Saturday, December 19, 2009
O Antiphon: December 19
O Root of Jesse, you stand as a signal for the people; before you kings shall fall silent and to you the nations shall make their prayer: come to deliver us, and do not delay.
Friday, December 18, 2009
O Antiphon: December 18
O Lord and leader of the house of Israel, you appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai: come, and redeem us with outstretched arm.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
O Anithphons: December 17
Last year I discovered the “O Antiphons” for the first time. They kind of turn up the heat on Advent and I enjoyed praying with them and thought this year I would post them for those of you who might also enjoy a very short daily prayer. Beginning on December 17th and continuing until the 23rd, the ancient church has sung (and continues to sing in liturgical churches) the “O Antiphons”. Dating to at least the 9th century, and probably even before that, these seven messianic titles of Christ have been used to remind us of what we wait for and to increase our anticipation that Christmas is coming. For those of you who are following this blog, may they give voice to the longing of your soul and the joy that we await.
O Wisdom, you came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: come, and teach us the way of prudence.
O Wisdom, you came from the mouth of the Most High, reaching from end to end and ordering all things mightily and sweetly: come, and teach us the way of prudence.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Waiting
I had an interesting trip to the grocery store this week. I do not enjoy grocery shopping, so I’m pretty brisk about it. “Get in and get out!” is my motto. But I happened to arrive on a day or at a time when everyone else in the store seemed to be driving those little motorized carts. There was a blockage on the canned fruit aisle, caused by a head-on of two of these little carts. So I dodged up the pasta row, when another one came zipping straight at me and a woman exclaimed “Finally! A tall person!” She explained that she had made three loops already, hoping for someone who could hand her down the pasta she wanted, shelved high above where she could reach from her seat. I thought about what that would be like for me, who wants to get out of there as quickly as possible, to have to loop around for every item while I waited in hope that someone would be coming to help me out. Not a happy thought.
I cruised on, feeling pretty good about my ability to reach angel hair pasta at will, when I got into a log-jam on the spice aisle. I just wanted to grab the curry powder and go, but there was a gentleman there who needed help finding salt. I showed him where it was and he engaged me in a conversation about whether it was okay to eat something without an expiration date, something his mother had told him never to do. As I tried to reassure him that salt would be an exception to that rule, another cart came down and stopped right in front of us, trapping us there in the spices. And then, I kid you not, this man said “Since we’re all stuck here together for a moment, let me tell you a joke…” and he did. The woman cruised on, determined to find her particular spice at a cheaper price (which as an aside, I find really impressive, because it means two trips to the grocery store to save a buck, by a person who is not ambulatory, which would be one of Dante’s lower circles to me). This joking, salt-buying man then proceeded to tell me of the death of his wife in the last year, the loneliness he feels, the difficulties he’s had in his family and ended it all by telling me, “I just want to find a woman”. Wait! Was I being picked up in the spice aisle? I don’t really know why he said that to me, I think it was just the pain of facing Christmas alone. Finding the yard covered in snow for the first time in 20 years and having a joke to tell, and no one to share them with. I can really understand that. I stood there sharing his pain for a moment and feeling very inadequate.
As my groceries were tallied up, the checker complained about how everybody is always in a hurry. She was catching her husband’s cold and she just wanted to slow everything down. In fact she wanted to take a nap. And then she told me all about her husband’s poor health and the weariness she felt from taking care of him and working and trying to keep everything together. I went home in a reflective mood. This is the season of Advent, when we wait in expectancy for the coming of Christ. This coming is past, present and future and as I thought about the forty-five minutes or so I had spent at the local market, encountering the faces of helplessness, loneliness and fear, I felt so strongly that these people needed the “now” part of Christmas. The belief that Christ’s coming can also be celebrated as the very real presence of the Son of God in our very ordinary lives. Whatever we face during this season, Christ is right beside us in it, working for our good even when we can’t see it. That is a precious gift to hang on to as we wait.
Here is a poem I ran across recently by George Herbert (1593-1633), an English rector, which beautifully combines our present need with the waiting of the Advent season:
The Call
Come my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.
I cruised on, feeling pretty good about my ability to reach angel hair pasta at will, when I got into a log-jam on the spice aisle. I just wanted to grab the curry powder and go, but there was a gentleman there who needed help finding salt. I showed him where it was and he engaged me in a conversation about whether it was okay to eat something without an expiration date, something his mother had told him never to do. As I tried to reassure him that salt would be an exception to that rule, another cart came down and stopped right in front of us, trapping us there in the spices. And then, I kid you not, this man said “Since we’re all stuck here together for a moment, let me tell you a joke…” and he did. The woman cruised on, determined to find her particular spice at a cheaper price (which as an aside, I find really impressive, because it means two trips to the grocery store to save a buck, by a person who is not ambulatory, which would be one of Dante’s lower circles to me). This joking, salt-buying man then proceeded to tell me of the death of his wife in the last year, the loneliness he feels, the difficulties he’s had in his family and ended it all by telling me, “I just want to find a woman”. Wait! Was I being picked up in the spice aisle? I don’t really know why he said that to me, I think it was just the pain of facing Christmas alone. Finding the yard covered in snow for the first time in 20 years and having a joke to tell, and no one to share them with. I can really understand that. I stood there sharing his pain for a moment and feeling very inadequate.
