by guest writer Lucinda Smith
Our heads are often full of voices – voices that pull us in opposing directions. There are so many words and not enough spaces in between. These words vie for our attention and the voices seem to demand some sort of action. At least, that is how it has felt for me these past few weeks.
Sometimes, there are emotions, strong and deep, that are attached to the words and this complicates things. Some of these, I know from experience, will subside, but others feel like I will break and tear apart under their weight.
Jesus says, in John 10:4 his sheep follow him because they know his voice.
As followers of Jesus, he is our good shepherd and we are his sheep. We have chosen to follow him because we have seen and found, in him, the way to life and peace and purpose. But the ‘following after him’ can get so complicated – others are journeying with us and the path gets crowded and confusing. It’s not as simple as we had thought it would be, or perhaps, as we had been told it would be.
I am 60 years old, and have learned a few things. I have discerned that there is only one voice that I must heed. Only one voice that speaks truth. Only one of the many, is distinguished and marked by love. Only some of the myriad of words that swirl around my head, competing for my attention, only some, will bring me life. I have learned this, but am also still learning this.
Jesus says that he is the Way, the Truth, the Life. What He says is not only true, it is THE TRUTH. This must mean that his words are superior to any other words that I may be tempted to listen to. Even when they don’t feel like THE TRUTH, they are THE TRUTH, and I can choose to believe them, or not. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They have learned to discern truth from lies.
In this same passage, Jesus says this about his sheep ‘they will never follow a stranger; in fact they will run away from him because they do not recognise a stranger’s voice’. He is so confident, isn’t he? So confident that the sheep will only listen to his voice.
Which brings me back to me, and the cacophony of sound that has filled my head just recently… ‘Jesus, I choose your voice only. I choose to focus so hard on your words that those of the stranger will drop away, as yours come into focus. Your words will never tear me down, they will not suck life out of me, they do not insult me or belittle me or cause me to consider myself to be either “too much, or not enough”. Your voice brings me comfort and is sweet and is often whispered – it reminds me of who I am and whose I am, and that is enough. You have said that I will not recognise the voice of the stranger, and therefore I choose to give it no space, no value, no power…’
————-
Bio for Lucinda Smith
Lucinda is married to Steve, a GP, and they live in Preston, Lancashire. She has four children, seven grandchildren and a lovely chocolate Labrador! The subject she is most passionate about is IDENTITY, and, in the days before Covid 19, she spoke regularly at women’s breakfasts and small conferences. She is currently in the process of writing a book, The Red Thread, based around the story of adopting their fourth child from China. In a former life, Lucinda and Steve were medical missionaries in Pakistan. She loves mentoring young women on their journeys with Jesus, walking, books, good films and cream teas!
by Christine Sine
Are you craving Christmas light already this year? You are not alone. I have bought some new strings of lights to illuminate the backyard and am planning an Advent garden with lots of light too. We all need plenty of light this year and we need it early – not just physical light, but spiritual light, too.
As I reflected on how I could bring more light to this season, I was reminded of a paper light box I was given last year by some dear friends who had just visited Palestine. The light was crafted by a disabled Palestinian man in Bethlehem who was trying to support his large family on a very meager income. I lit it each morning as a reminder to pray for those who are marginalized and abandoned in our world.
I pulled it out of my box of Christmas ornaments this morning, wondering as I did so what has happened to that man and so many marginalized people like him who have been further marginalized by the pandemic and the economic hardships it has created. I desperately need this light and others like it to keep reminding me of how Jesus usually appeared to those at the margins, to the disabled, the abused and the excluded. Even at his birth, it is the disabled, the despised, the abandoned and the excluded who are most prominent around the manger. It is in them that the Christ light seems to shine most brightly.
Paper lantern from Bethlehem
We all want the light of Christ to grow stronger in our lives as we move towards Christmas. That is part of the reason that we chose the title Lean Towards the Light this Advent & Christmas for our Advent devotional and seasonal theme this year. However if you are like me you probably need more than a daily devotional to remind you. You need lots of light around you, and you need to respond to Lilly Lewin’s question from Friday: Where have you seen the light? not just in thought, but in deed.
