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Advent 3: A Way Lit by Rejoicing

December 8, 2015

Image: As on a Day of Festival © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, Advent 3, Year C:
Zephaniah 3.14-20

He will rejoice over you with gladness,
he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival.
—Zephaniah 3.17-18

Last Saturday, in the gorgeous concert hall at the Timucua Arts White House in Orlando, we had a party. Organized by my wondrous friend and editor Christianne Squires, the party was held ostensibly to celebrate the publication of my new book, Circle of Grace. Taking place, however, just three days after the second anniversary of Gary’s death, I can’t help but think, as I look back on it now, that some benevolent forces were conspiring to stir up a celebration in a time when I most needed it.

I gave a reading during the party, which was my first public talk since Gary’s death. During the reading, I found myself speaking of one of the mysteries of grief: how, if we let it, grief can widen our hearts beyond anything we ever imagined. I talked about how I had recently commented to a friend that I never knew the human heart could hold so many things at one time. And not just at one time, but in one place. It is wondrously strange, how in the deepest, sharpest grief, joy can come and inhabit the very same space. One does not negate the other. But in the mysterious physics of mourning, they abide together. Joy allows sorrow to have its say, but it does not let despair have the final word.

Advent is a season for remembering that the joy that makes its way toward us does not depend on mere happiness. Joy is made of stronger stuff than this. Joy is what comes when, in days that tempt us toward despair, we choose to celebrate—not in denial of the causes of despair, but in defiance. In hope. In delight. In gladness for the One who comes to sing for us and with us, ever renewing us in his love.

As on a Day of Festival

Call it
the waters of salvation
or the garlands of gladness.

Call it
the grave-clothes
falling away
or call it the loosing
of the chains.

Call it
what binds us together:
fierce but
fragile but
fierce.

Call it
he will rejoice over you
with gladness;
call it
he will renew you
in his love;
call it
he will exult over you
with loud singing
as on a day
of festival.

Call it
the thin, thin place
where the veil
gives way.

Or call it this:
the path we make
when we go deep
and deeper still
into the dark
and look behind to see
the way has been lit
by our rejoicing.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace

Within the struggle, joy, pain, and delight that attend our life, there is an invisible circle of grace that enfolds and encompasses us in every moment. Blessings help us to perceive this circle of grace, to find our place of belonging within it, and to receive the strength the circle holds for us. —from the Introduction

Beginning in Advent and moving through the sacred seasons of the Christian year, Circle of Grace offers Jan’s distinctive and poetic blessings that illuminate the treasures each season offers to us. A beautiful gift this Advent and Christmas. Available in print and ebook.

Order the book

For a previous reflection on the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, click the image or title below.

Advent 3: Terrors and Wonders

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “As on a Day of Festival,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Advent special! During this season, subscribe to Jan Richardson Images and receive unlimited digital downloads for only $125 per year (regularly $165). Click Subscribe to sign up.

Using Jan’s words…
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

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Advent 2: A Blessing for Preparing

November 29, 2015

Image: A Road Runs Through It © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 2, Year C: Luke 3.1-6

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’
—Luke 3.3-4

This is the first year in a while that I haven’t been preparing to lead an online retreat for Advent. (More about that decision, and finding “the next right thing,” here.) So here I am, at the beginning of Advent, suddenly wondering, What am I preparing for?

It’s not that there isn’t plenty to do; in fact, I’m working to resist feeling overwhelmed by all that’s asking for my attention. And the decision not to offer an Advent retreat this year was, in part, about making room for some new creative work that has been knocking at the door of my soul. I can’t help but wonder, though, how it will be to enter into the space where that creative work will take place—the space of the studio, the space of my heart that, in these past two years since Gary’s death, has been broken open and enlarged beyond imagining, widened with both grief and wonder.

I am not feeling terribly prepared for this season. And that, perhaps, is where the heart of the invitation lies for me this Advent. We sometimes fall so easily into thinking that preparing is something we do. To be sure, preparing is part of Advent’s invitation to us, as the season calls us to echo and embody the words of Luke and Isaiah, and “prepare the way of the Lord.”

But this Advent, as I look back on the path since Gary’s death (two years ago this December 2), I feel drawn to ask, How have I already been prepared? What way has been made within me, without my having been aware of it at the time? On this road that runs through the hollow of my heart, how is Christ walking toward me, even now?

