For most of us Christmas Day is almost over and I think that this is a good time to take a quiet break and listen to a contemplative service. I found this particularly restful and restorative today. Enjoy!
A Contemplative Christmas is produced by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Seattle.
Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers. Video production, Richard Weyls.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“I Wonder as I Wander” (1933) – is an American folk hymn by John Jacob Niles. Text is shared under the Creative Commons attribution “Share Alike” license. The hymn tune is in the public domain.
“Silent Night” (1818) – hymn and text are in the public domain.
“O Star” – song written by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“Litany for December 25, 2020 (The Lord is My Light)” – prayer text by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY). Music copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“O Holy Night” (1847) – hymn text and tune are in the public domain.
By Lilly Lewin
One of my practices this advent was to do a photo-a-day with ADVENTWORD, a ministry of the Episcopal Church. Each day of Advent had a different word assigned to it and almost every day during Advent, I posted a photo I’d taken (from sometime in my life) and I wrote something to go with that word on my Instagram feed. One of the Advent words this week was HOLY… this is my poem/reflection on the word HOLY. May you pause and reflect on what is Holy to you this Christmas… and allow the Spirit that is Holy show you.
And remember, the season of Christmas starts today on December 25th and goes until Epiphany on January 6th. So you have 12 days to receive the gift of Christmas. Don’t rush it, don’t be discouraged by all you haven’t gotten done yet, or all you’d hoped would happen this year. Allow Jesus to be born into the mess of 2020 and show you his great love and his holy gift of friendship… take his hand and walk with him in 2021. Merry/Happy Christmas to you from Nashville!
HOLY …..
What makes something Holy?
Do you know it when you see it?
Or is it more a feeling?
A time
or a place?
That one holy moment.
Or yelling “Holy Cow!”
Or “holy sh*t”
In agony or fear.
Holy
The moment of quiet with a newborn
The softness off his skin
The gentle touch of fingertips
Or tiny toes.
Holy
Is it found in gentle
Laughter
or loud guffaw?
In a kiss…
Long or fleeting
A silent prayer
A sung song
A deep breath
Holy
At bedsides
In hospitals
In Cathedral
or Camper Vans
Or street corners
Holy
Sunsets
and sunrises
Crashing waves
Rain
Redwoods
A Star
Holy
Moments in time
Whispers
Longings
Dreams
Tears
Loss
Holy
All
Holy
by Carol Dixon, (photo above from a Christmas card by The Community of St Clare, Freeland, Whitney, UK (used with permission)
It should have been so special: the son of God
– announced by an angel heralding his greatness –
growing within her womb; recognised by an unborn child
who, at her greeting, jumped for pure, pre-natal joy.
But then came pointed looks, Joseph’s unspoken doubts,
the heavy, sluggish journey to a southern city
– bursting at the seams with teeming humanity – culminating
in doors shut in their desperate faces, frantic arguing,
and the eloquent exhaustion in her pleading eyes.
And now it had come to this: the outhouse of an inn,
blood and sweat and straw; the child, tearing
his way into the world – from darkness into light;
between her pains she watched the cross beam
up above her head, studying its rough-hewn shape.
A strange beginning for the chosen one of God,
coming to life in squalid poverty and deprivation,
in a land oppressed by power of arms; where citizens
– herded like the cattle whose stall she borrowed –
were numbered for a foreign ruler’s whim.
Such an ordinary birth: and yet she knew
as he was born, the world would never be the same again.
I still remember Christmas 1974 when my husband Donald and I discovered that we were expecting our first child. It seemed like a bit of a miracle considering I had an ectopic pregnancy previously and we had been warned by the doctor that it might be difficult for me to conceive (How wrong can you be, I had undiagnosed twins a couple of years later!). Yet here we were, about to be new parents, and I experienced a myriad of emotions – joy, anticipation, excitement, nervousness, uncertainty and worry about what it would be like to be responsible for another human being. Would I be up to the task? The circumstances weren’t ideal either as the day the pregnancy was confirmed just before Christmas, Donald came home from work with the news that he had lost his job so our plans for a lovely nursery and all new items for the baby had to go by the board. However all turned out fine as family and church friends rallied round and by the time our daughter was born we had everything we needed – from second hand Silver Cross pram ( much posher than we could have afforded!) and cosy cot, to mountains of barely-used baby clothes – designer makes that would have been beyond our pockets.