As my groceries were tallied up, the checker complained about how everybody is always in a hurry. She was catching her husband’s cold and she just wanted to slow everything down. In fact she wanted to take a nap. And then she told me all about her husband’s poor health and the weariness she felt from taking care of him and working and trying to keep everything together. I went home in a reflective mood. This is the season of Advent, when we wait in expectancy for the coming of Christ. This coming is past, present and future and as I thought about the forty-five minutes or so I had spent at the local market, encountering the faces of helplessness, loneliness and fear, I felt so strongly that these people needed the “now” part of Christmas. The belief that Christ’s coming can also be celebrated as the very real presence of the Son of God in our very ordinary lives. Whatever we face during this season, Christ is right beside us in it, working for our good even when we can’t see it. That is a precious gift to hang on to as we wait.
Here is a poem I ran across recently by George Herbert (1593-1633), an English rector, which beautifully combines our present need with the waiting of the Advent season:
The Call
Come my Way, my Truth, my Life:
Such a Way, as gives us breath:
Such a Truth, as ends all strife:
Such a Life, as killeth death.
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength:
Such a Light, as shows a feast:
Such a Feast, as mends in length:
Such a Strength, as makes his guest.
Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart:
Such a Joy, as none can move:
Such a Love, as none can part:
Such a Heart, as joys in love.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Giving Thanks
I think it’s wonderful to live in a country that has a national day of Thanksgiving. Wherever Americans are gathered next Thursday they will most likely commemorate the day with friends or family and feasting. Whether staying home or going to Grandma’s, soldiers in war zones, or people traveling, studying or living abroad, there will be an attempt at a “traditional” Thanksgiving dinner and some moment to give thanks and remember our blessings. Giving thanks seems like a very appropriate way to end Ordinary time and begin the holy season of Advent and Christmas.
I read in a news article this week that English speakers say “thanks” and “thank you” up to 100 times a day. That seems amazing to me! The author said that our use of it could be quite confusing to people who come here from other countries. We apparently use it several times at the end of a telephone call, as a way to signal we are winding up the conversation. I paid some attention to my use of “thanks” right after reading this and noticed that just going into the post office caused a heavy exchange of “thanks” to and from people holding the doors open and between the clerk at the counter and I. Then I went to the grocery store where the checker and the bag girl and I thanked each other rather profusely for me buying groceries, they handing me a receipt and helping me out with my bags. Interesting. But I don’t think that this gracious use of “thank you” really makes us grateful people. I suspect we have instead a culture of saying thanks without paying much attention to whether we really mean it or not. Because when I’m at the post office, I’m not really thinking about how glad I am that we have an organized postal system that will deliver my package to the right person – I’m just acknowledging that the clerk handed me my receipt.
But developing a spirit of gratitude is really an important part of our spiritual formation. Because the difference between people who find ways to “always give thanks” and those who become bitter and hopeless people isn’t really in the circumstances of life, but in the way we view God and his action in our unique situations. Life is not always a bed of roses, as we all know. Those people who can find something to be thankful for in the midst of this broken world have a peace and a joy that is the best testimony I know. They have discovered that giving thanks changes things. As the writer Wendy M. Wright says,
I read in a news article this week that English speakers say “thanks” and “thank you” up to 100 times a day. That seems amazing to me! The author said that our use of it could be quite confusing to people who come here from other countries. We apparently use it several times at the end of a telephone call, as a way to signal we are winding up the conversation. I paid some attention to my use of “thanks” right after reading this and noticed that just going into the post office caused a heavy exchange of “thanks” to and from people holding the doors open and between the clerk at the counter and I. Then I went to the grocery store where the checker and the bag girl and I thanked each other rather profusely for me buying groceries, they handing me a receipt and helping me out with my bags. Interesting. But I don’t think that this gracious use of “thank you” really makes us grateful people. I suspect we have instead a culture of saying thanks without paying much attention to whether we really mean it or not. Because when I’m at the post office, I’m not really thinking about how glad I am that we have an organized postal system that will deliver my package to the right person – I’m just acknowledging that the clerk handed me my receipt.
