Yesterday was the beginning of Advent for most of the Western church. This year it is a full four weeks long as Christmas Day falls on a Sunday. I love Advent, and though I thoroughly enjoy starting with Celtic Advent and a 40-day preparation for Christmas, it is really this weekend that marked my real Advent focus. I pulled out my icons and other Advent images. I created a new Advent garden; we purchased our Christmas tree and set up our Advent wreath on the dining room table. I love lighting the appropriate candles each morning as we eat breakfast and reflect on the season.
Ecuadorian Madonna and Child Church of Annunciation Nazareth, photo Anneke Geel
My theme for this year is Proclaiming Justice, Seeking Peace Through Advent. There are so many places that are caught up in the horrors of war, so many deaths from mass shootings here in the U.S. and so much suffering caused by our rapidly changing climate that I find myself approaching this season with feelings of joy and expectation but also of grief and lament. As we look at the Advent story this seems appropriate as the story of Mary’s pregnancy and the birth of Jesus is a story of joy and lament.
Guatemala, Madonna and Child Church of Annunciation Nazareth, photo Anneke Geel
Mary was a rebel, who shouted out her defiant and outspoken words of justice and freedom from the Empire of the rich and powerful in the Magnificat. This Freedom Song for the Poor is sometimes referred to as The Christmas Carol of Justice. Unfortunately we rarely hear it recited in its entirety during the build-up to Christmas. We want it to feel magical and radiate light, hope, joy and peace and its message of judgement and the upending of the status quo social order. Mary believed her unborn child was the promised Messiah who would bring justice to the world. She would have raised him with that in mind. His rebellious spirit was seeded in his unborn body and grew throughout his childhood as Mary and I think Joseph too, instilled more of their rebellious ideas in his heart.
Indonesian Madonna, Church of the Annunciation Nazareth, Photo Anneke Geel
The German theologian Dietrich Bonheoffer recognized the revolutionary nature of Mary’s song. Before being executed by the Nazis, Bonheoffer spoke these words in a sermon during Advent 1933:
“The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings.…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” (quoted from The Radical Subversive Message of the Magnificat.)
There is some evidence that the Magnificat was banned in certain times and places by oppressive dictatorships. During British rule in India, the singing of the Magnificat in church was prohibited because of its inflammatory lyrics. So, on the final day of British rule in India, Gandhi, who was not a Christian, requested that this song be read in all places where the British flag was being lowered (from Craig Greenfield). It is possible that dictatorial governments of Guatemala, Argentina and El Salvador found Mary’s proclamation of God’s special concern for the poor so revolutionary and such a threat to authority, that they also banned any public recitation of the Magnificat. These are radical words; words that still have the potential to topple governments and bring down the powerful from their thrones.
Japanese Madonna and child, Church of the Annunciation Nazareth, Photo Anneke Geel
I could not help but think about this as I looked through the photos sent to me by a friend who recently visited the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth where there is an incredible collection of images from around the world of Madonna and Child. So many of these images come from countries where there continues to be injustice shown to the poor and the marginalized. What difference would it make if we took the Magnificat seriously and lived our lives according to its revolutionary words?
Murals Madonna and Child Church of Annunciation Nazareth, photo Anneke Geel
Read through the Magnificat, here quoted from The Voice. Spend time this week reflecting on this subversive message. Examine the images in this post. You might even like to look at the more extensive collection here. Mary’s message is spoken across all cultures and in each place calls us to follow a radical Jesus. In what ways do you feel God calling you to speak out through this season of Advent for those who are disadvantaged?
Mary: My soul lifts up the Lord!
47 My spirit celebrates God, my Liberator!
48 For though I’m God’s humble servant,
God has noticed me.
Now and forever,
I will be considered blessed by all generations.
49 For the Mighty One has done great things for me;
holy is God’s name!
50 From generation to generation,
God’s lovingkindness endures
for those who revere Him.
51 God’s arm has accomplished mighty deeds.
The proud in mind and heart,
God has sent away in disarray.
52 The rulers from their high positions of power,
God has brought down low.
And those who were humble and lowly,
God has elevated with dignity.
53 The hungry—God has filled with fine food.
The rich—God has dismissed with nothing in their hands.