And you? How might it be to look back on the past week, the past month, the past year and ask what way has already been made in you? What road runs through your heart even now, ready for Christ to enter?

Prepare
A Blessing for Advent

Strange how one word
will so hollow you out.
But this word
has been in the wilderness
for months.
Years.

This word is what remained
after everything else
was worn away
by sand and stone.
It is what withstood
the glaring of sun by day,
the weeping loneliness of
the moon at night.

Now it comes to you
racing out of the wild,
eyes blazing
and waving its arms,
its voice ragged with desert
but piercing and loud
as it speaks itself
again and again:

Prepare, prepare.

It may feel like
the word is leveling you,
emptying you
as it asks you
to give up
what you have known.

It is impolite
and hardly tame,
but when it falls
upon your lips
you will wonder
at the sweetness,

like honey
that finds its way
into the hunger
you had not known
was there.

—Jan Richardson
from Circle of Grace

Order the book

Book Celebration: If you’re in the Orlando vicinity on Saturday, December 5, from 2-4 PM, we’d love for you to join us for a gathering to celebrate the publication of Circle of Grace! It will be held at the fantastic White House (in their beautiful vertical concert hall) near downtown Orlando. You can find details in my latest newsletter here.

For a previous reflection on the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, click the image or title below.

Advent 2: The Mystery of Approach

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “A Road Runs Through It,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Advent special: During this season, subscribe to Jan Richardson Images and receive unlimited digital downloads for only $125 per year (regularly $165). Click Subscribe to sign up.

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, lectionary | 8 Comments »

Advent 1: A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

November 25, 2015

Image: Grace in the Dark © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Psalms, Advent 1, Year C: Psalm 25.1-10

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths.
—Psalm 25.4

It was the second day of Advent when my husband Gary died, almost two years ago now. In the time that has unfolded since then, never have I had such a keen sense of the ways that light and dark dwell together, and how grace imbues the places that are most laden with shadows and unfathomable mystery. The season of Advent impresses this upon us with such intention, weaving its exquisite tapestry of stories and images that tell us of how God makes a way toward us even—and especially—when we cannot find the way ourselves.

Here on the threshold of Advent, what does it mean for us to lean into this season once again, to give ourselves to these weeks that show us with such specificity and care that there is no place where God does not desire to meet us? How will we move through these days in a way that allows us to receive the gift that comes looking for us, that asks only that we open our hands, our eyes, our heart to the Love that knows our name?

Here at The Advent Door this year, I will be offering blessings from my just-released book, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. As we enter into this season of mystery, it seems fitting to open with an Advent blessing that asks for protection and encompassing in the dark. May you know yourself enfolded by the grace that dwells in these Advent days. I am grateful to be traveling into this season with you.

A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.

Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.

I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.

But this is what
I can ask for you:

That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

—Jan Richardson

Order the book

For a previous reflection on the Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, click the image or title below.

Advent 1: Drawing Near

Using Jan’s artwork
To use the image “Grace in the Dark,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!

Using Jan’s words
For worship services and related settings, you are welcome to use Jan’s blessings or other words from this blog without requesting permission. All that’s needed is to acknowledge the source. Please include this info in a credit line: “© Jan Richardson. janrichardson.com.” For other uses, visit Copyright Permissions.

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, lectionary, Psalms | 16 Comments »

Advent 3: Testify to the Light

December 12, 2014

Image: Testify to the Light © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 3, Year B: John 1.6-8, 19-28

He came as a witness to testify to the light,
so that all might believe through him.
—John 1.7

In Belfast there is a woman who lights candles for Gary and me. She has a gift for finding thin places: an eleventh-century stone sanctuary; a whitewashed church in the mountains of Wales; a chapel crypt on the Yorkshire moors that holds the bones of Saint Cedd. In those places, on an altar or in the chink of a wall, Jenny lights a candle, and she prays—not merely in memory of what was, but in hope and in blessing for love that endures and life that persists on both sides of the veil.

Here on my brokenhearted side of the veil, the light comes as solace and unexpected grace. In this dark time, when there is no one who can walk this road for me or lessen what has been lost with Gary’s death, the light comes as a vivid reminder that we have, at the least, the power to help illuminate the path for each other.

