Through Stained Glass GUEST POST--The Thing About Advent

Today's midweek reflection is by First Presbyterian Church member, mother, writer, poet, and whimsical warrior, Kelli Owens. Today's words are inspired by the season of Advent. You can check out more of Kelli's writing at her blog by clicking here.

photo by Kelli Owens.

The thing about Advent is it begins in the dark. And for a word that means “coming” this feels strange, right? We often subconsciously associate the approach of something grand with alacrity of light, rejoicing, making merry. Garish bulbs and consumerism are perhaps easier to stomach than other things. Things of darkness. Of obscurity. Of whispers.

The thing about Advent is it begins with a body. Specifically, the body of a woman. Let that sink in - along with all conscious and subconscious connotations. The body of a woman is part of the story of the body of the Holy. Advent asks us not to rush past this.

There is a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke imagining the interaction between the angel Gabriel and Mary at the annunciation. How the angel lost all sense of his message by the immediacy of the woman before whom he stood.

“And yet your hands — how wondrously
Grown full of grace they are.
Such hands by woman never grew
So ripe, so fulsomely. …

Forgive me, I’ve forgot
What he who sat within the sun
Told me to speak about”

Her tender hands, the space her body inhabited, her ripe smallness. These are all implied by the biblical narrative, of course, but Rilke’s words give them sinew and skin. They bring us into the room.

What Rilke did there is the same thing we are invited to do every December. To bring the esoteric and abstract onto the gritty shores of earth. To disquiet our heavenly expectations of what Love looks like by cringing at a baby’s cry and being shocked at the scandal of his misunderstood young mother. Because if anything, darkness invites us out of our comfortable certainties to the bodily experience of the wild unknown.

The mystery of the season is not in the details of what we see as much as in the eyes we gain by watching for what the process wants to bring. Word becoming flesh isn’t a once and done, after all. What else could a season enshrouded in darkness mean if not to upset our expectations and shift our paradigm of the holy?

We can’t all have the gilded words of Rilke, walking backward into the biblical narrative - imagination first - so we can discover what wants found there. But perhaps what he points at isn’t the poem itself, but the invitation to come into the room. To let the word become flesh in ways that have nothing to do with skill level and everything to do with initiating ourselves into paradox. This is a time for us to hold space for the darkness and get curious about our relationship to it. This is a time for us to inhabit our human bodies as, like Mary’s, part of the story of the body of the Holy.

Sometimes Advent asks more questions than it answers. That’s the thing about Advent.

Through Stained Glass: Advent Word a Day-Memory

If you would like to read the poem mentioned below and seen above in the photo,
then follow this link. 

Memory.

“13 I think it right, as long as I am in this body,[h] to refresh your memory, 14 since I know that my death[i] will come soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me.”

The verse above gave me pause for a couple of reasons. First, I don’t remember this passage at all. Not only have I read the Bible through and through, been examined over its content, and have preached weekly from it for six-plus years, I have no memory of ever reading or preaching from this text. This is wild because, and here is reason number two why this 2 Peter text gave me pause—it actually refers back to something that happens in the Gospels: The Transfiguration.

Why haven’t I ever caught this before? For a moment when it dawned on me, a feeling similar to what I got when I would listen to my grandpa tell stories about from his childhood came over me. It was as if I was present to [not really] Peter, a sage telling about one of the most unbelievable experiences recorded in our sacred text.

The thing is, he leaves out the exciting details. You know, the whole Jesus is transfigured into three people; and there is no Mention of the festival of lights that took place upon that mountain, either. Peter focuses on the majesty of Christ he experienced in the Majestic Glory of God declaring, “This is my Son, my Beloved,[j] with whom I am well pleased.” As the young church waited for the return of Christ, Peter reminded them of his firsthand experience and wanted to encourage the community to hang on and to not give up on the promises of Christ. While the false teachers may declare the coming of Christ will not happen, Peter refreshes the memory of the community by recounting his firsthand experience of the transfigured Christ.

It is funny to me; this is how Peter remembers the transfiguration. Especially since he is often the one who is a bit too zealous for Christ’s sake in the Gospels. Alas, Peter reminds us all that the Good News is not some myth made up by a few knuckleheads or some old wives' tale. The Good News is about Jesus revealing what is true about all of us—we are God’s own.

Advent is about waiting. We too, like the community [fake] Peter was writing to, are waiting for the Light to return. Until it does in its fullness, we have what we need now at this moment. While it may not be the "Glory of the Lord," it is like a lamp that will hold off the darkness. 

Memory.

