What Turns Up (The New Pornographers)

image courtesy aphotoshooter (Flikr)

"What's love, 
what's love, 
what's love,
but what turns up in the dark?"

In these days closing in on the winter solstice, what I want to do is grow meditative with the darkness, but I often catch myself just resenting the long nights, like I'm racing to complete as much as possible before the last blue seeps from the sky.

Fact is, everything about how I live (cell phone, work schedule, holiday list) resists a meaningful way to move in harmony with the rhythms of light and dark, life and death, at this time of year. I know this, and yet I can't always stop myself. My cultural training is to think of the darkness as ending, as loss, as emptiness. After all, when people say, "she's carrying a lot of darkness in her" they usually don't mean that as a good thing.

"Up in the Dark" feels like a song about this sort of negative darkness: secrets and hiding. Fear and deception. And yet in the midst of all these "dark" emotions, love shows up. Not what I expected from an Indie pop song. 'Desire,' maybe, 'hopelessness,' possibly, but in fact, the refrain suggests that love, by definition, is 'what turns up in the dark'. 

First question: When has Love shown up for you "in the dark?"


Up in the Dark from The New Pornographers on Myspace.

Yet as much as the prevailing culture around me has taught me to understand darkness in only one way, I have also learned that darkness is where the roots grow. Even during this dark season, as the plants and trees sleep, a greening energy is moving deep within the heart of things. Life is stripped to its core so that it may return renewed. Darkness deepens life.

"What turns up in the dark?
What turns up in the dark?"

Second question: When have you discovered Love waiting for you in the shelter of darkness?

Could it be true that not only does Love not abandon us to the darkness, 
but a sheltering and peaceful darkness is what can help Love grow strongest? Could it be true that befriending the darkness, where it doesn't threaten to engulf us, could be a way to understand our belovedness more fully, to understand God as our Ground-of-All-Being more totally? Could it be true that in the dark all the exhausting running and hiding and games can end, the veil can be dropped, and we can encounter our vulnerability and truth within community and with God?

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,

    who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,

will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress;

    my God, in whom I trust.” 

- Psalm 91: 1-2

So as we dwell in the shadows of some of the darkest days of the year, may we hold the paradox of this space well: the possibility and the difficulty, the life and the death. May we remember that in this solstice darkness we are invited to die to old ways of clinging and lying, hiding and fearing, while also inviting our deepest wholeness and renewal in that very same darkness. May we remember that Christ dwells in this Advent space, in this almost-Christmas space, ready to be born in darkness, ready to be encountered in darkness, ready to be fully revealed in light.

All we need is this time in the dark.

Shine on.

                                                                                    -- Anna

How We Tell the End (The Softlightes)

Welcome to the end of the world. Turns out, everything looks basically the same.

The question isn't really whether the Mayan calendar got it right or wrong, it's what imagining our own endings does for us and in us. In our Christian tradition, the dramatic words of John's Revelation or the enigmatic predictions of Christ and the writers of the epistles can either fascinate us... or make us squirm, inspire us... or invite dread. 

What are the stories we tell about our endings, and our rebirths? Are they stories that affirm basic goodness, or relish in fallenness? Are they stories that believe in finality, or renewal? Often, our imaginations about the end of the world (or our acceptance of the imaginations of others) tell us more about ourselves than they do about factual future realities. 

Maybe that's why this song by the SoftLightes works for me: it balances the fear of ending ("there's a fire burning and demanding") and the desire for transformation ("but if I change, Love, who will I be, Love?") with a sense that it's worth just enjoying the moment, the present, this Christmas - whether its our last or not. 


The Last Christmas On Earth from SoftLightes on Myspace.


I love it that there's a suggestion at the end that even as we dance like it's our last Christmas this time, we'll keep doing that every year "as the times chance and my hair turns gray..." So each year we'll practice the present like our lives depend on it. We'll dwell deeply into the moments and relish the experiences of silliness and delight, tenderness and revelry, trusting that as we do, we make one of the deepest theological statements there is: that the Love that Came Down at Christmas didn't come to destroy but to create, not to punish but to bring hope. That same Love promised to come again with justice and peace, gathering all in to Godself.

"Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever."       - Rev. 22: 3-5

Whether it's the Mayan calendar or the tales of endings and new beginning written in our own tradition, what matters most isn't being right or wrong, accurate or mistaken: it's how the story we're telling ourselves makes our present days worthwhile, beautiful, profound, and holy... and how we are called to make it peaceful and meaningful for all people and all creation as we are able.

