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

Fri Dec. 30 - Brave New World (Nina Simone)

It's a new dawn

It's a new day

It's a new life

for me...

and I'm feelin' good...

New Year's Eve music is its own special genre: hopeful songs, wistful songs, starting-over songs, never-again songs, one-too-many drinking songs, gimme-some-lovin' songs, funny-resolution songs and depressive songs all vie for space to tell us they truly tell it like it was.

Feeling Good doesn't quite fit any of these categories, even though the words have a straightforward starting-over theme.  In contrast, the music behind the lyrics has this minor-keyed lurch and grind that gives it a lot more gravitas than the words themselves convey.  It's a song of mixed emotions, mixed times - an apt song for a moment when the old and new overlap in onelong night.

What I hear is someone who's had a rough time - maybe a really rough time - and has now made it to the other side.  Or maybe what I hear is someone who has found new strength, new drive, new determination.  Or maybe what I hear is someone just that so overjoyed  that the freedom and hope they feel within is echoed in every movement of Creation.  What I hear in all of these possibilities is someone who can hope onward into the future because she/he knows from where she came and can still look around her and truly be 'feelin' good.'

Maybe this was a wonderful, blessing-filled year for you, and the best possible thing 2012 could bring is another year like it.  Maybe it's just been a good year: good changes, good vibes, full of possibilities and adventures despite some rough spots.  Maybe it hasn't been a good year at all, or a downright drag-yourself-to-the-finish one.  No matter what, hoping onward requires knowing from where you've come well-enough to look clear-eyed at the present and the future, and maybe even claiming this very moment as really and truly "good."

2011 is drawing to a close.  Whatever it's meant to us, a new year rises to greet us with new promises and possibilities.  How is Creation calling to you about possibility, hope and freedom?

Feeling Good by Nina Simone; video by Tamara Connolly

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;

let the sea resound, and all that is in it.

Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;

Let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.

                                                      - Psalm 96: 11-12

In these final hours of a passing year, may we reflect, rejoice, laugh and welcome a new year, 'a bold world,' of freedom and grace.

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.