Amidst Darkness

I so deeply appreciated this morning's advent devotional reading from Richard Rohr:

Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us.


If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we are not seeing clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are apart from the darkness.

Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness—while never doubting the Light that God always is—and that we are too (Matthew 5:14). That is the narrow birth canal of God into the world—through the darkness and into an ever greater Light.

Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 23-24

Light and Darkness

I really appreciated this post that Allie Dearest wrote this morning.

Particularly this first bit:  "I notice that people who grew up in the light, so to speak, like to play around with darkness a whole lot more than people who've lived in it."

Makes me think about so many people I know.  And about choices I've made too.  Stirs the heart to confession and prayer.

A Christmas Light

I really appreciated this cartoon at The Naked Pastor today.

That's it? A baby? That's all we get?

Great questions!

Mother Teresa, Saturday Plans, and Early Morning Musings

Image via Wikipedia

It's 8:10 a.m.

I've been awake, unable to sleep, for nearly two hours already.

50 minutes from now, my alarm will go off, reminding me that I need to wake up, and be at mom and dad's house 45 minutes after that.

Today is the feast day for Mother Teresa. I suppose the fact that I pay attention to such things makes me slightly odd in the world of protestant christians that I mostly inhabit. Then again, I wear a bracelet with saints around my wrist, collect quotes from them, and wear a medal with St. Clare of Assisi on it around my neck most days, so I suppose all of those things also make me odd in that world.

In any case, Mother Teresa is one of those saints that has profoundly moved and impacted me. You can read about her here.

I sent a dear friend this e-card this morning, and was struck by the memories that came as I read that bit of a prayer.

Many years ago, in my last year of high school, I encountered Lent for the first time. A friend who in many ways profoundly shaped my life challenged me to practice the discipline of giving up something I loved, and replacing it with time spent meditating on Jesus. That year I gave up reading fiction and magazines (a challenge, since at that stage in my life I generally plowed through 2-3 novels a week). I replaced the fiction with classic Christian works, and works written by those whose faith I admired.

Mother Teresa had died a few years before that, and I'd been deeply moved as I'd watched the outpouring of emotion that came with her death. Emotion so different from that which had come only days early with the death of Princess Diana.

One of the first books I read during that Lenten period was one of Mother Teresa's. "No Greater Love." The book challenged and moved me deeply, and I'll never forget encountering the prayer I linked to above, in it's full form. It ushered in a period in my life where nearly daily I revisited that prayer, crying out the words to Jesus, and asking him to form them in my life. I prayed it alone, and, in a few precious and difficult moments where we were struggling, with friends.

As I lay in bed this morning, reading the email that reminded me that today was the feast day of Mother Teresa, I was thinking again of that prayer, and of how, years later, I am beginning to see how praying it formed my heart. How I have met people who truly glowed with Christ, and how I continue to pray that glow will be within me as well.

I have varied plans for today. Helping my mom with a cleaning and organization project. Errands. Some cleaning and sorting around my own house. Likely church. But the day is being formed in these early hours, as I am remembering the prayer written by John Henry Newman, loved by Mother Teresa, and prayed daily by her and the sisters of charity. I am remembering these words, and praying them again today...

Dear Lord:
Help me to spread your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly that all my life may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel your presene in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only you, O Lord!
Stay with me, then I shall begin to shine as you do; so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Lord, will be all from you; none of it will be mine; it will be you shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise you in the way you love best, by shining on those around me.
Let me preach you without preaching, not by words, but by my example, by the catching force, the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to you.
Amen.

Light?

This cartoon at The Naked Pastor made me chuckle this morning.

It may hit just a little bit close to home.

But I certainly know the feeling.

Check it out here.