Recently I started watching The Office. Tonight, I watched the episode when Michael Scott meets with his past love interests. As he does, he is confronted with something many of us do: romanticize our memories. As Michael insists to each former girlfriend how special they were together, they reminded him of the parts of their relationship he forgot or didn’t want to see. Eventually, Michael sees it, and like most of us, when we recognize a growing edge, begrudgingly accepts the misconception.

So yea, it’s good to remember that life is a mixed bag in every era and in every decade, and not to allow romanticizing the past ruin the life you have now.

Finally, I conclude this post that goes beyond the blogging rules, with a poem. It is titled Memory by David Whyte. It can be found in its entirety in his book Consolations.

MEMORY

is not just a then, recalled in a now, the past is never just the past, memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a wave form, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now. But the guru’s urge to live only in the now misunderstands the multilayered inheritance of existence, where all epochs live and breathe in parallels. Whether it be the epochal moment initiated by the appearance of the first hydrogen atoms in the universe or a first glimpse of adulthood perceived in adolescence, memory passes through an individual human life like a building musical waveform, constantly maturing, increasingly virtuosic, often volatile, sometimes overpowering. Every human life holds the power of this immense inherited pulse, holds and then supercharges it, according to the way we inhabit our identities in the untouchable now. Memory is an invitation to the source of our life, to a fuller participation in the now, to a future about to happen, but ultimately to a frontier identity that holds them all at once. Memory makes the now fully inhabitable.

Through Stained Glass: Advent Word A Day-Power

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Power.

What came to mind when you read that word?

He-Man. Flags. Weights. Buttons. Lightning. Snap!

Today when I was pondering power, I couldn’t help but think about the majestic windmills that speckle the cornfields in my county. When I lived out of state and would come home for the holidays, I would always be mesmerized by their prevailing stature. To this day, I light up like a kid in a candy store when I see them rotating in unison, and I am comforted by their synchronized red lights that flash in the night.

From what I understand about wind turbines, they work on a simple principle: instead of using electricity to make wind—like a fan—wind turbines use the wind to produce electricity. The wind turns the propeller-like blades of a turbine around a rotor, which spins a generator, which creates power. Wind power. Wind energy.

Powerful stuff.

So is the scripture lesson for today.

Look at 2 Peter 1.3—“His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

‘His’ in this case, is Christ. In Christ, we have received everything needed for life and godliness. That’s good stuff, friends.

But the powerful piece of this section of scripture is in verse 4—"Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust and may become participants of the divine nature.”

We need not wait to live in union with God. Jesus reveals the purpose and fullness of humanity, which is “that we can share in the divine nature,” even in this wounded and wounding world. God is in all things, through all things, with all things. Christ is present in us now. Like the wind that is readily available and waiting to be transformed into wind power, so is the invitation for us to participate in the divine nature.

Powerful stuff. So is the Love of God, which is in all things. This is the Christ. It is the Divine Nature we share in—it is what was revealed in Jesus. This Advent season, forget what Augustine said about ‘original sin,’ forget what Calvin said about ‘total depravity,’ and forget what Luther said about humanity, ‘humans are like piles of manure, covered over by Christ.’ Instead, remember that when we speak of the Advent or waiting for Christmas or preparing for Christmas, we're not talking about waiting for a little baby Jesus to be born. That already happened 2000 years ago. We're in fact welcoming the Universal Christ, the Cosmic Christ, the Christ that is forever being born in the human soul and into history. I love those words from Richard Rohr.

We aren’t simply observants of God’s power, but we are participants in the very energy that created everything in the beginning. I guess it makes sense then, “…brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble.”

Through Stained Glass: Thanksgiving Thoughts

If you are interested in how we made these, let me know!
We would be happy to help make them with you. 

Ready for an exercise?

Don’t worry. This exercise doesn’t require you to get into that workout outfit you bought 11 months ago.

No, you can do this one sitting down. Right where you are. Right now.

Ready?

List 3 things you are thankful for.

Ready?

Go.

1.

2.

3.

Easy as that pie you’ll eat tomorrow.

Also—guess what? You just prayed. You did a ‘thanks’ prayer, to quote Anne Lamott.

Ready for another exercise? Again, you don’t have to go anywhere.

Here we go:

Breathe in something you’re grateful for.

Hold it…

Now, let it out—gratitude.

Do it 2 more times. Same thing. In with gratefulness, out with gratitude.

I’ll wait.

Good job!

Another prayer.

Here in the United States, we are on the eve of the day we dedicate as “Thanksgiving.” For some, this day will include preparing, cooking, cleaning, and celebrating with loved ones around a table, TV, or telephones with cameras. Thanksgiving Day is a day we pause to consider all we are thankful for in our lives. Some of us will do so with ease; still others of us might need to dig a little deeper, look past the help prayers, and the wow ones, too (more Anne Lamott) to find their ‘thanks’ prayer. A few of us might not get to ‘thanks,’ and that is okay.

