Grassroots Dreams (Soweto Gospel Choir)

"My eyes will see the beautiful gates
and the streets of gold
of the City of Salvation"

So while we tend to tiptoe around it, with phrases like the "drawing-together of creation" and the "reconciliation of all things," Advent is primarily about apocalypse, plain and simple. Jesus returns, and everything changes. 

This gets tricky for me, because growing up in my church context, apocalyptic visions in the Bible were a weird joke. Seriously, who actually believed in that stuff?

There was just a little teeny bit of privilege in my former attitude, I know. But I was raised understanding apocalyptic literature to be childish rage-dreams, mediated through booming voices on U.S. TV and radio. 

Little did I know that the original authors of these strange, vivid stories of God's triumph were almost always outside of the power system, voiceless to the "mainstream" culture. God's downtrodden, catastrophe-worn people sought a vision to dream them forward, and the revelatory prophecies and promises of both testaments offered meaning, endurance, and hope. 

These seemingly triumphant, even triumphalist, visions were actually words from the depths. 

"My eyes will see the beautiful gates 
and the streets of gold..."

From this angle, Advent isn't just a nice bow on the story of God and Creation. It definitely isn't just sort of demurely hoping everyone can be as happy (or privileged) as I am "someday," or lighting a candle and feeling vaguely sad for the "less fortunate," during the holidays. All that is all surface-level stuff -- but Advent surges from the depths. It lives in broken cracks in the sidewalk, in the dust of the street, in the shame and fear in our own hearts. Advent dwells in the deep, and this is where its most soul-stirring dreams are born.

Soweto Gospel Choir - "Jerusalem" (Live) - Voices from Heaven album version

This song has been on our Advent playlist since before the A.M.P. was born, but there never seemed like the right opening for it. But with Nelson Mandela's death yesterday, and the world looking at both his role in the anti-apartheid movement and his legacy for the future, a South African choir sings, sandwiched between the apartheid that was and the uncertainty of what will be:

"Jerusalem... my wishes and hopes are for you."

This is a dream worth dreaming: that "streets of gold" could spring up between these very cracks in the pavement. This is grassroots dreaming: standing in the Now, the In-Between, and letting our songs reflect our deepest hopes while also casting our gaze forward. Shining onward.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God [...]

And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” 

- Rev 21: 1-5a, selected

May you find your Advent dreaming going deeper in these lengthening nights, and may your songs, your words, and your hands, reflect the love of God for all creation, today and always.

                                                            -- Anna

It Comes to Us All (Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama)

 "Beauty that
we left behind
how shall we
tomorrow find

Set aside
our weight in sin
so that we
can live again"  -Ben Harper

Hopeful. Tired. Expectant. Regretful. Anxious. Suffering. Celebrating. Sorrowing. We stand on the threshold. Whatever the journey of the last year entailed for us, however we come to it, tonight we will step across, out of the old year and into the new.

Some of us will mark this passing in the company of friends and family, some in huge celebratory crowds, life’s demands will cause others to mark the occasion while at work, or in hospitals and still others will pass the night in church. Regardless of where we are tonight, whether we limp, crawl, run or skip into it, the New Year will come to us all. We will together meet it at 12:00 AM.

As we do at the dawning of each new year, we turn toward possibility, we breathe deeply of hope and remember that the baby of the manger came to make all things new, that what is lost may be found again, what is broken may be repaired, that the world can be changed.

But most of all today, at AMP we want to remember that we walk into the New Year together. This is a great hope. For within one another lie innumerable possibilities-- for support, companionship, solidarity, tenacity, creativity to heal our hearts, hold us up, pull us forward, feed our hungers, and transform us and the world in which we live.  The divine gift of possibility, of hope, dwells richly in us when we are community.

full lyrics here. 

