read about Mother Teresa's motivation: each of the people she served was Christ.

Sometimes God has to pile it on real thick before I wake up to the heart of the matter. We sometimes understand intimacy as a source of discomfort, which we manage by keeping our distance. But intimacy, or being open to experiencing our own vulnerability, helps us to sit with discomfort. We’re always seeking comfort, and although we might long for transformation, we crave solid ground upon which to stand. We have become expert in isolating ourselves in community. We want to bring ourselves to the table and join in the festivities, but there are all these people (!) and they make us self-conscious, and we're really not up for it because someone has died/is sick/filing for divorce, or we don't anyone to see us when we feel/look/think we're less than our best. The bad news is that people can tell when something's up; we're not fooling anyone. The good news is that everybody has something going on, no one is at their best all the time, and it's not only about us.

It's when we remember that it's about us together that our way is prepared and we are comforted, because the best thing to do when one is discouraged is to encourage others. In his book Everyone as a Friend, author Jeffrey Hopkins writes: It is not sufficient merely to see that sentient beings are suffering. You must also develop a sense of closeness with them, a sense that they are dear. With that combination, —seeing that people suffer and thinking of them as dear, —you can develop compassion.

We do this by learning to link the person in the mirror to the person we would like to see in the world. We feel our way to openness, oneness, and genuine curiosity about one another by beginning with ourselves. We learn to look more than see, listen more than speak, and we learn to sit on our cushion (or chair, or pew) with the things that make us uncomfortable. If we're lucky, self-consciousness, walls, and ego fall away. We begin to drop our defenses and scripts, and learn show our faces, unveiled, at last. Others will reciprocate and begin to show themselves, then it's face to face all the way up. This is one way we might begin to redeem God, and stop worrying about it redeeming us.

Advent Reflection XI: George Herbert

Enrich my heart, mouth, hands in me,
With faith, with hope, with charitie;
That I may runne, rise, rest with thee.

- George Herbert

Advent X: Chesterton

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

- GK Chesterton (1874–1936), from The House of Christmas

Advent Reflection IX: Art to Ponder

Last year I curated an Advent art exhibit for the Episcopal Church Visual Arts folks called Imaging the Sacred Art of Chant. You might like the curator's statement, too.

Advent Reflection VIII: Humility and Presence

Wait! Wait! Wait! Everyone's preparing, but I've just begun to wrap my head around the waiting theme I've spent the last week exploring. Once I got the idea of waiting into my head, it quickly moved to my heart in painful ways, and I find myself in relation to God through all the rest of the people. I won't call them "others" because I have no delusion that there are any "others." Not even one. There's only us.

How do we pay attention to us? How do we have a conversation that we don't feel a need to check out of to look at our phone, the box score, or the people at the next table? You know when you do it. I know when I do it. We all know with whom we do it, and with whom we would never think to do it. What would happen if we were deeply present with the people we don't think need that level of presence from us? What would happen if we thought of presence as a sign of respect? It is. What if I could sing I will not take these things for granted to anyone who walks into my life?

God doesn't turn off the royal telephone, but maybe I need to turn my phone off when it distracts from the task at hand: being present.
Somewhere in my heart I know that if I could just "Pay the fuck attention!" as my dear friend Deb said, the way would be prepared.

Wherever two or three are gathered in humility, knowing that love/god is among and between us with something really interesting to hear; that's where it begins. It doesn't come only from inside one's head or from the NPR or TED talks, but from the ones directly in our path. This shit is hard, but as my friend John McQuiston says: Always We Begin Again. Try, try, try again.


The source of humility is the habit of realizing the presence of God.

- Archbishop William Temple

Advent Reflection VII: Pay Attention

Are we almost there?
How much longer till I'm safe in bed at home?
How much money do I owe for what I own?
How much left to pay?

Chorus:
Pay attention
Pay attention
This is it, more or less
Who would ever guess
This is the best of times
This is the worst of times
And it's passing
Pay attention.

Is it over yet?
How much longer does the hidden road go on?
How much farther till I cross the Rubicon?
How much toll to pay? (Chorus)

This isn't where I thought I'd be --
I ignored my own design.
But if you're here, if you're with me
I like it fine, I like it fine...

Someone tells a joke
Someone marries, someone else is giving birth
Someone's praying, someone's buried in the earth
All of us will pay -- (Chorus)

Words/Music copyright 1994 D. G. Bly

Listen to it here. buy it here: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/themiserableoffendersdeb

RIP Deborah Griffin Bly. Miss you already.