It may seem a little early for this, but I decided to reflect on this question while making my own cut out paper light like I did last year. Once again, I chose a star as my pattern – being very aware that the light of Christ shines in us and draws all the disabled, the abandoned, the excluded and despised to himself in special ways at this season. So I watched the video tutorial below and made a star. I didn’t have the right kind of paper or backing so I had to improvise a bit – backing my star with tissue paper and then taping it to a large jar that once had tulips growing in it. It wasn’t perfect but it was a wonderful focus for my reflections and a great reminder of the kind of God that we follow.
Watch the tutorial and while you are making your star, reflect on the question: How can I make the light of Christ shine more brightly as I get ready for the Christmas season? When you are finished, sit in silence for a couple of moments allowing God to speak clearly to you. Write down what comes to mind. Take particular note of how God prompts you to reach out to the marginalized in your community.
Now that you have created your star, find a jar or a vase that you can use for your lantern. You will also need a piece of tissue paper and some glue so that you can paste your star to the tissue paper.
Large glass jar
Jar coated in tissue paper
Paste your star to the paper and tape it or glue it around the vase or jar. I actually used a paper clip at the top as I didn’t want something that would be difficult to remove afterwards. Find an electric candle to place inside it and light it. Prayerfully consider what other ways God might be prompting you to shine the light of Christ into our world as the birth of Christ approaches.
Pasting on the star
My lantern sits in my office/sacred space next to one of my orchids and I plan to light it each morning as a reminder of the approaching birth of Jesus our bright and morning star and of his call to shine God’s light into this broken world.
Paper star lantern
NOTE: This exercise is adapted from one of the activity in the final module of our Advent Retreat Lean Towards The Light
by Christine Sine
As we move closer to the festive season this year with a growing number of countries returning to lockdown and those of us in the U.S. struggling with a staggering upsurge in COVID, we all need times of contemplation and reflection to refresh and renew us and bring us peace. This week’s contemplative service from St Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle does that for many of us. I pray you will drink deeply from its waters and allow it to draw you closer to the Eternal One.
A contemplative service with music in the style-of-Taize for the Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756 with additional notes below.
“Da Pacem Cordium,” and “Atme in Uns” are songs from the Taize community – copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé.
“Even in Sorrow” – Composed by Kester Limner in March 2020 for the people of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“Kyrie for November 8, 2020” – Text and music by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons
License, Attribution (CC-BY).
“His Eye is on the Sparrow” – is a public domain hymn written in 1905 by Civilla D. Martin and Charles H. Gabriel.
by Kate Kennington Steer, all images by Kate Kennington Steer
I find it difficult to comprehend where my time between the Autumn Equinox and Samhain (the Celtic festival for this cross-quarter day on November 7th) has disappeared to. I cannot remember even using it in any meaningful way. It is a strange time where dates and days of the week mean little to me on a daily basis. Perhaps that explains why I am so interested in following the light this year, marking my seasonal pilgrimage through the year, even if light can be such an unstable, insubstantial element in which to anchor myself.
Samhain brings a ‘certain slant of light’ which is an invitation from the ‘thin’ places: a festival to mark the beginning of the ‘season of dark’, the ending of the ‘season of light’ (the two halves of the Celtic year). Such an invitation explicitly confronts my modern fears about the nature of darkness, and the way my mind, body and spirit react to such shifts in the light with ‘seasonal affected disorder’ (SAD). In the northern hemisphere, Samhain brings the invitation to welcome the coming dark days as rest time, pause time, recovery time, planning time. Samhain celebrates such a movement in tones of light: from the warm, ‘hot’ colours of Summer, through the golds of Autumn, to the cooler shades of Winter, where blues and greys can dominate.
So Samhain is another ‘hinge’ point in my year, and one my Celt ancestors might have described in terms of a ‘threshold’. Those same Celt ancestors used Samhain as the opportunity in the year where they could deliberately recommit themselves to celebrating their own ancestors by remembering them, bringing their influence back into the present moment, and listening again for whatever wisdom the elders may have had for their present time and space. In my family, November marks the death of a great-grandmother and grandmother and the birthday of a deceased grandfather, so sorrow is never far from my thoughts at this time, though deep gratitude for their lives and the love they showed me is also not far from my surface.