It matters that we hold the light for one another. It matters that we bear witness to the Light that holds us all, that we testify to this Light that shines its infinite love and mercy on us across oceans, across borders, across time.

Who holds the light for you? In this season, who might need you to hold the light for them in acts of love and grace?

Blessed Are You Who Bear the Light

Blessed are you
who bear the light
in unbearable times,
who testify
to its endurance
amid the unendurable,
who bear witness
to its persistence
when everything seems
in shadow
and grief.

Blessed are you
in whom
the light lives,
in whom
the brightness blazes—
your heart
a chapel,
an altar where
in the deepest night
can be seen
the fire that
shines forth in you
in unaccountable faith,
in stubborn hope,
in love that illumines
every broken thing
it finds.

—Jan Richardson

Update: This blessing appears in Jan’s new book Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.

For previous reflections on this passage, visit Where I’m From and Advent 3: The Prayer Book of John the Baptist.

An Advent Journey…

ILLUMINATED 2014 — Still open!
Are you hungry for an experience that invites you into Advent without stressing your schedule? There’s still time to join us for this online journey! The retreat has begun, but we can easily catch you up. Offering a space of elegant simplicity as you travel toward Christmas, the Illuminated retreat fits easily into the rhythm of your days, anywhere you are. For info and registration, visit ILLUMINATED 2014.

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “Testify to the Light,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. (Be sure to check out our Advent special on annual subscriptions at the images site! $125, regularly $165.)

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Gospel of John, lectionary | 5 Comments »

Advent 1: Blessing When the World Is Ending

November 23, 2014

Image: End and Beginning © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 1, Year B: Mark 13.24-37

The sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
—Mark 13.24

It used to come as something of a shock to me: that a season commonly perceived to be about joy and peace always begins with the end of the world. Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, the lectionary gives us a little apocalypse. That’s what it’s actually called: “Little Apocalypse” is the name often given to Jesus’ discourse on the Mount of Olives, where he describes to his listeners the events that will take place as he returns.

This time around, as Advent approaches, Jesus’ apocalyptic talk comes not so much as a shock as it does something that feels familiar to me. December 2 will, unbelievably, mark a year since Gary’s unexpected death—a year since our world came to an end, a year since the onset of my own little apocalypse.

The ending of one’s personal world is not the same, I know, as The End of the World that Jesus describes here. Yet the first Sunday of Advent invites us to recognize that these endings are connected; that the Christ who will return at the end of time somehow inhabits each ending we experience in this life. Every year, Advent calls us to practice the apocalypse: to look for the presence of Christ who enters into our every loss, who comes to us in the midst of devastation, who gathers us up when our world has shattered, and who offers the healing that is a foretaste of the wholeness he is working to bring about not only at the end of time but also in this time, in this place.

As Advent begins, is there something in your life that is ending? How might you look for the presence of Christ who comes to you in that place?

Blessing When the World is Ending

Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.

Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.

Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.

Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.

But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.

It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.

This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.

It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.

—Jan Richardson

Update: “Blessing When the World Is Ending” appears in Jan’s recent book Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.

For previous reflections on this and related passages, visit Advent 1: Practicing the Apocalypse, Advent 1: In Which We Stay Awake, and Advent 1: Through the Door.

An Advent Journey…

ILLUMINATED 2014 — Come join us!
Are you hungry for an experience that invites you into Advent without stressing your schedule? This online retreat is not about adding one more thing to your holidays. It is about helping you find spaces for reflection that draw you deep into this season that shimmers with mystery and possibility. Offering a space of elegant simplicity as you journey toward Christmas, the Illuminated retreat fits easily into the rhythm of your days, anywhere you are. Begins November 30. For info and registration, visit ILLUMINATED 2014. Individual, group, & congregational rates available.

Using Jan’s artwork…
To use the image “End and Beginning,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. (This is also available as an art print. After clicking over to the image’s page on the Jan Richardson Images site, just scroll down to the “Purchase as an Art Print” section.) Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!