White Scarf Kind of Day (Peace)

Today I'm praying:

• for the mother of one of my former youth students. She collapsed outside her home two days ago in the severe winter temperatures and wasn't found for quite some time. She's in a coma in a local hospital.
• for her two sons - one of whom is one of my former youth students.
• for a family I love.
• for dear friends scattered around the country.
• for the ability to surrender and be at peace.
• a line from Joan of Arcadia, where God is speaking to her, "Here's the thing you need to learn from the martyrs, Joan, they did it the hard way. That's what I'm asking of you."
• for health and strength restored.
• for freedom from the dark places.
• for willingness to walk voluntarily in the dark places as necessary - but to walk free instead of bound.
• for warmth - Be not afraid of winter - Seasons change. God never does.
• for safety in travels.
• for wisdom to move forward.
• for growing joy.
• for the coming of the light.
• with lit candles, and a favorite white scarf wrapped around my neck.
• with all the little reminders of place and people and hearts.
• for the things that seem in perpetual limbo
• and for the relationships that are so unclear.
• for the ability to deeply forgive.
• for the change of spaces necessary to be at peace.

It's the fourth Sunday in advent - Peace. Later I'll pause and light the advent wreath in my bedroom. I'll light it and pray again for the ruling peace of Christ.

But sometimes, I wonder, if peace is not something that we don't expect.

I'm thinking a lot about Mary this year. The mother of Christ. I read a cycle of poems about her life by Ranier Maria Rilke yesterday. Just a short little book, but beautiful.

And I wonder if peace isn't the thing that came with some combination of "You are highly favored, the Lord is with you," and "Mary treasured all these things and stored them in her heart," and "As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul."

Maybe peace comes even there, especially there, in the moments when the things most treasured within us have been pierced and bleed.

Come, Lord of Peace, today. Bring light.

Advent (and Lent)

I feel the pressing of the darkness
the weight of the season

it's not hard, at this time of year
when I arrive at work in the dark
and leave when the light has already begun to fade
to feel the darkness encroaching
and understand the longing for the light

on my stereo a lone voice sings
of the journey to the cross
"Into the darkness we must go,
gone, gone is the light.
Jesus, remember me
when you enter your kingdom."

"This feels more like Lent -
like a journey to death and a grave,
than like Advent, and praying for birth"
I said to her
"Advent and Lent are the same"
she said
"A conversation for another night,
but Advent and Lent are the same"

Cyclical seasons
journeying through the dark
ever longing for light
for life, for restoration
to come.

Jesus Christ, have mercy on me
as I wait and walk in darkness.

Bits and Pieces

I was looking through some blog posts and links I put up earlier this year...

Here are some bits and pieces that are poking at my heart this morning:

This cartoon at "The Naked Pastor"

This bit of a poem (from this post):

Bless the darkness around you.
That’s why you’re a poet.
As the night presses inward
you radiate beams of light.
Voznesekií

This line (from this post), written just before I left Malta, which has turned out to be far more deeply true than I could have known:

There are new things springing up within me. Sometimes they scare me, sometimes they excite me. Generally they feel as if they are going to bring both great pain, and great beauty. But I think that all the really beautiful things in life do that.

The Mostly Dark

I’m sitting here in the mostly dark, and the light from my laptop screen is reflecting off my glasses, catching on every speck of dust or smudge, and highlighting the fact that they need to be wiped clean. My chair is just below my window, and it’s open, letting in the cool late evening air, and the ambient noise from nearby streets. I’m at peace.

My life feels like that right now too… mostly dark, but at peace. No real illumination. Lots of places where I am paused, waiting for what comes next. Where I have taken every step that has thus far presented itself, and now I wait, in the mostly dark – just enough light to know that things beautiful and freeing are coming, but not enough light to yet claim them.

Maybe the mostly dark is what it’s all about anyway… just enough light to move from one step to the next. I’m thinking of a Bruce Cockburn lyric “…another step deeper into darkness/closer to the light…”

I’m thinking too about all the various scripture passages…

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path…”

“You will hear a voice behind you saying, ‘This is the way. Walk in it.”

“The Lord turns my darkness into light…”

“before I go…to the land of deepest night, of deep shadow and disorder, where even the light is like darkness…”

“He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings deep shadows into the light.”

“When I looked for light, then came darkness.”

“He redeemed my soul from going down to the pit and I will live to enjoy the light.”

“You, O Lord, keep my lamp burning. My god turns my darkness into light.”

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light…”

Cockburn again:

Gone from mystery into mystery
Gone from daylight into night
Another step deeper into darkness
Closer to the light