It is no accident that the Anglican Church marks November as a ‘memorial for the dead’ month. It begins with the feasts of All Souls and All Saints, encompassing the twentieth-century moment of Remembrance Day on the 11th November, and lasts until the Church year comes to an end again with the feast of Christ the King the week before Advent begins. Other religions too mark this month with a variety of ‘festivals of light’, and it seems to be a repeated cultural and spiritual theme that this time is an acknowledgement that one cannot have day without night, dawn without dusk, sun without moon, light without shadow, and that winding throughout all our stories our ancestors played their part, for good and ill.
So Samhain is a tipping point towards the dark. And this year, with waves of Covid-19 besetting our world, the threat to our mortality seems rather more present. Many have suffered the loss of loved ones, and in so many cases these died tragically isolated. Many have been overwhelmed by caring for the sick, in homes or in hospitals, battered by dealing with death in far greater frequency than normal. Even those who, like me, have learned the new term ‘shielding’, are not immune to the social zeitgeist of anxiety that permeates every news bulletin and often, every conversation.
So perhaps this year, I am being exposed to fear in a wider way than I have previously experienced. Ways forward into this Winter can at best only be tentative, when the coming of another period of ‘local lockdown’ seems increasingly likely and routines I have learnt in the last few months, will have to make way once again. In this unsettled, temporary rootlessness, the path into Winter already seems misty, murky and full of mystery. I recently read this deceptively simple description of mist in Garden of God’s Heart by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt, which seems to encapsulate so many nuanced images about the transitions between light and dark, between Autumn and Winter, between past, present and future:
Cloud covering the ground, sky descended, clumping in icy giant breaths across the garden. Laying low like a fugitive fog. Will you disperse gently, leaving a stratum of honeydew manna? Or just deposit damp droplets as you disappear?
Vanishing vapour, wisps of winter starting to enter the world, the heaviness of cold bursting onto the scene, touching the last vestiges of autumn unannounced and somewhat unwelcome after a lulling of milder golden days. A mantle of mist, a shrouding of mystery that will perhaps teach us about spiritual secrets and the patience we need to wait for clarity. (214)
In my search for such clarity, I have found myself returning to a favourite source of wisdom, Learning to walk in the dark by Barbara Brown Taylor, and I remember one salient point: that darkness is not dark to God. So, if I ask for the grace of eyes to see, the eyes of my heart might glimpse, recognise, embrace the light in dark; I might enter the mystery of one eternal paradox: this darkness is light, just as this light is dark.
It is so easy to be afraid of the coming darkness, a very real external reflection of feelings which can dominate inside me. I used to wake every morning saying ‘I don’t want to live this day’. Even whilst still a young woman, I insisted to my family and doctors that I wanted a DNR notice on record in case of accident, knowing as I did so that inside I was battling with waves of suicidal thoughts. Now at least I know to listen for The Invitation who whispers ‘enter this day, K’, even though there are still many days I feel it is impossible to respond. Yet the miracle of the seasons turning in my own spiritual life is that there are at least some mornings when I can wake to greet, welcome and surrender to the gift of the new day. On these days I can pray more easily the opening lines of Thomas Keating’s ‘Centering Prayer’ that I say almost daily: ‘I welcome everything this day brings, since I know all is for my healing’.
As I wrote at the Autumn Equinox, do I want to live a fear-filled life or a creativity-filled life? This still such a ‘live’ question for me. The creativity-filled life I long for invites me to root myself in my present, paying attention to what is within and without me, getting curious about how the synchronicities of life my be showing me a new path of being, signposting the way to go for my healing. So the invitation of this Samhain for me is to garner the courage to just wait and sit in the mess of my present uncertainties. To pause before I try to fix. To clear a space so I might hear what those who have gone before me want to say to me, (whether they died recently or long ago, whether known to me personally or not). To listen to the wisdom they offer. To see what rich treasure they have found in their own dark. To follow their guiding as to where I too may find what I need for this coming moment, day and season.