54 To Israel, God’s servant,
God has given help,
55 As promised to our ancestors,
remembering Abraham and his descendants in mercy forever.
Only a few more days to sign up!!! Join Christine Sine for a time of quiet reflection on December 3rd, 2022. Slow down the busyness of the season and nourish your soul with contemplative focus and reflection. All the details can be found here:
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A contemplative service with music in the spirit of Taize. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Thank you for praying with St Andrews Episcopal Church !
L’ajuda Em Vindra (I Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills)
–Music copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756.
Što Oko Ne Vidje (What No Eye has Seen) – Taizé song
–By the Taizé community, copyright 2010, all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756
Within our Darkest Night (Dans Nos Obscurites) – Taizé song
By J. Berthier
–Copyright 1991, all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756.
Maranatha, Come Lord Jesus
–Written for The University Of Notre Dame Folk Choir by Steven C.
Warner, released on the album “Prophets of Joy”
Copyright 1996 World Library Publications, all rights reserved Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756.
by Tom Sine
“Young people are a more powerful force than ever in the UN climate summit, the UN’s youngest climate advisor tells BBC News in Egypt.
Greta Thunberg has skipped the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting, calling a forum for ‘greenwashing’ as she continues to ask if her generation can live in a sustainable future?
But young people from countries at high risk from climate change say they are ‘calling it out’ from inside…Vanessa Nakate from Uganda will tell governments to wash their ‘oil-stained hands.’
Additionally, for the first time ever young people have had a Youth Pavilion where they met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (COP27:Without Greta, activists make waves at climate summit, BBC, 2022).
The Economist had already described their view of our likely future before the conference began.
To accept that the world’s average temperature might rise by more than 1.5°C, declared the foreign minister of the Marshall Islands in 2015, would be to sign the ‘death warrant’ of small, low-lying countries such as his. To widespread surprise, the grandees who met in Paris that year, at a climate conference like the one starting in Egypt next week, accepted his argument. They enshrined the goal of limiting global warming to about 1.5°C in the Paris agreement, which sought to co-ordinate national efforts to curb emissions of greenhouse gases.”
No one remembered to tell the firing squad, however. The same countries that piously signed the Paris agreement have not cut their emissions enough to meet its targets; in fact global emissions are still growing. The world is already about 1.2°C hotter than it was in pre-industrial times. Given the lasting impact of greenhouse gases already emitted, and the impossibility of stopping emissions overnight, there is no way Earth can now avoid a temperature rise of more than 1.5°C. There is still hope that the overshoot may not be too big, and may be only temporary, but even these consoling possibilities are becoming ever less likely.
The response to all this should be a dose of realism. Many activists are reluctant to admit that 1.5°C is a lost cause. But failing to do so prolongs the mistakes made in Paris, where the world’s governments adopted a Herculean goal without any plausible plan for reaching it. The delegates gathering in Egypt should be chastened by failure, not lulled by false hope. They need to be more pragmatic, and face up to some hard truths.”
The Economist urges more immediate action.
First, cutting emissions will require much more money. Roughly speaking, global investment in clean energy needs to triple from today’s $1trn a year, and be concentrated in developing countries, which generate most of today’s emissions. Solar and wind power can be cheaper to build and run than more polluting types, but grids need to be rebuilt to cope with the intermittency of the sun and the wind. Concessionary lending and aid from rich countries are essential and a moral imperative. However, the sums required are far greater than what might plausibly be squeezed out of Western donors or multilateral organizations such as the World Bank.”
Those of us who are people of faith need to aggressively join those in Gen Next, like Young Evangelicals For Climate Action as well as the many young secular environmental activists who are aggressively responding to this huge environmental crisis as we race into the troubled 2030s!
Let me know what your ideas are for joining those aggressively working to preserve this good creation in the coming decade as an essential Christian practice.
Check out 2020s Foresight: Three Vital Practices for Thriving This Decade of Accelerating Change. It is designed with questions at the end of chapters to be used as a group study book to creatively respond to the climate crisis and other challenges in this time of concerning change.