But developing a spirit of gratitude is really an important part of our spiritual formation. Because the difference between people who find ways to “always give thanks” and those who become bitter and hopeless people isn’t really in the circumstances of life, but in the way we view God and his action in our unique situations. Life is not always a bed of roses, as we all know. Those people who can find something to be thankful for in the midst of this broken world have a peace and a joy that is the best testimony I know. They have discovered that giving thanks changes things. As the writer Wendy M. Wright says,
“The act of thanksgiving presses the sweet nectar of joy from the husks and hulls of everyday life. We harvest the fruits that wait, heavy and ripe, to fall: the thousand small gestures of caring, the struggles with our shortcomings, the legacy of our faithfulness, the lessons learned from disappointments and failure. All of it, gathered up in gratitude.”No matter what concerns press on you today, may you find that giving thanks is formative and produces a cornucopia of fruitfulness in your life. Please consider joining with us for our Thanksgiving Eve service on Wednesday night at 7. It will be a wonderful opportunity to give thanks and receive the Eucharist (which is the Greek word for “thanksgiving”) together.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Celebrating the Church!
Next week we celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Oak Hills Church. In thinking back to all that this local church has meant to me and my family, one of the things I most appreciate about Oak Hills is the opportunity that I’ve been given to use my gifts and talents here. I was in my twenties, with a toddler in tow, when I first got involved at Oak Hills. In the way of many women who choose to stay home and raise a family, sometimes I felt a little isolated and that the life I was living was too small. But the ability to be involved in the life of the church expanded, for me, the meaningfulness and purpose of my life beyond my own family and neighborhood. It gave me a place to lead, think and dream. I have made life long friends and watched the playmates of my own children grow up and begin families of their own. It is an amazing gift to find this rootedness in today’s society; to find a sense of place and belonging.
I appreciate, also, the ministry of the church in my own spiritual formation. Through the years the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the teaching has had an indelible impact on my life. Sermons, small groups, recommended readings and most especially those spiritual friendships that I treasure, have advanced my relationship with God in both an inward personal way and an outward world-view way. There is a consistency to the services and ministries that all point in the same direction: the reality of the presence of the Kingdom of God right here, right now, for everyone.
One of the spiritual companions that I have “met” here is Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish nun. She wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Almost five centuries later, that is still the case. The body of Christ can only operate through the participation of those who gather together to do his will in the world. Thanks to all of you who have been the body of Christ with me (and to me) in the past and to those who will join in being the body in the next twenty-five years. I’m very hopeful that the ways that God will find to use us to bless his world is on the increase and I can’t wait to see it all unfold!
I appreciate, also, the ministry of the church in my own spiritual formation. Through the years the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the teaching has had an indelible impact on my life. Sermons, small groups, recommended readings and most especially those spiritual friendships that I treasure, have advanced my relationship with God in both an inward personal way and an outward world-view way. There is a consistency to the services and ministries that all point in the same direction: the reality of the presence of the Kingdom of God right here, right now, for everyone.
One of the spiritual companions that I have “met” here is Teresa of Avila, a sixteenth century Spanish nun. She wrote, “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on the world, yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.” Almost five centuries later, that is still the case. The body of Christ can only operate through the participation of those who gather together to do his will in the world. Thanks to all of you who have been the body of Christ with me (and to me) in the past and to those who will join in being the body in the next twenty-five years. I’m very hopeful that the ways that God will find to use us to bless his world is on the increase and I can’t wait to see it all unfold!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Experiencing the Extra-Ordinary
My days are mostly ordinary. They’re filled with work, meetings, errands, friends and family. I tend to pray that I will meet God in the mundane-ness of the everyday, but honestly my expectation of what that means is pretty low. But I was reading again the story of Jesus’ encounter with the deaf man in the region of Tyre and Sidon (Mark 7:31-37). Surely, this man woke up with no thought that anything different was about to occur in his life. He began the day in his usual way, until his friends arrived and hurried him off to meet Jesus. I wonder if he even knew what was going on. Were his friends able to convey to him that there was a healer in the area, or did they just convince him to go along with them? I imagine that he didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, because of the way that Mark tells us that Jesus “took him aside, away from the crowd” and because of the way that Jesus healed him. We know that the power to heal emanated from Jesus to such as extent that he could speak healing (the Roman centurion’s paralyzed servant) or bring a cure with the merest touch (as in the case of the hemorrhaging woman), but for this man, who couldn’t hear, Jesus sticks his fingers in his ears, spits and touches his tongue. Why the rigmarole, I’ve often wondered? But now it seems a gentle and gracious way to give this man some idea of what is about to happen – namely that the Kingdom of God has broken out and swept around this man and his life will be changed forever. Mark tells us that the “people were overwhelmed with amazement” that this deaf-mute man could suddenly hear and speak plainly. I wish Mark had told us what he said! But the reminder to me is that if we are alive to the Kingdom of God, no day is truly ordinary. Extraordinary things are possible. Swirling all around us, ready to break out, is the power of God to change lives, heal the wounded, and overwhelm us with amazement.
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