Today’s music selection sings through moments of struggle and fatigue, of wondering about the future, of hopefulness and rebirth;  all of them hemmed in by choruses that speak of reaching out in faith and that assert “I shall not walk alone.”  As we end this season of the Advent Music Project, this is the message that we hope carries us through in the New Year: we do not walk alone.

The New Year meets us all together, may we know in our selves the power of that together-ness as we walk into this next year.   

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. -Romans 15:13

Thank you for journeying with us through Advent and peace to you in the coming year.               

-Anna and Lindsey

The Power of 'Maybe' (Ron Sexsmith)

Maybe can be a powerful word. It's a word of opening... of possibility. It can lift us from a place of cynicism or calm our unrealistic expectations of what a day can do in our lives.

Christmas isn't a day or even a season, it's a radical event that changes everything. From that change we are invited to make our own transformations: in how we act, in how we love, in how we hope.

Ron Sexsmith puts it this way:


Maybe this Christmas will mean something more
Maybe this year 
Love will appear 
Deeper than ever before 
And maybe forgiveness will ask us to call 
Someone we've loved 

Someone we've lost 

For reasons we can't quite recall 

Maybe this Chistmas

Maybe there'll be an open door 

Maybe the star that's shown before 

Will shine once more 

And maybe this Christmas will find us at last 

In heavenly peace

Grateful, at least, 

For the love we've been shown in the past 

Maybe this Christmas 

Maybe this Christmas

May you trust what may be this Christmas season, allowing Christmas to mean something more than just a day that's already come and gone -- to open yourself again to the opportunity for new birth our God, Emmanuel, offers in his own.

                                                                         - Anna

Merry Christmas, from the Children (Sufjan Stevens)

This post starts out sad, but, much like Advent, turns into Christmas: Advent didn't end softly in my world. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I sat with a family whose otherwise healthy child became dangerously ill that same morning. So instead of the normal last-minute holiday wrapping, cooking, and planning, the family gathered at the hospital and tearfully kept vigil over the balance between life and death of a toddler. And I sat with them.

This story could be another apt illustration of Advent need and lament. But to leave it as lament ignores that there is so much more that our faith offers. At the very least, what a strange wonder that this same night Christians the world over would celebrate the birth of the Christ child, God-with-us. That is: God-with-us here, in this, right now. In our joy and our pain.

Lindsey and I both have a soft spot for this tender little song, the Friendly Beasts, with its child-like language about Jesus' birth. Given all the sad news about children this year, from Sandy Hook all the way to this toddler's sudden illness, it seems only appropriate to let the children carry the lead in the music department today, because we could stand to re-learn from the wonder, the joy, the magic, and the play of how children experience the Christmas story.

Yet children aren't immune to the pain of life. Each family I visited on Christmas Eve in the children's hospital was accompanied by the young patients' siblings, worrying, but also wondering aloud about other important issues... like how Santa would leave presents in the hospital. Unsure and scared about their families, yes, but also hoping and joyful about the promises of this Christmas day. Filled with possibilities and magic, dreams and wild imaginings for what Christmas Day might bring to their lives in so many ways.

May it be so, truly so, for you and yours today.

Seed the Hope... Resist the Sleep (John Legend and the Roots)

It can take a while for us to fully say the need as we walk forward in Advent, but there comes a time when Advent compels us to do more: respond and resist. So this week on the Advent Music Prject we recall how we SEED THE HOPE of God's coming reign, and RESIST THE SLEEP of un-remembering who and whose we are.

Advent can be a beautiful time of yearning and waiting, but it should also be a time of acting and transforming. After all, Advent looks forward, not backward. It preceeds Christmas to remind us that God's coming is not complete, that Christ still acts in the world and is bringing about a beautiful transformation of all that is broken into wholeness.

In response to the staggering needs of this world and the hopes we each carry in our hearts, we speak and act. We do the hard work of hoping not merely with our words, but with our hands, with our time, and with our lives. We tend the roots of new life wherever it is found.

