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Advent 3: Terrors and Wonders

December 7, 2009


The Final Fire Is Love © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Advent 3, Year C: Luke 3.7-18

Some years before I met him, my sweetheart, Garrison Doles, starred in a horror film. Shot here in Central Florida, Jack-O is a real classic of the drive-in, B-movie genre, complete with a low budget, no rehearsals, and scenes shot in one take. The movie featured a jack-o-lantern-headed demon disturbed from his grave (by unwitting teenagers, as ever) who then (after dispatching the teenagers) seeks his revenge upon the descendants of the man who had killed him. The movie also featured John Carradine, the famed actor who in his later years became a mainstay in horror films. Through the miracle of technology, the fact that he’d been dead for nearly a decade didn’t diminish his performance.

I’m not a big fan of the horror genre, but of course I had to see this one. I’m happy to report that my sweetheart saves the day, the demon is vanquished, and the townspeople return to their normal lives, freed from the specter of a scythe-wielding, pumpkin-headed fiend.

I find myself curious about what it is that draws people into scenarios designed to scare them. For some folks, there’s clearly something compelling about entering a space in which the darker realities of life are so intensely magnified yet also reduced to the manageable size of a movie screen. And I imagine that’s one aspect of the appeal: that amid the known terrors of the world, a horror film offers us an opportunity to have some control over how we encounter our fears.

Fascination with fear isn’t a new phenomenon, of course. In the Middle Ages, some of the most vivid and enduring works of art are those depicting hell and its torments. The artists’ renderings of the underworld—as, for instance, in this painting of a hell-mouth in the 15th-century Hours of Catherine of Cleves or in the works of Hieronymous Bosch—tend to be far more visually interesting and gripping than their depictions of heaven.

Horror movies weren’t the first thing that came to mind as I read the gospel lection for this week. Yet I found myself thinking about them as I wrestled with the text, which is one of the more challenging ones that Advent gives to us. On the one hand, I am quite taken by John the Baptist, this man who so devotes his life to preparing the way for Christ, his own cousin. John has many opportunities to claim status and power for himself—as in this very text, when people are wondering who he is and are prepared to believe he is the Messiah. It seems, however, that any pretensions or yearning for power John may have ever had have been worn away by his life of prayer in the wilderness. The baptizer studiously resists taking on any power or identity that does not belong to him.

Meanwhile, on my other hand, I am uneasy with this man who calls his listeners a brood of vipers, and I wonder about this crowd that is so willing to listen to a preacher who speaks to them in this way. Beyond the matter of John’s name-calling, I find myself wondering: what draws them to this wild-eyed prophet who speaks—probably yells—such fearsome visions of fire and brimstone, axes and roots, winnowing forks and threshing floors?

It’s tempting to think that at least some of those among the crowds have sought out John for the spectacle of it: that the same kind of thing that draws 21st-century people to terrifying visions on the silver screen drew crowds into the wilderness for the 1st century’s version of graphic, high-def, full-throttle, give-you-the-willies cataclysmic fare. It is perhaps tempting, too, to think that when the crowd asks, “What should we do?” it sounds less like an authentic question and more like the helpless, hand-wringing query of a character in one of those horror films—and you know there’s no real point in their asking what they should do, because no matter what you holler at the screen, they’re going to open that door, or go into those woods, or accept that ride from a stranger.

The drama, the intensity, the sensation and sensationalism of John the Baptist’s words and their power to stir the crowd: this is compelling and disturbing stuff. Ultimately, however, what John the Baptist gives to his hearers goes far beyond sensationalism. Wherever their question comes from, whatever has impelled them to ask what they should do, John gives them an answer that, if they heed it, if they take it on as their own, will change them utterly.

I’m intrigued by how specific John is with his responses. He does not give his questioners a “one size fits all” solution, as do so many preachers who flavor their sermons with fire. Those who have clothing and food need to share them with those who don’t, John says. When the tax collectors ask what they should do, he tells them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” When soldiers ask him, John tells them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.” To each group, to each condition presented him, John provides counsel tailored distinctly to who they are.