I welcome your response: email me at twsine@gmail.com
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When I am depressed, threatened, overwhelmed, insecure, or facing failure and regret I feel tired. I find myself yearning to lose myself in the refuge of sleep. Sleep, both literal and metaphorical, is the escape we seek from a difficult and broken world. And for some of us sleep is a blessed mercy; a relief from trauma that is just too much for us to face or overcome. I do not judge—I have been there and I celebrate whatever helps a human being to get through the day and find some measure of peace and maybe even joy.
But sleep is not our natural state. Nor is it our preferred state. It is designed to support and empower life. It is the place of restoration that enables us to face another day and enter the world ready to receive the gifts it offers and to share whatever gifts we may.
Sleep is never a state that can be permanently sustained. Even the most asleep, the most traumatised, and those who most seek protection and safety in hiding, must eventually wake up—albeit involuntarily—to face waking life.
For all of us, whatever our relationship with sleep—or sleep-living—may be, Advent offers an invitation. We can choose how we will see and experience the world even when it is threatening and unsafe. And the key is to pay attention—the learning of which is one of the key gifts of this Advent season.
Jesus’ Call to Stay Alert
In Matthew 24, Jesus spoke about the chaos and trauma that awaited Israel because of the growing thirst for rebellion. Jewish society was deeply divided and that made them vulnerable. Some preferred to retreat from society in an attempt to escape their oppression. Some preferred to accommodate and cooperate with the Roman occupiers in an attempt to find security. And some sought to find freedom by overthrowing the Romans and reestablishing an independent Jewish state. All of these responses were, in their own way, a kind of sleepwalking—a way for the people to avoid the complexities of their reality and put a buffer between them and their struggles. And so Jesus called the people to stay alert.
The heart of authentic spirituality is this alertness. It is a willingness to see the reality of what’s happening in the world and then look deeper to see the larger spiritual realities at play within the world’s movements and events.
For Jesus, the significant event that he could see on the horizon was the Roman invasion. He could see that the destruction of the Temple was inevitable and he knew the suffering that always accompanies such things. But beneath this trauma was the reality that God’s presence was there in the midst of the chaos. God’s reign was still seeking to bring justice and love into the world even though the opposite seemed to be the case. The world’s power games were being exposed and the failure of political processes—whether defending the status quo or overthrowing it—to bring about a world of human flourishing was being revealed. As a result, people were being given a choice to opt out and follow a different way: the way of the Beatitudes, of the Sermon on the Mount, of love and justice, of kindness and peace. In the face of the turmoil to come, Jesus called his followers to refuse to play by the world’s rules of dominance, division, and destruction. And he showed them that to recognise God’s reign at work and to see the coming of the Christ (the eternal presence of love and justice that fills the universe) they would need to be alert.
Staying Alert
In the reading from Matthew’s Gospel that is set for Advent Sunday, Jesus offers guidelines to help his disciples navigate the turbulent events that he knew were coming. His suggestions do not require some special skill in analysing the forces at work. They’re not about joining some revolutionary movement to change the world. Rather, they’re about paying attention where we are—to the grasshopper and the grass; to the sky and the birds and the rivers and trees; to the insects and flowers; to our own heartbeat and breathing and longings. Because there, in the paying of attention, is where we discover the divine presence. That’s where we catch God’s vision of a new world.
There, in the paying of attention, we can know that our pain, trauma, nightmares and demons are not forever. Even if we need to spend most of our lives asleep to escape their horrors, we can know that ultimately life and wholeness will win out. Or, if we’ve found a way to stay mostly awake and live with a deep awareness and alertness, in those times when we need to sleep for a moment, we can know that we rest in the divine presence. We can sleep in the knowledge that the universe is working on a different schedule from our short lives—a schedule of billions of years—to become more connected, creative, and compassionate.
How to Pay Attention
Jesus spoke his words of warning and invitation decades before the Roman invasion actually happened. He knew that we don’t easily learn to pay attention in those times when life makes us want to find refuge in sleep. We need to learn to live awake when it is easy to be awake and threats are still distant. But whether we are trying to find evidence of God’s presence in the midst of turmoil or simply doing the work of spiritual practice to learn to live our most sacred lives in a world at peace, the process of learning to pay attention is the same. Here are some suggestion to develop our spiritual alertness:
Begin with Yourself
The first step, as always in spiritual practice, is to know yourself as you are. We need to do the work to identify what keeps us from alertness and what puts us to sleep. We need to identify the things that dull our senses. We need to recognise the literal or metaphorical drugs that blur our vision and keep us from seeing the Spirit of beauty, truth, and goodness that cannot be destroyed by trauma, violence, or evil. And we need to identify and take hold of the things that enable us to be alert and see beyond the surface realities of our world to the deeper spiritual forces at work. We need to nurture our capacity to pay attention, even if only for a few moments at a time.