“People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness, but they choose not to live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God. They discover that there are people who heal each other’s wounds, forgive each other’s offenses, share their possessions, foster the spirit of community, celebrate the gifts they have received, and live in constant anticipation of the full manifestation of God’s glory.” HENRI NOUWEN
Where have you seen the LIGHT this week? Take a few minutes and think about this.
Where have you been blind to the LIGHT? How have you gotten sucked into the darkness? Talk to Jesus about this and ask him for forgiveness and new sight!
Where have you seen the LIGHT dispel the darkness?
How do you need to receive more of the JOY OF GOD? What can you do today to experience JOY? What do you need to stop doing in order to be more joy-filled?
Who is pointing you to flashes of light in these crazy days? Thank Jesus for them.
How can you bring more LIGHT to your family, roommates, neighborhood in the days ahead? Ask Jesus to show you and help you!
ACTION:
READ Psalm 34 and Matthew 5:1-12 each day this week. Allow the words to bring you LIGHT, PEACE and HEALING.
Pray for your country, each day this week. Pray for peace and justice and “our better angels” to prevail.
LIGHT A CANDLE or use your flashlight as a reminder that God’s LIGHT is brighter than the darkness. SHINE the flashlight on a map of your country or your city and pray for God’s LIGHT TO SHINE and BE SEEN there.
READ 1 John 3:1-3. What helps you remember that you are totally loved by Jesus and you are a child of God?
How can you see other people as God’s children today? How can you share more of God’s LOVE AND LIGHT even to those who disagree with you or think differently than you do?
TAKE TIME TO REST! This is an exhausting season! And if you are living in America, the waiting on the election results has added to the exhaustion and anxiety! We all need REST and time to restore our souls, time to recover from the trauma and the drama we are all living in. MAKE time to REST this weekend.
BE STILL and KNOW
CLOSING PRAYER
Lord!
Give us grace today to love as you love. Help us to love with extravagance.
Give us hope today for ourselves and others. Heal our hurts and our hearts today,
So we can serve and help those around us. Help us to know that you are enough.
And help us live today and everyday in thankfulness. For all you’ve done and for all you bless us with.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
We are elated to announce that the Lean Towards the Light Advent Retreat Online experience is ready and available! Thank you to those that have pre-ordered and for those that emailed us with your interest before the retreat was ready. For $39.99, this retreat includes 90 days of access to progress through the material as you would like, though we recommend one module a week in keeping with the layout of Advent.
For more details about this retreat experience, click the product page below!
In Melbourne, Australia, we are several months into our second lockdown, in this piece I explore the potential of seeing this COVID-impacted season as one of pilgrimage – those journeys never seem to take you where you think you’ll go… that pretty much sums up 2020. How are you travelling on the path to the “new normal”?
I listen to people talk about a “new normal”. I hear it as something ‘out there’ and I wonder, “Who’s making it? Who’s working on building the new normal?”
Sometimes I catch up with friends (over zoom or for a socially distanced walk) and they’ve discovered something wonderful in this season and they ask: “What can I do to keep this? How can I keep living my life with this in it once things go back to normal?”. There is that word again. Normal. This idea that normal is something that happens outside of us and is controlled by forces outside of us. But what we’re really talking about is life, or culture, and culture is made up of ‘the values, beliefs, underlying assumptions, attitudes, and behaviors shared by a group of people’. How and why is lockdown having an impact on these?
In trying to come up with a parallel for this lockdown experience, I started thinking about the idea of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage is a conscious stepping aside from life as normal in order to explore and experience a totally new environment such as: a journey to the Red Centre, walking the El Camino or doing an internship, or taking a sabbatical often for a time of discernment or at a time of transition such as a relationship or job ending. Anyone who has had experiences of this kind will know that it is not the destination that teaches us something, but rather what we learn along the way as we are taking the journey.