In these final days of Advent, may the story you tell yourself out of your traditions be one filled with grace and hope, a word of peace for all creation that imbues your present with meaning and purpose, delight and dancing.

                                                - Anna

Choosing Danger (Sounds of Blackness)

There are no Christmas cards about courage, have you noticed? Peace, Joy, Goodwill to All... check, not much mention of courage. But if the Christmas story is about anything it is about the angels’ oft-repeated message: Do Not Be Afraid. And if anything is antithetical to the message of Christmas, it's fear.

Today, Sounds of Blackness sing these words into our consciousness:

What a lowly place to be born
What a lowly place to be born
Like a stranger, not far from danger
He was born in a manger: My Lord

This song reminds us that God chose to be born into a lowly place: born to refugee parents, of the underclass, homeless at the time of his birth. More than that, God chose to be born into danger, the very real dangers of poverty and oppression, and, later, the danger of an infant genocide sparked by the fear of a ruler.

We believe that this kind of birth, God breaking into the world in this way, reveals to us God’s deep concern for those on the margins of society.  The lowly birth of our God, and the ensuing life of Jesus, lived in solidarity with those on the edges of community, tell us that God stands with the suffering, the oppressed, the victims of injustice in every time.

Born In A Manger from Sounds of Blackness on Myspace.



This brings many of us to the discomfort of today's song: In the grand view of our country’s population (let alone the world’s population) most of us have received enough privilege to make the above theological claims feel a little dangerous.  Following a God who choses to stand with those on the margins, has implications for our own lives that might make us feel a little afraid.

Can we find the courage to question our own social privilege, our own wealth in order to be found, like our God, on the side of the lowly? Do we have the heart to wonder, as love is born again and again each year at Christmas, if there's a danger into which we are called to follow the lowly babe in the manger? Will we follow if the danger threatens our comfort, our image, our lifestyle as we seek to follow the God who stands with the marginalized and loves the lowly?



Let's hear, today, this Christmas message: 

Courage. 

Do not be afraid. 

For the Divine Love that was born in Bethlehem turned the world upside down to bring justice, peace, and fullness of life; and that Divine Love, seeks to do the same, as it is born anew in every time and place and heart (even ours’).

                                                                                                      - Lindsey

Un-Boxed (Ben Howard)

 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

- Matthew 6: 27 

So here's the flip side of our theme this week: sometimes speaking our needs during Advent can make us brood. And more than brood: worry. 

This isn't just the high-strung holiday worries of 'did I remember all the gifts?' or 'will we need more stuffing?," it's the BIG STUFF worry, like "that I'm losing the ones that I hold dear." 

Taking time to wonder about the big stuff can be productive, but when it turns into worry, running around in the same tight mental loops, then it can make us feel so small: "just a blade in the grass, spoke unto the wheel." Worse, we can convince ourselves that everything we've ever done is wrong and that we'll "become what [we] deserve."

This feeling may be more familiar to some of us than others. Some of us mask these doubts and worries with constant activity or with ego-blustering that hides our groundlessness. Nonetheless, we've almost all had that moment when we recognize the true depth of our brokenness and neediness and think: I really am a terrible mess. Maybe this is what I deserve.

The Fear by Ben Howard. Lyrics HERE.

Fear of our own unworthiness is much different than knowing that we do nothing to 'merit' God's love and grace. Fear of our unworthiness is a small room with peeling walls, a life lived with worry keeping us intdoors. Most critically, fear of our unworthiness is un-Christian, even though so many of our theologies and churches use this as a tactic to convince us of other things: that we must act a certain way, say certain things, or believe in just the right balance... otherwise God's love will be revoked.

The truth is that Christ came to hang out with the screw ups. He surrounded himself with good but flawed friends, loved them past their betrayal, and hasn't given up on this crazy world since. We have been promised that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and yet we live our days acting like it might not be true.

Luckily, during Advent, we are called back to ourselves. Not the ego-self of "I'm just fine, okay!" and not the shame-self of "I'm unworthy." We are called to the true Self, which God created and loves, which is already whole and free. The fierce glow of that Christmas star cast a new light on all who sought it out: it revealed that life should not be lived in the confines of fear, and that our worries can't change the beautiful intentions which God has for Creation.

How will you say your need, trusting that even in your brokenness and neediness you are also beloved and whole?