Find One Thing to Wonder At
One of the best ways to learn to open our eyes to the vision of God’s presence is to make a habit of looking for things to wonder about. In the moments when we are fully awake, even though we may feel pain, fear and the desperate need to return to sleep, we can find at least one awe-inspiring thing to notice. We can cultivate the habit of regularly identifying something to honour and give thanks for. Whether it is a blade of grass, a grasshopper’s jaws, a bird’s sweet song, or the curious shape of a cloud, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we learn to notice these natural things and see the Divine presence in them.
Recognise That the Darkness Cannot Extinguish the Light
And then, when we have learned to see more deeply in the simple things around us, we can use that ability to see even in the ugliness, deception, and evil that love, life, and light remain and the darkness does not and cannot extinguish them. We can take note of the evidence of the Divine Spirit moving in the chaos and bringing forth life.
It’s not easy to learn to pay attention and stay alert in this turbulent world, but it is worth the effort. The season of Advent is the perfect school to train us to live awake a little more intentionally and consistently. It’s important to remember though, that we cannot live awake all the time, we cannot pay attention completely, and some of us need more sleep than others. Some of us will live in an almost constant state of awareness, only retreating into literal sleep when needed. Others among us will need to spend most of our lives in the safety of living asleep, only ‘waking up’ and becoming aware when it is absolutely necessary. But whichever it is for us, paying attention and seeing the divine presence even in the midst of the pain can help us to live a little easier and sleep a little more restoratively. Then slowly, over time, we may find that we are able to awaken a little more and pay attention just a little better. And the sharp edge of our trauma will grow just a little duller and the pain a little less piercing.
This article is the first chapter of a new resource for Advent created by John van de Laar titled Vision Quest – See more clearly. Check it out here on his website Sacredise!
Join Christine Sine for a time of quiet reflection on December 3rd, 2022. Slow down the busyness of the season and nourish your soul with contemplative focus and reflection. All the details can be found here:
https://godspacelight.com/event/advent-quiet-day/
The Season of Advent is a new beginning! A fresh start! It’s the beginning of the new church year. So Happy New Year! (Traditional Advent is the four weeks before Christmas and starts this Sunday.) The Season of Advent is an opportunity to pay attention and notice what God is up to in our world and in us! It’s an opportunity to notice what God is doing in our own lives.
My pilgrimage planning got me thinking about all the Pilgrims, all the Travelers in the Christmas Story.
Mary going to see Elizabeth when she found out she was pregnant.
Mary & Joseph going to Bethlehem because of the census.
The Shepherds making a short pilgrimage into town from their hillside camp after they are surprised by the angels announcement of Jesus’s arrival.
The Magi, who journeyed the farthest, making a long pilgrimage trip to find the newborn king. Their pilgrimage took them two years to finish and then they had to journey back to their homes.
I haven’t been on a pilgrimage to the real Bethlehem yet. But on a pilgrimage to Assisi in 2015, our family got to experience a bit of what it might have been like to journey to Bethlehem. Our family went to Assisi to discover the home of St. Francis, who hosted the very first creche/nativity scene. We found out that several little towns around Assisi reenact the Christmas story by becoming Bethlehem for several days each December. We drove our rental van down several winding country roads to join other Italian pilgrims ready to experience the wonder of the birth of Jesus. The streets of this little town wound up and up and the community members had decorated them with shops that might have been real in the days of Jesus. Everyone participated. The streets were crowded, all of us ready to find baby Jesus.
Italian Mary and Joseph
Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem and a journey towards seeing Jesus’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
What would an Advent Pilgrimage look like?
On pilgrimage, the journey is just as important as the destination. Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem and a journey towards seeing Jesus’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.
As pilgrims, we watch and prepare to be interrupted.
Are we willing, like Mary, to let God interrupt us this Advent season?
Are we willing, like Joseph and the Shepherds, to let God surprise us?