In response to the social systems designed to lull us into inaction by confusing consumerism with community and entertainment with engagement, we resist the slumber of passivity and apathy. We move, we speak, we learn, we question, we call out for transformation. We remember that this world belongs to God, and let the fire of our passion burn bright.

"There's something in your heart

And it's in your eyes

It's the fire

Inside you

Let it burn

You don't say good luck

You say don't give up

It's the fire

Inside you

Let it burn"

The Fire perf. The Roots (feat. John Legend). Lyrics HERE.

This could be interpreted as a song about personal success, but both the Roots and John Legend have shown consciousness beyond their own interests in their music. There's also a way in which when we Seed the Hope and Resist the Sleep, we live in recognition that our destinies are bound together, and that what seeds hope in the lives of others reverberates back to our own. 

In the end, we don't save the world, but we create spaces for the God Who Comes to move in and take hold. Yet without tending to the places of new life among us, Advent cannot do its full work of providing safe, dark space for seeds to grow, a womb of waiting for the God-with-Us who brings all things to light and life. So we work in Advent, and allow Advent to do its work in us, seeding the hope and resisting the sleep, both being drawn and drawing others into the renewal this season offers.

"Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all. Repay no one evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all. Rejoice always, pray without cearsing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despire the words of the prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil."                                                    - 1 Thess 5: 13b-22

Where are you being called to seed the hope or resist the sleep this Advent season?

May you feel new energy, even in these shortest days, for the work of compassion and hope, the passion of engagement and action we so sorely need from one another.

                                                                                            - Anna

**This week, we'll take YOUR suggestions for what songs help you Seed the Hope or Resist the Sleep. Post a YouTube link with your thoughts and we'll re-post them all on our Saturday post.**

Q & A (Raphael Saadiq)




photo courtesy David Pham

"Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you."  Matthew 7:7

We need good questions. Questions that help us name our needs and desires, questions that elicit our voice and create space for us to know ourselves better, questions that identify the dissonance and brokenness in life, questions that open us up to dream of something different.

In his book, Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke writes to a young man who is troubled by questions to which he cannot find the answers. Rilke says. “Love the questions themselves; as if they are locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language…live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live you way into the answers.”

In this Advent season one of our needs is time and space to question, and to sit with the questions; to be, to wait, to speak and to listen. There is some grace here, some breathing room to pause, some relief to be had in calling out the disjointed places in this season and in our lives.

                                     

Our song today reminds us, however, that we cannot stop there. As much as we need the space and the practice of questioning, we also need answers. We cannot stop pursuing, hoping for, demanding answers to some of our most important questions.  The catch of Advent is that we tell the truth, and name our needs and ask our questions and we wait and we dwell and we observe; but we do so with expectation, with hope - we need to.

 So we look for answers. We expect answers for questions like Saadiq’s, who will “help that child whose only 4 years old?” We demand answers when we confront injustices in our communities and brokenness in our institutions. We work toward answers for questions that echo across the nations, “How can peace become a reality on our streets and in our world?” And we hope for answers to the questions whispering within us: “Can I be transformed?”

So we come, needy, to this Advent season. We bring the questions that we must ask and the answers that we already have, in the hope that they will talk to each other, sparking among us better questions and deeper answers, for these, we need in every season.

As we enter this Advent season, may we hear, in community, the voices around us and the voice within. May we listen for the deepening questions, and seek together the strength to press on for their answers.

                                                                                                                                              -Lindsey

Say the Need (Mavis Staples)

This year, the Advent Music Project is thinking about how we "do" Advent in our lives. How does Advent become more than a description of a season, and become a verb that we use to move, grow, and shape not just this moment, but our way forward as well? If Advent and Christmas don't transform us, bit by bit, through the years, we're missing out on their biggest power.



This first week of the Advent Music Project, we'll think about how we SAY THE NEED. How is Advent a time for "pausing in life's pleasures and counting its many tears?"