Forget fire, forget winnowing forks, forget threshing floors: amid our daily lives, is there anything more unsettling than receiving a clear word about what it is that we’re meant to do in this world? Is there anything that risks taking us deeper into our insecurities, into our fears, into the dark unknown than when someone who sees and recognizes and knows us, then challenges us to be the person whom God has created and called us to be? And is there anything more full of wonder and hope?

I think of Audre Lorde, who, in a conversation with her fellow poet Adrienne Rich, said, “Once you live any piece of your vision it opens you to a constant onslaught. Of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities.”

This, finally, is what John the Baptist, this preparer of the way, is offering to his hearers: wonders. Possibilities. The invitation to be initiated into a relationship with God’s own incarnate self. The fire, the winnowing fork, the threshing floor: these are important, but they are not John’s primary point. As ever, John in his fierce fashion is pointing to—making the way for—the One who comes. And this One comes not for the purpose of terrifying us but of loving us.

Terror may get our attention. It’s one way of telling a story. In the most adept hands, it can be a compelling form in which to illuminate the complexities involved in the struggle of good against evil. Yet terror alone—fear of hellfire and damnation—is not enough to sustain a lasting relationship with Christ. Horror, by itself, is not the path to lead us into heaven. Only love—the truest fire—can do this.

In this season, we remember and celebrate this fierce and fiery love: the love that created us; the love that garbed itself in our own flesh and came among us; the love that beckons us to respond by discerning and doing what it is that God formed and fashioned us, in all our particularity, to do; the love that we will one day see and know in its completeness.

So what should we do, then? How do you carry this question—this question the crowd asked of John—in this season? How do you discern God’s longing for your life? To whom do you listen as you seek an answer to this question?

May the presence of love attend your Advent days.

[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!]

[The Audre Lorde quote is from her book Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1984).]

Posted in Advent, art, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, medieval, religion, sacred time | 11 Comments »

Advent 2: A Song that Means Blessed

December 5, 2009


Benedictus © Jan L. Richardson

Canticle, Advent 2, Year C: Luke 1.68-79

“Burning/all night long/Burning/at the gates of dawn
Singing/near and far/Singing/to raise the morning star.”
–Bruce Cockburn

This Sunday, instead of a passage from the psalms, the Advent lectionary gives us a canticle—one of those those songs that trace a melodic, poetic, and oftentimes prophetic line through both testaments of the Bible. Reading the lines of what has become known as the Canticle of Zechariah, I cannot help but hear voices, and melody. I’m not having an auditory hallucination; the sounds are lodged in my memory, imprinted by years of singing these words on the occasions when I have gathered with my sisters and brothers of Saint Brigid of Kildare Monastery.

For a millennium and a half, this passage from Luke has been part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the monastic round of prayer that stretches from before dawn throughout the day and evening and into the dark again. Specifically, this text is chanted at the hour of Lauds, one of the early morning offices of prayer. It is known as the Benedictus: in Latin, this means blessed.

Blessed is the first word of the song that Zechariah sings. It is the first word we hear from his lips after the silence that the archangel Gabriel imposed on him when he dared to be incredulous at the news that his wife—who, as Zechariah himself described it, was “getting on in years”—was pregnant with the child whom we would come to know as John the Baptist, the one who would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Luke 1.17). Like Mary’s song that precedes it, Zechariah’s canticle is a potent song about what God has accomplished. It is a song, too, of what God will yet do in and through the life of this child—this baby eight days old—to whom Zechariah sings.

After Zechariah has blessed and praised God for some verses, he turns his focus on his child beginning in verse 76: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.” One can imagine this father gathering his son into his arms as he raises what surely must have been a bittersweet song. If he knew this much about his son, Zechariah must also have had some understanding, like Mary in the temple after Simeon sang of her son with words about light and glory, that the shadow of a sword hovered close by.