May you enter Advent remembering that, individually and communally, we are freed from the stiff confines of fear, doubt, worry and shame by a God who lavishes us with love beyond our imaginings.

                                                                                                                        - Anna

Wed Jan. 4 I Release and I Let Go (Florence and the Machine)

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
-Galatians 5:1 (The Message)






This song, and the music of Florence and the Machine in general, I find to be rich in imagery and emotion. Every time I listen it resonates with me and sparks some different thought, question or memory. Today I offer them, patchwork style, hoping that these words and this music will create some sparks in you, too.

 Florence and the Machine: Shake it Out

**Some strong language

I'm always dragging that horse around

All of his questions, such a mournful sound

Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
I like to keep my issues drawn

cause it's always darkest before the dawn

Is this theme too late, we are four days in. People've started over already, haven't they? Begun already out-withed the old and in-withed the new? Have I begun already? Yep, begun and begun again.

Beginning as one point of time somehow isn't working for me.
The newness of this year feels blunted by my sameness; perhaps I didn't really intend to be changed, or did that step of beginning unearth some old pieces of my self that I didn't know were down there?

and I am done with my graceless heart

so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and restart

How can I still be holding that fear? anger? expectation? I let it go so many times.


A friend wisely said to me once, we should take a hint from our bodies. When there is something in there that is not good, the body does what it has to expell it. Some times we need to take our issues out and disect them or analyze them, sometimes we just need to know its bad for us and get it out, let it go.






That which we cling to, shapes us. Teach us to chose wisely what we hold to ourselves and that which we release to spiral away into the world.

Shake it out, shake it out, oh woah

and it's hard to dance with the devil on your back

so shake him off

"Shake therapy" is Kate's favorite thing. My friend didn't patent the idea but she may be it's greatest evangelist. When she finds herself carrying the detriments of stress in her body or when she is frustrated or angry, she will literally shake all of her limbs as hard as she can to release the stress that is harmful to her spirit and her muscles. When I have been present this shaking has transformed our frustration into riotous laughter (my favorite kind of release) on both our parts, and I believe there is something to it.

I release you, fear... I give you back....
You are not my shadow any longer.
I won’t hold you in my hands.
You can’t live in my eyes, my ears, my voice my belly, or in my heart
-Joy Harjo

(inspired I say) I release you, my fear and my self protection. I shake you off, lies of inferiority and I unwrap tight fingers from you, bitterness. Then I prepare myself to do this again tomorrow.

Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me

There is a kind of grace that we need in letting go, it is hard. And there is a kind of grace that we receive in letting go - the free-fall kind, the just-be kind, that grace where we don't have to work as hard as we think we do, where we can be who we are, where we can chose to let something go over and over and over, trusting God each time to move, further and further from our grasping hands that which is harmful and to place in them, instead, something new.

So, as Florence says, "what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me."










Gentle God, uncover in us that which needs release, strengthen our hands to open, to let go and to receive.

-Lindsey

Tues Dec. 27 - Time Is on Our Side (Free Energy)

We'll never get any other life...

So together we make this whole.
                      - Free Energy

It may seem strange to put a pop dance song in a Christmas lineup.  There are no 'silver bells' here, but there is plenty of cowbell.  This song is basically about liberation through a great beat, singable lyrics and a will to survive - and if this theme seems a little thin to you, just hold on for a minute.

One of the reasons the A.M. Project came into existence is because I know in my own journey how many times a good song has "saved" my life.  Sometimes prayer or meditation works, sometimes worship works, sometimes a talk with a friend does the trick, but sometimes when we're lost in the circles of our own thoughts, a good song on the radio can resuscitate us back to reality.  This is no insult to more "certified holy" forms of rejuvenation; it merely acknowledges what many of us already know: music moves us.

A danceable song, lyrics that seem to speak right to us, hum-able tunes... whether we more often listen to R&B, bluegrass and soul, hip hop, dance pop, classical or jazz, those of us who love music love it because of its power to stay with us, to change us - to help us.

This is all we got tonight

This is all we got tonight

We are young and still alive

And now the time is on our side

The Advent Music Project could very easily have been a collection of Christmas classics and new Christian rock favorites and indie Christian gems where the lyrics were always clearly about Jesus and God and the Christmas miracle.  Honestly, this would have made our reflection-writing task much easier!  But we didn't take on this project to find God only where God was already obvious; we wanted to find God, Jesus, Advent and Christmas in a few places no one had thought to look yet.