As we've said before, Advent isn't Lent. Yet both of these seasons are about telling the truth about our lives and the world. As Jan Richardson says,

"Advent beckons us to remember that even as we anticipate birth, we are challenged to let go; to make way for what is coming, we give up whatever would hinder us from receiving it. Sounds a lot like Lent. And sounds a lot like our whole lives. One of the gifts of the liturgical seasons is that they invite us to give particular focus to the stuff that surfaces all along our path."

So even though there are times in this season when our "voice would be merry, but 'tis sighing all the day," we can hold both realities in tandem: our struggle with what IS, and our hopes and longing for what COMES.

Mavis Staples, perf. Hard Times Come Again No More. Lyrics HERE.

A sign that Advent is growing among us is when the truth of our lives meets our trust in God's salvation.

So,"Hard times come again no more," we say. We say our need, and we hold our yearnings in our hands as we live deeply into this season of flickering light, long nights, and rising hope.

May you hunger for the newness of this season, and may hope and honesty meet one another in your life, and kiss. May patience and longing meet; may your focus and your faith kiss one another; and may you enjoy the rich feast of reflection and renewal they offer.

- 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.

Wed Dec. 28 Days of Possibility (Susan McKeown)

At the turn of the year when all hope seems to fade
deep within the bleak chill icy cold
comes a voice in our ear for to be unafraid
and have faith all that's lost shall be found...

...no more dwell in sadness but do trust in our hearts
that the New Year will right everything
We do say with one voice we do pray with one heart
for the promise that Christmas doth bring.
-Song of Forgetting

I am not one to laud people’s ability to affect their own destiny, or suggest Oprah-style that one can order up a new life with the universe  (Not that I don’t believe in self empowerment, I just frequently find a troubling lack of social analysis in these claims).  But I do believe that our days are full of possibility.  

I think of how many different people came into my life this last year: a couple new friends, a whole staff of coworkers that seemed like they’d be daily fixtures forever (until our store closed), and countless people who I encountered only once.  And that was only my public life; how many schemes did I work on and abandon, plans did I form and put in motion? Dreams, failures, redirection, losses of family members, of a job, of a clear path toward my goal. The unpredicatbility of life is what makes it rich with possibility.

This time of year reminds us that things change, the year cycles and, though for some of us it might travel similar paths, each step is ripe with the potential of our own choices and the power of our connected nature.

The Song of Forgetting weaves together images of ending and beginning with a sense of hope and possibility.  In the white hollow silence as a new day is born and all the fair world lies asleep tied up with a prayer for the promise that Christmas doth bring. This is perhaps the promise the angel gave to Mary “nothing will be impossible with God;” or the promise of Mary’s son, that God is with us; or the promise that God, whose Love came to transform the world, is also interested in loving us to newness.

This Christmas gift, this sense of hope and possibility, that comes more easily to us at the New Year, is something that calls to us the whole year through, echoing in the birth of each new day. It beckons us again, when the first spring shoot polks out of the snow, when babies are born, when we begin a task again for the eighth time, and on each day in between.


May we hear the call of possibility and the song of hope in each day of the coming year.

-Lindsey

Mon Dec. 26 - This Time Like You Mean It (Sister Rosetta Tharpe)

The angel said to the shepherds, "Do not be afraid.  I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord."
  [And] suddenly a multitude of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace...!"

                                       - Luke 2:10-14, adapted

Why is there so little joy in our churches around Christmas? Joy isn't the same thing as adoration and praise, although these are close sisters. It's also not the same as quiet inspiration, although this, too, is related. Joy is an attitude, not an action; it's about nearly irrepressible delight, amazement, wonder, or understanding. In a Christian context, joy is about connection with the divine story in a way that is radically moving, that literally shakes up our foundations and brings us to our feet - or to our knees.

Yes, I'm happy about pancakes on Christmas morning or opening presents, and delighted by family and calm feelings of peace. Or maybe some years I'm not - maybe Christmas is painful and awkward for me that year. But I believe that joy can break out for us all into any situation - even though it rarely does.