When Mary said ‘Yes’ to God, things didn’t quite pan out as she expected either. Having to make a long journey towards the end of her pregnancy, discovering that instead of a comfy room attended by her mum and the village midwife, she found herself in a strange place, miles from home, in an out building. Yet there in the poverty and squalor, Jesus was born, the embodiment of God’s love.
This Christmas promises to be very different from the celebrations we normally expect – no mingling with families and loved ones, no dashing to busy shops to choose that special present, but however it turns out we can be sure of one thing – God is with us in the baby born in Bethlehem all those centuries ago, living in our hearts and our world today.
Christmas Prayer
You came as a baby, Lord,
as a little helpless child
who relied on a human family
to care for him.
You cried because you were hungry,
because you were homeless,
because you were a stranger
far away from home.
You still cry with hunger, Lord,
in the voices of the many starving;
your tears still flow: for the homeless,
the lonely and the forgotten;
you still rely on human families
to care for you.
And so this Christmas, Lord, we pray:
help us to be the kind of people
who look for you in the world,
and joyfully discover you
as we care for one another.
© Carol Dixon (from Worship Resources for Advent & Christmas John Paul Press, reproduced with permission)
Homeless King Carol
(Tune: Brahms lullaby)
Baby Jesus, God’s own son,
Y-ou came to this ea-rth
As a humble human child
When you chose to share our birth.
Source of Hope, Prince of Peace,
Word of Truth, Grace of Go-d,
Bringing light in the dark;
Come and live in our hearts.
Homeless king, in our world,
A-n outhouse your birthplace,
As an infant refugee
Yo-u joined the human race,
Image of the Father’s love
Fo-r all of humanity,
Bringing joy to quell our fear;
Come and live in our hearts.
Loving Saviour of the world
W-e ask for your blessing
T-o live life to the full,
Helping o-thers in need.
As we learn to share your love
W-ith neighbour and stranger,
Bringing peace to all we meet;
Come and live in our hearts.
© Carol Dixon
[Please feel free to use these worship resources in your church]
by June Friesen
And God caused a light to shine across my pathway only visible in this photo –
Not visible to the eye as walking. And so it is with God – as we walk, as we wait – He is present.
John 14:1-7
1“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. 2 There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? 3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”
5 “No, we don’t know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
6 Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. 7 If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”
Waiting in Silence: HOPE
- What brings you through a dark day/days?
- What could possibly add life to your life this year?
- Have many of us, particularly in the church in America, lost all hope or most of it like the Israelites did? Are we focused on Covid, it’s high risk, isolation, not being able to be with family, friends, church family on Sunday, so much so that we may miss where Jesus wants us to see Him or find Him this year? Or are we going to be open to where, when and how Jesus is going to come to us as individuals, families, friends in new ways? Maybe the ways that Jesus shows up will be so different and strange to us that we almost – and maybe some will actually miss Him.
- How about Joseph? How about Mary? How about you and me? Is God asking us to step outside our comfort zone this year? What might that look like? Will others question us or even challenge our sanity? I know that there are many who have to continue to work in precarious places because they are necessary staff to meet the needs of people who are ill, cannot care for themselves, in many and varied situations……I admit that this is probably one of the hardest things for me to struggle with.
- So Jesus reminds us that if we remain true to Him – recognize Him as our God and Savior that He will come back for us to take us to heaven – yet all we are greeted with for now over 2,000 years is silence – so my friends – what about this hope? What about the silence of God?
Waiting In God’s Silence
God, where are you?
Are you really alive?
Do you see all the suffering?
All the anxiety over Covid?
All the animosity between people groups?
All the struggling about power, right and wrong?
Do You really care?
Do You really care about ‘the Church?’
Do You really care about me?
You tell Your People to wait.
You told the Israelites to wait and look what happened….
They missed your arrival for the most part –
They even crucified Your Son –
Yes, I know that was a part of the plan –
And I am sure that this Covid is part of your plan too –
However –
The quietness looms in largeness –
The loneliness grows deeper –
The emptiness seems exaggerated –
The powerlessness is –
Well, it is just so consuming –
In fact, the powerlessness is causing
Self-centered and inner focused people
With pure selfishness and self-preservation
As the be all and end all.