As your pastor, colleague, friend, and stranger, I will say thanks to you. Not in some patronizing way, but in a pastoral way. With kindness and gentleness, and a touch of tenderness. Because I am thankful for you. I am grateful for your story—even if I haven’t read it yet. I’ll give thanks for you because God has gifted us—the world, the community, the church—with you. While I may not know you personally, you are known personally by God—and I give thanks to the Holy One for God has given us you.

Here are a few more words from Anne Lamott on the ‘thanks.’ prayer:

“We and life are spectacularly flawed and complex. Often we do not get our way, which I hate, hate, hate. But in my saner moments I remember that if we did, usually we would shortchange ourselves. Sometimes circumstances conspire to remind us or even let us glimpse how thin the membrane is between here and there, between birth and the grave, between human and the divine. In wonder at the occasional direct experience of this, we say, Thank you.”

At The Center yesterday, we made ‘Gratitude Jars.’ We spent over an hour with the students creating them, looking up words in magazines that go with the themes of gratitude and thankfulness, and we wrote poems about the feeling of thankfulness; we wrote poems thanking nature; we wrote poems giving thanks for our unique talents. As we were making them, the students stopped and said, “Hey Laura and Adam, thank you. And thanks to the church for getting us these supplies.”

Thank you, church. Thank you for leaning into love a little deeper this past year. Thank you for taking a risk with someone who needed a little help learning about how to be in a community. Thank you for showing up this past year and offering God your gifts, gratitude, and goals. Thank you, church, for loving each other, for showing up with casseroles when some of us needed comfort food, and thank you church for your faithful commitment to the baptismal vows we’ve made.

As we move closer to Thanksgiving, I invite you to be intentional and extravagant with your ‘thanks’ and ‘gratitude.’ In so doing, not only will you feel better, but you will help others feel better about themselves, as well. Being thankful helps cultivate a grateful community…

…like ours!

So, Happy Thanksgiving, friends. Know you are loved. You are appreciated. And you mean the world to so many of us. More importantly, you are the apple to God’s eye. And that’s something to be thankful for!

Through Stained Glass: For All the Saints

Through Stained Glass: For All the Saints

Who is a saint in your life? Is it your grandma who took you to your first church service as a little child? Or maybe it is your dad who kept his faith in the darkest of times. Is it your first Sunday school teacher—the one who taught you the song "Jesus Loves Me?" Maybe it is Saint Mary, Saint Teresa, or Saint Andrew. Or it is your spouse, your friend, or your child. Whoever it is, All Saints’ Day is a day for us to remember these fine folks and to celebrate their lives.

On Sunday, November 3, we will celebrate All Saints’ Day during worship. All Saints’ Day is a time to rejoice in all who, through the ages, have faithfully served the Lord. The day reminds us that we are part of one continuing, living communion of saints. When we celebrate Holy Communion, we experience the communion of saints, feasting with believers past, present, and future. The author of Hebrews 12 reminds us that these saints, a "great cloud of witnesses," surrounds us and cheers us on. The author of Hebrews also says that saints are people set apart by God who live their lives as a witness to the glory of God. A saint then is not only a person who has completed his or her baptism in Christ and now lives in glory with God, but also one who assembles faithfully around Word and Sacrament like we do.

All Saints’ Day is a day to celebrate and honor those folks who have helped shape us and aided us in our faith journey. Like my Grandpa Quine. He had a heart for Scripture. I remember one of the last times I visited with him, and we were talking about our favorite Bible verses. Without missing a beat and looking me in the eye, he quoted this passage from Isaiah 40 at length,

"...but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

My grandfather had a deep faith, mighty enough to move mountains, I'm sure. To me, he is a saint.

As I write this article, it will be one year since he completed his baptism. I miss him so much. But what eases the grief is the Bible of his I have. I use it every morning for morning prayer. My favorite part of this worn-out book is the underlining I find throughout it. When I see one, it is as if I am getting a peek into the faith of the strongest, bravest, most faithful person I have ever met. His Bible is one of my most prized possessions. It is an artifact of my faith—a type of sacrament that contains, exhibits, recalls, visualizes and communicates another reality, the reality of God’s love.

On Sunday, November 3, you are invited to bring in photos and artifacts of saints who are now a part of the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us every Sunday. You will also have the occasion to name a saint in your life and express your gratitude for him or her. Our time together will culminate around the Lord's Supper, and we will join our voices to sing God's praise with all the saints, living and dead. A table in the back of the Sanctuary will be set up beginning October 27, for our items to share.

See you at the Kirk House!

Peace,

Adam