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Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Gospel of Mark, lectionary | 24 Comments »

Celebrating Epiphany and Women’s Christmas

January 4, 2013

Image: By Another Road © Jan L. Richardson

As always, the wonderful but intense days of Advent make me grateful that Christmas lasts for twelve days instead of just one. Although the world around us pretty well shuts Christmas down at midnight on December 25, the Christmas season, which extends to Epiphany on January 6, provides a great opportunity to pause and take a deep breath before we fling ourselves into the year ahead. To celebrate Epiphany, I have a new blessing for you over at The Painted Prayerbook; you can find it here:

Epiphany: Blessing of the Magi

And do you know that there’s a wonderful tradition, rooted in Ireland, of celebrating Epiphany as Women’s Christmas? You can learn more by visiting my Sanctuary of Women blog, where my latest post includes a link to a special retreat that I’ve designed for you to use for Women’s Christmas—or whenever you’re in need of a break! You can download the retreat as a PDF at no cost. I’m happy for you to share the retreat with friends—a great way to celebrate the day. Click the image or title below to visit the Women’s Christmas post and download the retreat.

Women’s Christmas: The Map You Make Yourself

I’m grateful for your company here at The Advent Door and look forward to returning when Advent approaches again. In the meantime, I’d love for you to join me over at The Painted Prayerbook, my blogging home the rest of the year. Happy New Year, Merry Epiphany, Blessed Women’s Christmas to you!

Posted in art, blessings, Christmas, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

Advent 1: Drawing Near

November 25, 2012

Image: Drawing Near © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 1, Year C: Luke 21.25-36

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up
and raise your heads, because your redemption
is drawing near.
—Luke 21.28

Drawing Near
A Blessing to Begin Advent

It is difficult to see it from here,
I know,
but trust me when I say
this blessing is inscribed
on the horizon.
Is written on
that far point
you can hardly see.
Is etched into
a landscape
whose contours you cannot know
from here.
All you know
is that it calls you,
draws you,
pulls you toward
what you have perceived
only in pieces,
in fragments that came to you
in dreaming
or in prayer.

I cannot account for how,
as you draw near,
the blessing embedded in the horizon
begins to blossom
upon the soles of your feet,
shimmers in your two hands.
It is one of the mysteries
of the road,
how the blessing
you have traveled toward,
waited for,
ached for
suddenly appears
as if it had been with you
all this time,
as if it simply
needed to know
how far you were willing
to walk
to find the lines
that were traced upon you
before the day
that you were born.

—Jan Richardson

P.S. For a previous reflection on this passage, click this image or the title below:

Advent 1: Practicing the Apocalypse

And if you don’t know about the online Advent retreat that Gary and I will be leading from December 1-29, please check it out by clicking the icon below. Folks have been signing up for the retreat from around the world; we would love for you to join us!

[To use the image “Drawing Near,” please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, poetry | 9 Comments »

Christmas Day: How the Light Comes

December 21, 2011

Image: And the Darkness Did Not Overcome It © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Christmas Day, Years ABC: John 1.1-14

I love how John tells it. His version of the Christmas story is absent of anything we can put into a manger scene—no baby Jesus, no Mary who dared to say yes to an archangel, no Joseph who risked believing in his dreams and allied himself with Mary and her child. No shepherds. No angels. No far-traveling, gift-bearing Magi wafting in on the fragrances of frankincense and myrrh.

John pares away the Christmas story to its essence: The Word. Light. Life. Dwelling among us. In the flesh.

Glory and grace and truth.

In his telling, John the Evangelist invokes John the Baptist, Jesus’ way-making cousin who haunts the season of Advent. Himself a pared-down figure—the wilderness having worn away anything that would have hindered him from his call—John the Baptist is utterly at home in John the Evangelist’s telling of the story that enchants with its poetic simplicity and beauty. The Baptist knows about the basics, knows about getting to the heart of things, knows what it means to divest ourselves of anything that hinders us from preparing a way for the Word and proclaiming its presence in our midst.

And so for this day, in the Spirit of John the Evangelist and John the Baptist, a simple blessing and a prayer: that we may tell the story, that we may testify to the light, that the Word may take flesh in us this day and in all the days to come.

How the Light Comes

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.

What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.

That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.

That it loves
searching out
what is hidden,
what is lost,
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.

That it has a fondness
for the body,
for finding its way
toward flesh,
for tracing the edges
of form,
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.

I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.

And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still

to the blessed light
that comes.