Then I hear Jesus whisper within –
“Child of mine – come, come with me –
Sit here quietly with me and listen to my heart –
I have hope to share with you –
Hope that will bring you all the way through to the end
When you will enter into my arms to be welcomed to your eternal home.
Yes, my child, it is hard to hope when the pain is everywhere,
It is hard to hope when animosity among people is so great,
I remember what it was like too and wondered if the resurrection would be real for me,
And as I faced that struggle everyone else had their own disappointment and pain
Leaving me alone, feeling so alone, so hopeless –
But my child, I knew without a doubt that my Father cared and loved me,
And He was victorious in the end giving me back even a better life –
And so here is my ‘Hope Gift’ for you today –
‘Please trust me with your earthly life today, and every day,
Especially in the midst of this dark time,
I will hold it safely until it is ultimately gifted
With eternal life as you enter my eternal home prepared especially for you.
I love you my child (your name),
I cannot wait until we meet face to face,
You will make it – trust me –
Together we will make it in spite of Covid and anything and everything else,
Because My Father said that nothing shall separate any of His children from me ever.
I LOVE YOU! YOU ARE SPECIAL!
See you soon.” Amen.
by Kate Kennington Steer, (all images by Kate Kennington Steer)
I put on some music,
trying to catch a mood,
but the invented rhythms
do nothing.
So I listen instead
to the cackle and spit of the fire,
the roar and hiss of the rain,
the howl and whip of the wind
and ah,
yes,
there it is.
‘Mood Music’
from Devastating Beauty, Gideon Heugh
During this year when I have been deliberately seeking to explore the way colour affects my life, I found myself reflecting on the choice of the colour blue as the symbol for creating a new feast day. The modern Church has dubbed today, the shortest day of the year, the Winter Solstice, as ‘Blue Christmas’: an opportunity to celebrate the presence and worth of all those individuals who find this season particularly difficult, whether through physical or mental illness, through grief, through poverty, through family violence and abuse, or through loneliness and abandonment. By consciously bringing all these to mind, the hope is that we will all increase our compassion, understanding and welcome towards those who are often considered outsiders and strangers, shut out from the traditional, commercial or religious rituals that surround this time of the year.
So why ‘blue’? The first resonance which comes to my mind is the phrase ‘feeling blue’, to describe someone’s mental and emotional state. It might imply a mild, but heartfelt, depressed moment, day or season in someone’s life; or an elongated experience of a foggy blankness that nothing seems to touch. There is a vagueness about this blue, a I-don’t-really-know-what’s-wrong-with-me blue, describing someone who is downcast, feeling separated, isolated, dislocated, excluded, from the normal bustle of the everyday world in that moment.
It is often suggested that any emotional turmoil associated with ‘feeling blue’ might be healed with the spiritual and neural muscle memory which regular meditation can give. Such a holistic approach might bring about the antidote of a ‘blue mind’, as Wallace J. Nichols comments:
Blue Mind is a mildly meditative state characterized by calm, peacefulness, unity, and a sense of general happiness and satisfaction with life in the moment. It is inspired by water and elements associated with water, from the color blue to the words we use to describe the sensations associated with immersion.
In utter contrasts to this, there’s ‘singing the Blues’. This blue streams out of the roots of Negro-Spirituals of the deep South of the U.S.A. This blue is a scream of pain born out of human experiences no being should ever undergo – let alone at the hands of another through enslavement, trafficking, or torture. It is a blue wail of rage and grief that comes from places that I, as a white, educated, British woman, will never comprehend. The fact that there are unnumbered musicians down the centuries who have made beauty from this blue, who have sought to expand upon this blue and explore its multifarious facets, is a source of awe and wonder to me.
Then there’s the ‘blue hour’, the phase of sunset which, for photographers, follows the ‘golden hour’. These are the blues of twilight – whether civil, nautical or astronomical (the degrees to which the sun has descended below the horizon). These are the blues of longing, of distance, of ambiguity and mystery, of descent towards the dark. In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit writes:
The blue of distance comes with time, with the discovery of melancholy, of loss, the texture of longing, of the complexity of the terrain we traverse, and with the years of travel…Blue the color that represents the spirit, the sky, and water, the immaterial and the remote, so that however tactile and up-close it is, it is always about distance and disembodiment. (39,159)
In a letter from December 1828, the English painter Samuel Palmer wrote this evocative description of the ‘blue hour’:
Creation sometimes pours into the spiritual eye the radiance of Heaven: the green mountains that glimmer in a summer gloaming from the dusky yet bloomy East … [These things] shed a mild, a grateful, an unearthly lustre into the inmost spirits, and seem the interchanging twilight of that peaceful country, where there is no sorrow or night. Every light eternally on the change: yet no light finally extinguished.