Trouble is, we can't just BE more joyful. The miracle of joy is that it can't be manufactured or forced - it is utterly authentic or it is nothing. All we can do is be open to it, be awake to the story of our faith and be convicted about its meaning in our lives. In the end, joy comes, unbidden, from the place where our deepest hopes and convictions meet resounding outside affirmation - like the angels appearing to frightened shepherds to put an emphatic exclamation point on God's promises of love and redemption.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the earliest rock n' roll musicians in the U.S., though she's rarely credited for it. She grew up on the preaching circuit with her mother learning to play guitar and never left the gospel spirit in which she was raised. What I appreciate so much about Sister Rosetta is her joyful, almost infectious delight when she sings and plays - she rolls back her eyes, sways, wails on the guitar and just generally invites us join her in a playful conspiracy of rejoicing:

Up above my head, 

I hear music in the air,

Up above my head,

there is music in the air

Up above my head

I really do believe (I really do believe)

There's joy somewhere

All in my home, 

there is music in the air...

What would it look like if we could catch the spirit of this kind of praise and delight -- this great joy -- more often in our lives, homes and communities? Maybe it would look like Sister Rosetta or maybe it would be quieter or more subtle, but either way it would be real, meaningful and - most important: visible.

This carries us back to the heart of Christian evangelism - which isn't some sickly, cloying Vote-For-Jesus campaign or mere self-aggradizing proselytizing, but which simply starts with the act of living of our lives as if this Christmas story mattered - as if it gave us genuine hope and real joy.  

The Advent Music Project didn't feel like a complete project unless we followed the Christmas star all the way into the manger and to Epiphany. So this week, as Christmastide begins, we're thinking about Hoping Onward into the twelve days of Christmas, into a new calendar year, and beyond. So we ask ourselves: how do we hope onward and delve deeper into the story of Jesus' birth so that we don't just abandon him in the manger when the parties and food and gifts have ended?

One possibility of hoping onward might be to re-embrace the possibility of joy in our lives and Christian communities. We might remember and experience 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' this year as if there were some strange and wonderful music about to break out overhead, announcing good news of great joy. We might sing the songs as if they meant something, we might worship wholeheartedly and try to live -at least for a moment - as if we really mean it when we said that we believe that Emmanuel was born again this Christmas Day, inviting all Creation to join with us in the angels' playful conspiracy of rejoicing, as well.

'May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in the Lord, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.'                  - Romans 15:13

                             - Anna

Mon Dec. 19 - Making it Through (Over the Rhine)

We've been reckless, we've been good,
doin' most of the things we should --
but the picture is much bigger than we knew...
               - Over the Rhine

Here's what I like about Advent: it puts things in perspective.  At all times of the year people get sick, have surgeries, fight with family or spouses, break up with girl or boyfriends, lose jobs, get great news, give birth, feel lonely or frustrated or lost... but it all seems to matter more with the backdrop of Advent and Christmas.  Things take on a weight and a poignancy that rarely gets equaled elsewhere in the year.

In this final week of Advent, the Advent Music Project is considering, How do we dwell into this Christmas-tide?  My first instinctive response: We dwell into Christmas by dwelling into everything else - especially the difficult stuff -, too.


In our church communities we often have this urge to leave the unruly, disquieting issues of world affairs, broken relationships, and scattered hopes back at the beginning of Advent when in fact, that is exactly what we should bring right into the center of the quiet manger scene.  As somebody was observing the other day, that "peaceful" manger-scene we carry in our collective imagination is really a moment of quiet in what's truly been a chaotic, stressful story involving an unexpected pregnancy, discernment in a marriage, travel, overbooked lodgings, and then... labor.