—Jan Richardson

2015 Update: “How the Light Comes” appears in Jan’s new book Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons.

P.S. For previous reflections for Christmas Day, click the images or titles below:

Christmas Day: Witness of that Light

Tangled Up in You

Door 25: The Book of Beginnings

Christmas Day: An Illuminated Joy

[Thanks to Jenee Woodard for featuring the “And the Darkness Did Not Overcome It” image this week at The Text This Week. To use this image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Christmas, Gospel of John, lectionary, poetry | 4 Comments »

Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night

December 19, 2011

This week, in addition to preparing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, many congregations will offer a “Longest Night” or “Blue Christmas” service. Usually held on or near the Winter Solstice, this gathering provides a space for those who are having a difficult time during the holidays or simply need to acknowledge some pain or loss they are carrying in the midst of this season of celebration. For you who are offering or participating in such a service, and for all who struggle in this season, I wish you many blessings and pray for the presence of Christ our Light, who goes with us in the darkness and in the day.

Blessing for the Longest Night

All throughout these months
as the shadows
have lengthened,
this blessing has been
gathering itself,
making ready,
preparing for
this night.

It has practiced
walking in the dark,
traveling with
its eyes closed,
feeling its way
by memory
by touch
by the pull of the moon
even as it wanes.

So believe me
when I tell you
this blessing will
reach you
even if you
have not light enough
to read it;
it will find you
even though you cannot
see it coming.

You will know
the moment of its
arriving
by your release
of the breath
you have held
so long;
a loosening
of the clenching
in your hands,
of the clutch
around your heart;
a thinning
of the darkness
that had drawn itself
around you.

This blessing
does not mean
to take the night away
but it knows
its hidden roads,
knows the resting spots
along the path,
knows what it means
to travel
in the company
of a friend.

So when
this blessing comes,
take its hand.
Get up.
Set out on the road
you cannot see.

This is the night
when you can trust
that any direction
you go,
you will be walking
toward the dawn.

—Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Update: Thanks to everyone who has contacted me to ask for permission to use this blessing for a Longest Night/Blue Christmas service. If you’d like to use “Blessing for the Longest Night” in a service, I’d be delighted for you to do so; simply include this credit line:

No need to write me for permission, though I would be pleased to hear where you’re using it. If you’d like to use the artwork, please scroll down to the end of this post for info. Many thanks!

P.S. For previous reflections on the Winter Solstice, click the images or titles below:

Winter Solstice: The Moon Is Always Whole

Door 21: Blue Plate Special

Solstice: A Woman in Winter
(From my Sanctuary of Women blog)

[To use the “Longest Night” image, please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Christmas, poetry, sacred time | 96 Comments »

Advent 4: An Awful and Wondrous Yes

December 11, 2011

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 4, Year B: Luke 1.26-38

Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.”
—Luke 1.38

A Blessing for After

This blessing
is for the moment
after clarity has come,
after inspiration,
after you have agreed
to what seemed
impossible.

This blessing
is what follows
after illumination departs
and you realize
there is no map
for the path
you have chosen,
no one to serve
as guide,
nothing to do
but gather up
your gumption
and set out.

This blessing
will go with you.
It carries no answers,
no charts,
no plans.
It carries no source
of light
within itself.

But in its pocket
is tucked a mirror
that, from time to time,
it will hold up to you

to remind you
of the radiance
that came
when you gave
your awful and wondrous
yes.

—Jan Richardson

2015 update: “Blessing for Rejoicing” appears in my new book Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. You can find the book here.

For previous reflections on this passage, click the images or titles below:

Home for the Holidays

Door 20: Getting the Message

Resources for the Season: Into Advent

[To use the image “Annunciation II,” image please visit this page at janrichardsonimages.com. Your use of janrichardsonimages.com helps make the ministry of The Advent Door possible. Thank you!]

Posted in Advent, art, blessings, Gospel of Luke, lectionary | 3 Comments »

The Advent Door

Archive for the ‘blessings’ Category

Advent 3: A Way Lit by Rejoicing

Advent 2: A Blessing for Preparing

Advent 1: A Blessing for Traveling in the Dark

Advent 3: Testify to the Light

An Advent Journey…

Advent 1: Blessing When the World Is Ending

An Advent Journey…

Celebrating Epiphany and Women’s Christmas

Advent 1: Drawing Near

Christmas Day: How the Light Comes

Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night

Advent 4: An Awful and Wondrous Yes

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