That I might see ‘every light eternally on the change: yet no light finally extinguished’ seems to sum up the hope that lies deep under all the ambiguity and lostness of my own blues-song. So this year, I am deliberately trying to take note of twilight, charting the shifts in me as another set of daylights fade into nightlights in the sky outside my window. I hope to be deliberate about gathering into me all the hues of blues, and as earth-time leans into darkness, to help my spirit-time lean towards the lights reflected back to my eyes in even the darkest of indigo tones.
Here is a light which the eye inevitably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful – the light of a declining day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watchfires in the green sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, I say, not perhaps more acute but having more of spiritual hope and longing … all that is dazzling in colour and perfect in form [is evanescent and shallow] when compared with the still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills.
Perhaps then, deliberately, mindfully, care-fully, I can embrace all my different blues, all the shades of it that are unique to me. Perhaps then, I maybe able to sit in the blues of my lostness and see them clearly enough to realise there are others in this world, known and unknown to me, in this present moment and in the future, who need what only my Spirit-enlivened colours can give them. Perhaps then, my ‘blue mind’ might be transfigured into an offering of Grace which points straight to the One who invites me to immerse myself into the blue shadowed darknesses of the Light of the World.
Note: As an Amazon Affiliate, Godspace earns an amount on qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support for Godspace in this way.
by Kim Balke and Christine Sine
Many of you, I am sure, remember my good friend Kim Balke, who had a heart transplant last year. Prior to that she was an expressive arts therapist working with children in Delta B.C.
Kim currently requires frequent blood transfusions because some of her meds are suppressing her blood production. Her disability has not meant she is inactive however. She contributed the free download Colourful Me to Godspace and still draws inspirational doodles and writes beautiful poetry, often during her long waits in hospital for the duration of her transfusions.
Kim’s creativity continues to inspire me and prompted me to ask, “What do we do while we wait during this Advent season – waiting as it were for our blood to be replenished by the light of Christ?” I think this is especially true in these last few days of Advent. The waiting gets harder the closer we get to new birth, something that I know is true for Kim as she waits for the meds she has been given to restart her haemoglobin production, to kick in and be effective.
Read through this poem below, one of those she wrote while receiving a blood transfusion. Sit quietly, take time for stillness and waiting. Perhaps you would like to doodle while you do so. How does God inspire you in this season of waiting?
Fly
My dragon fly
Through fields of Fall,
Through flavours of harvest
And the hallowed eves,
Even the fog of our unrest, unease,
Wander ‘til wings weary sleep,
To waken in my imagination,
To let winter’s waiting,
stillness,
settle seeds.
Small, hopeful deeds
Knitted into today earth,
Lullabied into lovely, laughing spring
And the beginning again of things.
But for now,
Fly
My dragon fly.
October 4, 2020, Kim Balke
by Christine Sine
It’s the last week of Advent. Yesterday, we lit our 4th Advent candle. To be honest though, my focus and I think the focus of many of us is on Christmas rather than Advent. We are really ready to celebrate the birth of Christ and I was tempted over the weekend to change out my Advent images for Christmas ones. I did move my narcissus bulbs (now flowering) and one of our poinsettias in behind my Advent wreath so that I caught a first glimpse of the Christmas season. However, I resisted switching everything to Christmas symbols and I am glad that I did.
Prompted by Lilly Lewin’s Freerange Friday, Finding Joy with the Shepherds, I read through Psalm 97 in both the Passion Translation and The Message. This verse really caught my attention:
“Light-seeds are planted in the souls of God’s people,
Joy-seeds are planted in good heart-soil” Ps 97:11 The Message
What have I done over the season of Advent to prepare good heart-soil, I wondered? And how good is the soil that I have prepared to plant and nurture the seeds of joy and light that God wants to grow in me in the coming year?