We usually politely ignore this last part of the story, maybe because it's disconcerting to think of Mary not looking perpetually calm and beatific, but I'm pretty sure that was not the expression she wore when Jesus was, you know... "about to emerge."  I actually find this rather helpful, since I can get panic and confusion, dismay and even a little fear (let's remember Mary was likely between 13 and 15 years old, after all) ... it's the peacefulness that I sometimes have a hard time embodying.

Last December I worked every single day between Thanksgiving and Christmas managing a book store.  There was no "Advent," there was CHRISTMAS... yelled in my ear for almost a month.  So I can tell you, my physical and emotional fatigue walking into a late-night Christmas Eve service (the first time I'd been to church that season) was extreme.  I had literally been forcing myself to not think about how miserable this month was making me, and suddenly I was in a dark room with people who wanted to sing and think about Jesus... and proceeded to surprise myself by crying during the whole service.

Maybe this sounds crazy to you.  Maybe you've yet to experience a really terrible Christmas season, and God bless you if so. Or maybe you know exactly what I'm talking about, only much worse.  I've talked to people who were sitting in inpatient behavioral health units during Christmas, people who were undergoing surprise chemotherapy at Christmas.  It happens.  All. The. Time.

What I love about We're Gonna' Pull Through is that because the issue they need to "pull through" never gets identified, it can become all of our issues.  I love that there's some humor in here, there's some solidarity, there's some small admission of hope:

maybe, sorta', kinda'

if I really had to say,

something good is on its way...

We're Gonna Pull Through - Over the Rhine (lyrics HERE)

This is the permission we need: to dwell into the difficult places we can't just leave behind in Advent, we can't just stop feeling and we can't just fix.  Life isn't that simple, and the picture is always 'bigger than we knew.'  Instead, what we can do is give ourselves some space to deal with what we're ignoring without trying to solve it, and then... lay it in the stable door.

In the end, this is where the fabled peace of that manger-scene comes from: from a mother who lays aside her pain and her fear for the future to look into the eyes of new and marvelous life.  From a father who lets down his guard and dwells into the moment with them.  From a child who carries all the hopes of a thousand generations as if it were weightless because it is carried in love.  This is where we lay down our hearts and realize that it is this releasing, even for a moment, that allows us to make it through.  This simple act gives us the grace of perspective - a reminder that these things do matter, and that there's hope for it all.

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
                      - John 14: 27

May we remember that the manger scene isn't a place to keep out our real lives, but a place to fearlessly invite the mess of the world that we may receive healing, peace, and grace from the God of Love.

                           - Anna

Sun Dec 4 - This is Not the End (Gungor)

"And hope does not disappoint us..." 
                     - Romans 5:5



As I have gone through the last week it has felt increasingly important to find a moment of hope, like coming up for a breath from under the waters of sadness and longing. If we are, in fact, going to do the hard work of Advent - the honest self-evaluation, the intentional observation of the world, the heavy listening to the heartbreak of others - then one of our greatest needs will be hope.

    
    
     Advent carries for us this important reminder, the good news that Hope has come. Hope was present with us when the Divine came to dwell in a small, frail, human body and walk among us; or perhaps earlier when the Great Mystery promised itself in love to a man and all his descendants across time and space; or even earlier perhaps when the Spirit of God was breathed into the first human. And every day in between on which a person arose to a new morning, a new possibility, Hope has been present with us, in and among us from the beginning.

In the words of theologian Ivone Gebara:
“hope is in our bones, walking in our steps, breathing in our very breath.”

     Today’s song says ‘this is not the end…we will open our eyes wider, this is not the end…we will open our mouths wider.’ I might insert a 'because' in where the elipses are. We carry within us the hope that strengthens one another, that holds the promise of God’s coming, that builds among us now the lifeways of that promise: peace, justice, love.

Take a deep breath. The hope is inside you.

May we open our eyes wide to see hope incarnate in each of us.

May we open our mouths wide to speak hope into the lives of all whom we meet.

May we stretch our arms wide to hold hope in the tense balance of all that we carry through this Advent season.

                                        -Lindsey