As with many good pop songs, the lyrics to Free Energy are both extremely literal and also open to the listener's personal experience. 'We are young and still alive' can be a rally cry for anyone from 9 to 90, and 'now the time is on our side' can speak to each of our hopes and longings.  So if we let go of our prejudgments about what "makes" Christmas music, isn't this the kind of song we could imagine the shepherds singing on the way back to their fields - the world and its possibilities suddenly opened up before them by a baby and his family camping in a manger?

What if 'this is all we got tonight' isn't a minimalist statement, but a free-wheeling confession that all we need is what we have because we've been freed from all our fears?  What if it was better-known that the angels loved a good cowbell-enhanced rock song just as well as harps and flutes?  What if we could acknowledge that at Christmas we are free to rock, free to dance, free to dare new things, because once and for all we have been shown that time is on our side, that God is bringing about astounding acts of mercy and grace, hope and love, freedom and wisdom all around us, and is urging us to just join the chorus and sing along:

The Lord is my light and my salvation -

so why should I be afraid?

The Lord is my fortress protecting me from danger -

so why should I tremble?

                                - Psalm 27:1 (NLT)

This Christmas-tide, let us not be afraid to rock, to dance, to shout with the knowledge that, despite all brokenness and waiting, in the end we have been shown in Christ's birth that time is definitely on our side.

Fri Dec. 23 - An Invitation (Imogen Heap)

And the Word became flesh and lived among us... From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

                      - John 1:14a, 16

incarnation: an improv

 (hit play and read on)

THE TIME IS NIGH. 

Creation braces;

cities shiver

and hide their sharp gleam.

pundits, thieves and martyrs seek solace in oblivion,

laughing at docile folk hunkering against the wind -

the desperate and lonely 
covering their ears 
against echoing angel sounds.

you, too, huddle:

lost, jaded, 
confused; 

reaching, uncertain, 
in the dark...

terrified that you are numb or

terrified that you might feel something --

or terrified that everything matters and you

haven't really paid attention.

have you done enough
to be ready?

have you done anything
at all?

HARK, NOW:

stop asking

all 

the wrong questions.

all you need

is

to open your eyes -

open your eyes -

OPEN YOUR EYES.

widen 
your whole self.

expand --

               allow --

                              release --

just

invite 

the miracle 

to be lit again

in you.

music: Cumulus by Imogen Heap

                                           - Anna

Wed Dec. 14 Casting Out (Eastmountainsouth)

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.   

-I John 4:12 & 18

    …yet, we still run. Even in this time of preparation, of promise, in this time when we remember an event held up as one of the greatest proofs of a loving gracious Deity, I am still afraid. There is something about the Christian concept of Divine Love that is both wondrous and unnerving; something so intimate, so knowingly gracious, that it unearths all of my insecurities, my fears, my scars and the brokenness of my heart. For me, sometimes the unearthing is relieving, but frequently it is a painful process.

Which is what I think of when I hear the lyric:

Once in Israel, Love came - and we were all afraid.

Not trying to generalize in the least, this is just how I make sense of what it means to be afraid in the presence of love. Be it the radical tendencies, the searching-and-knowing nature or just the unfathomable-ness of the Love of God, I do not think I am the only one who is unnerved (try explaining to Uncle Larry just how deeply God loves him over the Christmas ham this year, don’t forget the part about how deeply God loves Larry’s enemies, too). Maybe that’s just my Uncle Larry, maybe that’s just me. But I wonder if part of preparing for the coming Love, is recognizing our fear, our unnerved responses (of whatever variety) examining them, and learning to hold them in our advent waiting.

Having lived through several cycles of reflection on the Love that came down at Christmas, I was at first a little disheartened to be confessing, yet again, that familiar fear that keeps me running. But as I reflected on the Bible verse above, I found myself wondering about just how it is that fear is ‘cast out’ of us. What if the casting out of fear is not always a single, powerful moment, as I had previously imagined (perhaps because of the demon possession imagery that frequently accompanies the verb ‘to cast out’)? What if it, instead, is a slow drain or a steady tide that deposits more and more love in us until our fear and pain are pushed out by that love?

Because, luckily for us, Love didn’t just come once in Israel, but Love comes to us again and again, born in our midst daily. So, perhaps for now it is enough just to be able to hold our fears and as we let love wash over us again and again, to find that the fears shrink in our grasp and little by little are washed away.  

Divine Love, return again to us.

                                         -Lindsey