We have not been able to choose to take this pilgrimage, but regardless there are similarities: We have needed to let go of the ‘way things have always been’ and consider what else they might be. The routines aren’t there, the busyness, the commuting, the activities and events that take up our time… the bustle of life has slowed because we cannot travel more than 5kms and need to be home before a curfew. There is an invitation here to consider, what is essential to us? What can we survive well without or even is a relief to stop? Unbidden, we are being asked to reconsider, “What are my values, beliefs, assumptions…”?
Here’s what can happen on a pilgrimage: when you sit with a empty horizon before you and allow the land to speak to you, you will discover how full it is; or when you walk (and walk and walk) and hold silence within yourself knowing yourself to be walking where many others have walked, and will walk again, you can identify both as singular and part of the collective of all of humanity; or when you visit a new country and experience being the person who doesn’t know the language, the food, courtesies, jokes or the slang and might know for the first time that you can be the ‘other’ too… it’s not the place we go that changes, or the places we come back to – but us. I don’t know that change is the right word for this because, really, it’s remembering, and re-membering. A coming back to the wholeness of who we feel called to be, and how we can be – and become – that which we lost sight of somehow.
Here’s what can happen on a pilgrimage: when you walk in your neighbourhood, you meet and get to know your own neighbours, discover a little library, a lovely garden, a cute letterbox – familiar and new as if you were trying to memorise the face of a loved one before you lose them, suddenly there are details you never saw before and they are precious; or when you are removed from friends, family and the usual social circles, you paint a spoon for Spoonville, put a teddy bear in the window, and leave groceries at the free pantry. Learning without words, without touch, without ever meeting, I can connect with someone and that can be profoundly meaningful; or when you are stuck with someone, or stuck apart, stuck in a job you need or stuck on a job you love and can’t go to right now, you recognise the fragility of life and how important it is to do what you love with the people you love best and who love you well – what will it cost you to have that? What is it worth to have that?
This seems the spot where you might easily drop T.S. Eliot’s ‘the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time’. T.S. Eliot wrote these Four Quartets during World War II and the air-raids on Great Britain. It is good to remember that these times ARE precedented. Pandemics have ravaged with worldwide impact before, as disease arrived on cruise ships, so too, it came with the First Fleet. People have lived through experiences wondering if the world would ever be the same again, wondering whether a safe world would exist for their children to grow up in. It is this line from Eliot that drew me today:
“last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”
The new normal belongs to you.
It is yours to discover. It is yours to remember.
I invite you to gently and creatively engage with any/all of these questions through journaling, a vision board, mind map, or other mindfulness practice you enjoy, as you make your way onwards.
Reflection questions:
- Is there anything you have discovered a lockdown love for? Make a list… what did this teach you about yourself you didn’t know before? What needs did these meet?
- Make a list of things you have felt you’ve missed or lost in lockdown. What do you value about them?
- Are there things that you haven’t missed? What has putting these down, freed up capacity for?
Land, family, law, ceremony and language are five key interconnected elements of Indigenous culture – how have the interventions and new laws of the lockdown impacted how these elements in your life have looked over the past few months? Was there somewhere outside your 5kms you longed for? How were rituals different, such as birthdays, weddings or funerals? Have you been using Zoom, Google Hangouts, Discord… or silenced by in accessibility of software or skills?
Has this time brought up things from the past that have been painful or difficult? Honour that. Celebrate what you know about survival. Consider doing a compare and contrast of then and now as a way of seeing how far you’ve come and how much resiliency you have learned. If someone was absent – who is present? If someone harmed – who is healing?
Has this time brought attention to or caused areas of your life to become painful or difficult? Honour that. What is this telling you about what’s important to you? One way to enter into this conversation might be to map What Is/What Could Be. Know you are worthy of dignity and respect and a life that fulfills you and brings you joy. Are there any steps, however small, that might create movement between what is and what could be? Take them.
Did you take up new, or see changes in, the roles and relationships you have through COVID? As teacher, partner, parent, friend… acknowledge these shifts. What can you appreciate about them?
————————-
Photo by Talitha Fraser
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!