Can we be willing, like this couple and the Magi, to take the pilgrimage to Bethlehem even when we don’t know what to expect along the way?
Italian Bethlehem
What would an ADVENT PILGRIMAGE look like for you this year? I’m not talking about going somewhere exotic or even taking a trip somewhere. But what if we saw the season of Advent as a pilgrimage to Bethlehem. How would I need to prepare? What things would I need to consider?
How might the SEASON OF ADVENT be a PILGRIMAGE?
What am I seeking?
What do I need?
How can I plan to pay attention?
Spend some time this weekend thinking about this. Ask Jesus to show you .
You can print out the ADVENT COLORING SHEET and use it to consider the thing or things you need or want for your Advent Pilgrimage. You might use each of these journal prompts and ask “How do I need___________ this Advent? ” or “What does ___________look like for me this Advent?”
Direction
Peace and Pause
Rest and Sabbath
Adventure
Celebration
Receiving or Discovering Treasure or Gift
Let Jesus surprise you! Let God interrupt you! Become an Advent Pilgrim.
What do you need this Advent?
©lillylewin and freerangeworship.com
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There are signs of gratitude and thanksgiving everywhere I go. Literally. One can find the word ‘grateful’ on any number of plaques sold in home improvement departments. Recently I saw a plaque in someone’s bathroom which read, “Be Thankful.” Interesting placement for that sign I thought! At a farmer’s market I saw a pillow with these words: grateful, thankful, blessed.
Grateful, thankful, blessed
In her book, Co-dependent No More by Melody Beattie, she writes, “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into successes, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Gratitude makes things right.”
Powerful words! And yet I wonder, how does gratitude do all of that? It almost sounds like magic, doesn’t it? How does gratitude actually work? There is a Gospel story that gives us one answer.
In the Gospel of Luke, (17:11-19) we are told the story of ten lepers who were healed by Jesus. Healed, they went on their way to their homes. However, one returned to Jesus to offer thanks and praised God “with a loud voice.” He threw himself on the ground at the feet of Jesus. What an act of sloppy love and surrender! And what did he say? He said, “Thank you!” And Jesus said, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Your faith has made you well. In this case the word well means healed in the sense of being made whole.
Now I am sure that the nine lepers were grateful to be cured of their disease. But the writer of the Gospel and Jesus emphasize the behavior of the one who praised God and thanked Jesus. He was made whole. This short Gospel account gives us a wonderful illustration of the difference between curing and healing. Nine lepers are cured, but only one, the tenth is pronounced healed, made whole. The tenth leper had been cured of his leprosy, but unlike the other nine he demonstrated his healing and wholeness as he fluently expressed his gratitude and thanksgiving to God and to Jesus. The tenth leper shows us one important way we can express our gratitude. It is to praise God and to say thank-you out loud to someone or something.
Gratitude may be a feeling or a mind state but for it to actually effect positive changes in our lives, I think it needs to be expressed with concrete action. Action is what makes gratitude work and change people. There is something about saying thank-you out loud to others and praising God that moves us closer to spiritual wholeness. Expression of our gratitude can take the form of spontaneous praise to God and creation.
Last spring, I was able to watch an eagle for quite some time. It was perched on a tall pole, and I was able to take several pictures of it while it was eyeballing the grasses below. Suddenly the eagle’s mate zoomed in and knocked the sitting eagle off of the post. They both flew off. And then I saw a river otter emerge from the grasses and gracefully disappear into the bay. The eagle must have been studying the otter. Who knows why the eagle’s mate interrupted the vigil? What a treat this moment in God’s creation offered me! I thanked all three of the animals for simply being and then I praised God for this small part of creation of which I was included.
English Boom Preserve, Camano Island, Washington
Expression of our gratitude can be as simple as saying “Thank-you” to our Creator, creation, families, friends and strangers where and whenever they show up. For what or whom are you grateful? Do you routinely thank the individuals in your lives who bring you love and joy? Do you praise God for creation and your many blessings and gifts?
Speaking of gifts, a favorite hymn of mine that is traditionally sung on Thanksgiving Day in churches is titled, “All Good Gifts.” The chorus simply states, “All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, then thank the Lord, oh thank the Lord for all of God’s love.” God’s gifts are all that we are and all that we have been given.