Advent Reflection VI: I find myself waiting

How this heart
no larger than my hand
can enfold heaven, hell,
and this wide earth
this is the mystery
no one will ever understand. - Angelus Silesius



I find myself waiting for word on the state of my loved ones, in hospitals and homes, water flowing from the sky and from my eyes. Some have made it through the day, others have gone to see God face to face.


Moving right along,
In case mine tips the balance,
I begin to pray

Leaving things undone
I sit still, awaiting word,
Allowing for breath.

Why do I picture
God's hand gently pouring rice?
Grains land as people.

I find myself there
widening calm rarely grasped
but sometimes perceived.

I'm suddenly tired.
Are you sleeping or heav'n bound?
Always I hear both.

Advent Reflection V: Eliot

Here's a reality check from East Coker, in The Four Quartets, by T. S. Eliot

...The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless...


You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

Advent Reflection IV: Keepin' the Baby Awake: Music for Advent and Christmas

Once upon a time, in two brains very far away, lived the urge to play with the people in church by stealing their songs for a while. Ultimately the songs were returned, but they were NEVER the same. The people loved this. Tidings of great joy quickly spread to late night parties far across the waters, filling at least two other boroughs with a joyful ruckus. People sang along. God saw it was good.

That was almost twenty years ago, but this is now. Shit has definitely happened, and continues to do so, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Click the link in the title below and prepare your hearts (and wallets) to support the rest of you through the purchase of the fruit of pure joy and laughter. Then you can listen and sing along, too!

Available as a download only, I know you'll love Keepin' the Baby Awake as much as I do. Share it with family, friends, strangers. Keep Advent Weird. It's like nothing you've ever heard before or since, and you won't be sorry.

Advent III: Seeking God

Christ could be born
a thousand times in Galilee -
but all in vain
until he is born in me.

Do not seek God
in outer space -
your heart is the only place
in which to meet him
face to face.


And dear ones, it's face to face all the way up.


Christ could be born ... and Do not seek God ... from The Book of Angelus Silesius by Frederick Franck

Advent Reflection II: Mixed Messages

“This is the gift that God holds out to us in this season:
to carry the light, but also to see in the dark,
and to find the shapes of things in the shadows.”

- Jan L. Richardson, in Night Visions


This space between Thanksgiving and Christmas is my favorite time of year, but one that still brings memories of grief. Advent begins the first Sunday after November 30th, which is my birthday. In 1975 I had just finished celebrating my 18th birthday when the phone call came. My grandfather had died. He was like a guardian angel to me, and would put himself between me and whoever was upsetting me, then try and talk everyone down. As a kid, I was never very good at calm and grounded, and Papa was a big help. I'm still deeply grateful he was around until I was of legal age. He would have been 100 this year.

Even though lately I am somewhat more adept at holding life's pain and joy simultaneously, it's not always an easy task. We're all in the same boat when it comes to managing life's mixed messages - each year bringing another 365 days of experience to integrate - so I offer this quote, which for many years has been a locus from which to see my way toward preparing a way without denying the often bewildering realities of life.


“This is the gift that God holds out to us in this season:
to carry the light, but also to see in the dark,
and to find the shapes of things in the shadows.”

- Jan L. Richardson, in Night Visions

Advent Reflection I: If in Your Heart

If in your heart you make a manger for his birth, then God will once again become a child on earth. - Angelus Silesius

Take a listen to If in Your Heart and at the end of it you'll find yourself in a fine place to begin Advent.

Friend, whatever you are, you must not stand still:
One must from one light into the other spill. - Angelus Silesius

Angelus Silesius is the monastic name of Johannes Scheffler. Born into a noble Polish Lutheran family, he received a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Padua and became a physician. As a young man he was drawn to the writings of the German mystic Jacob Boehme. Scheffler's mysticism didn't sit well with the dogmatic forms of German Lutheranism of the time and, in 1653, he converted to Catholicism. He took the name Angelus, adding the surname Silesius, meaning "from Silesia." He published two books of poetry: The Soul's Spiritual Delight and The Cherubic Pilgrim, and was often engaged in public controversy with both the Lutheran and Catholic churches.

His poetry hinted at a quietest mysticism which asserts that the soul, when it attains deep quiet, can experience God directly -- a notion neither institution has been too fond of. Click here for more info and books. Thanks to Ivan M. Granger for the bio.

In case you need advent defined, dictionary.com says:
advent  
ad·vent [ad-vent]
noun
1. a coming into place, view, or being; arrival: the advent of the holiday season.
2. (usually initial capital letter ) the coming of Christ into the world.
3. (initial capital letter ) the period beginning four Sundays before Christmas, observed in commemoration of the coming of Christ into the world.