As I pondered this, I was reminded that in Meditation Monday – Plant, Grow, Flourish at the beginning of Advent, when I planted those narcissus bulbs, I wrote:
The Old Testament begins with God planting a garden, a place of utter delight, pregnant with life that is meant to grow and flourish. Here, God shapes humankind from the soil to tend the garden, drawing all of us into the eternal story as caretakers of a creation that is meant to flourish.
In the beginning of the New Testament, God plants a single seed of divine presence, a single seed of a new creation, entering the human story and meant to grow, flourish and be multiplied throughout the earth. No sculpting into being of a fully formed human this time, but the planting of a tiny seed that must grow and develop as we all did, in a mother’s dark and nurturing womb, in the right season breaking out as a new born baby that like us took years to develop into a fully mature human.
This Advent opened for me new understanding of the people around Mary and their importance in protecting, nurturing and bringing to birth the child planted and growing in her womb. Without Elizabeth, Joseph and Joseph’s family the child Jesus, this first seed of God’s new creation, would not have survived and flourished. Without the shepherds and the Magi it would not have been heralded with the welcome that the Messiah deserved.
Fourth Week of Advent
What light-seeds and joy-seeds have been planted in your life this Advent season? Hopefully this Advent season has planted divine seeds in us, too. That seed planted in Mary’s womb 2,000 years ago has already matured, died and produced millions of seeds that have now been planted in us. But are they planted in good heart-soil? The Advent story places tremendous responsibility on us to protect and nurture the seeds of hope and joy, of justice and peace that God has planted within us by preparing and enriching the heart-soil in which they are planted. Much to ponder as I looked at my flourishing narcissus bulbs – the Advent wreath looks quite drab without these hope giving signs of life.
Who have we enlisted to help protect and nurture the seed? Who do we hope will herald the seeds with joy and welcome?
2020 has been a hard year for all of us and has left many of us feeling that the soil of our hearts and our souls is depleted. Some feel that it is barren and, to be honest, these last couple of weeks have been really hard for me and I certainly am aware of the depletion that the stresses of 2020 have brought. So what am I doing to prepare my heart-soil, and what do you think you should be doing?
I have recruited those whom I know will help me build up the soil in the ways it needs to be so that the seeds God is planting will be as productive as possible in the coming year. My anam cara – a good friend with whom I have shared much joy and heartache over the last 40 years – is my first go-to person. There are other friends, too, that I am recruiting as well as a circle of collaborators who I know will help keep me on the right track in my ministry. Perhaps you have a similar friend or a spiritual director you can enlist to help you enrich the soil of your heart over the next few weeks.
I am preparing for a spiritual retreat. This is something that I do every year after Christmas, but this year, I think it is more important than ever, so important, that I am planning to hold a webinar mid-January, so that you too can enter into a process of retreat and discernment with me. I am also pondering my three pieces of advice to myself from my last retreat in August –
- Be self-aware and tend to my self-care. For me, this requires a balance of physical, spiritual and emotional care. My contemplative times in the morning, my awe and wonder walks, and regular physical exercise are all elements that contribute to my self-care.
- Name the tensions. What destroys my sense of wonder and how do I adjust? When I am distracted, what do I have trouble naming and how does this lack of self-awareness make me vulnerable?
- Follow the stirrings. Be attentive to what your life says, maintain your freedom, enjoy God – only a few words but so much expressed in them. My attentiveness to my life can come through books that I read, people I speak to, imaginings that stir in my mind. It’s an exciting process but I sometimes think it isn’t one for the faint hearted. This discernment really is a way of life and we need to take it seriously every step of the way, painting the flexibility and resilience that it demands of us.
I am rereading my favourite books on discernment – Discernment by Henri Nouwen and The Way of Discernment by Elizabeth Liebert that are my constant companions in a discernment process. If these do not appeal to you, check out our The Art of Discernment Resource List for other possibilities.
So as Advent draws to a close and we prepare to celebrate both the birth of Christ and the ways that Christ is birthed in us during this season, how are you preparing your heart-soil so that the light-seeds and the joy-seeds God is planting will be most effective in the coming year?
As an Amazon Associate, I receive a small amount for purchases made through appropriate links.
Thank you for supporting Godspace in this way.
When referencing or quoting Godspace Light, please be sure to include the Author (Christine Sine unless otherwise noted), the Title of the article or resource, the Source link where appropriate, and ©Godspacelight.com. Thank you!