I am reminded by how Esther De Waal ends her lovely book called, The Celtic Way of Prayer. She writes
What a waste to go through life surrounded by all the good gifts that God showers on me, “gently and generously” yet blind and deaf to his presence hidden in all things, human and nonhuman. As I learn not to take for granted, to wonder anew, I find that a constant attitude of gratitude is life-giving. In the face of such amazing grace and generosity, the only possible response must become that of continuing and ever-deepening praise.
As we celebrate the Thanksgiving holy day, we might ponder what David Adam, in his book, The Open Gate, says. He rightly connects thanksgiving with thanks-living.
Thanks-living is our appreciation of our wonderful and mysterious world being reflected in our actions, our awareness of our good and gracious God, seen in the way we are generous and giving also. It is also being more aware of the great unity of all creation. Thanksgiving literally has the power to transform our world.
Thank you one and all for reading this. I praise God for the Godspace community. It is a blessing and a sign of God’s love for all of us. And, of course it is a wonderful place to practice thanks-living!
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By Laurie Klein
- If I make Thanksgiving succotash, or Yuletide lutefisk, will anyone eat?
- If I don’t budget enough for presents, will the grandkids still want to come next year?
- If so-and-so brings up the election, what should I do?
IF Schmiff. Too many possibilities ride shotgun with worry. Steamrolled, I go numb to the wonder meant to enhance celebration.
And here come the holidays . . .
As we approach our inevitable lists, may I share an idea that’s helping me become more of a celebrant (and less of a gibbering, flummoxed escapist)?
When the notion first dropped into my awareness, early, early one morning almost a year ago, it felt exciting. Then, a tad gimmicky. Later, fittingly catchy, therefore memorable—at my age, a godsend.
Here’s what I do:
As often as I can, before rising, I daydream for 15 minutes. Rather than setting my alarm I ask God (the night before) to gently stir me next morning toward consciousness. That won’t work for everyone.
Demanding schedules, dawn-rising kids (or creatures) who need you may preclude the morning slot. A before-bed ritual or midday break also works.
Please, gift yourself with a mini-oasis to daydream. No need to join Slackers Anonymous. Consider it a prescription for your well-being.
Most days, a little on-ramp to living more creatively appears. Ideas emerge. New connections surface. Some call this a state of “flow.” I go with it. If I’m apt to lose track of time on a morning with looming appointments, I’ll set a back-up alarm to ensure I fulfill my duties.
I call step one DRIFT. It’s an invitational state of mind we can enter, a Spirit-led openness to the gentle brainstorm. No need for that bedside journal. Just mentally coast among the small frets and marvels that rise, savoring the occasional glint, allowing grace to direct your thoughts.
Some will be utter drivel. One or two . . . might dazzle.
As you come more fully awake, prayerfully SIFT through your impressions. As we yield to the Spirit’s curation, one possibility often seems highlighted.
LIFT that instance of shimmer, in prayer. Is it meant for today, I ask? Later this week or month? I then surrender out-workings and outcomes to God’s timing.
You might think of this simple practice as a spiritual D.S.L. (Digital Subscriber Line). By grace you are accessing heaven’s broadband provision. But rather than firing up the internet in a given moment, you’re connecting with the charged presence of our endlessly wise, dynamic, inventive God.
That little word “if” hides within the heart of drift, sift, and lift. Among English parts of speech, in a sentence “if” serves as a conjunction. In other arenas, it also correlates and clarifies the coming together of two or more things in meaningful ways, including events or ideas. Grammar itself becomes an ally.
I’ve been engaging my three-word process for months now. Usually, I find my guilt-inducing IF’s take on more realistic proportions. Curiosity and a sense of adventure begin to unfurl . . .
So that’s it.
- Enter a state of DRIFT.
- Enact the (prayerful) SIFT.
- Receive the ensuing LIFT—even as you lift your unfolding inspiration to God’s care.
And, if you’ll accept one more riff:
- Embrace the SHIFT all this will cause.
- Rejoice in the GIFT being entrusted to you, so you can in turn offer it to others.
Over time, what we heed is what we remember. As this becomes habit, gradually, we come to resemble what, and Whom, we look to and love.
Photo by Paul Levesley from Unsplash
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