And yet Zechariah sings. Full of wild hope, he sings. Knowing the state of the world, he sings. And he closes his canticle with these words:

By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.

These are my favorite lines of the canticle. When I pray with the St. Brigid’s community on our annual retreat, in that early morning hour when I am still in the realm between sleep and full waking, we chant these lines twice: once at the beginning of the canticle, and again at the end. In my mind, these lines are so bound together with sunrise and meeting the day that I can almost imagine that we—all of us around the world who sing these words at the outset of the day—sing them not in response to the coming of dawn but rather to help ensure it. Not in a literal fashion, of course; the physical rising of the sun does not depend on us (and a good thing, too, as my night owl self rarely is up at that hour). But there is some kind of light that depends on our waiting for it, watching for it, singing it into this world. And when we can’t, God bids us trust that there are others watching and waiting and singing on our behalf and on behalf of the world.

Sitting down to write this reflection, I receive an email from a friend with surprising, horrendous news about her young husband’s health. Yesterday, word of the death of a colleague’s son in an accident. My prayer list for those in peril—medical, financial, emotional—steadily grows. And here in Advent, as those of us in the northern hemisphere journey through the darkest part of the year, we gather these words about ourselves and pray for tender mercy. Not in denial, but, like Zechariah, in the place where wild hope is born.

I read the lines again, and again I hear the voices of my sisters and brothers, praying at dawn. Praying for dawn. Praying the dawn. Voices rising, falling, rising again.

In darkness, we sing.

In the shadow of death, we sing.

Blessing, we sing.

Blessed.

Whom do you hear as you read the lines of this canticle? How do you watch and wait and sing for the light? Who does this for you when you cannot? Who might need you to do it for them? What wild hope do you carry in these days?

Amid the shadows, may we lift our voices in blessing. Peace to you.

[To use the “Benedictus” 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, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, poetry, religion, sacred time | 4 Comments »

Advent 2: The Mystery of Approach

December 2, 2009

Image: Preparing the Way © Jan Richardson

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

In his book Anam Cara, John O’Donohue has a section called “The Mystery of Approach,” in which he writes,

For years I have had an idea for a short story about a world where you would approach only one person in the course of your life. Naturally, one would have to subtract biological considerations from this assumption in order to draw this imaginary world. You would have to practice years of silence before the mystery of presence in the Other, then you could begin to approach.

I’m taken with O’Donohue’s notion that to approach another person is an act of reverence that requires preparation. Most of us cross paths with so many people in the course of our life that we often forget that to encounter someone, to truly meet another, is a sacred act. Given how very many of us there are on this planet, and how frequently we allow the image of God in us to become obscured, it’s easy to overlook the way in which coming into the presence of another—a being who is created in the likeness of God—is a sacrament and a wonder.

This week, John the Baptist, along with his predecessor Isaiah, has been calling me to remember what it means to prepare to encounter another: in this case, of course, to come into the presence of one who is not just created in the image of God but who is God. In describing what the Baptist has come to do, Luke evokes the potent words of Isaiah, words that are full of an ancient hope for one who will come to restore and redeem:

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’

One can imagine that John the Baptist, this locusts-and-wild-honey-eating, camel’s-hair-wearing prophet, must have spent his own time of preparation in the wilderness before he began to call people to prepare for the one who was coming. It was only by making himself ready—by straightening the paths within himself and smoothing out all that was rough in his interior landscape—that John was able to do the work that God had called him to do. And so we, too, are called in this season: to attend to and prepare our inner terrain so that we may welcome Christ in our lives and in our world.

But I have to tell you: this vision of straight paths, filled valleys, and mountains and hills leveled out—it rather gives me the willies. What Isaiah describes, and what John the Baptist is testifying to and working for, is a world that has undergone an apocalyptic leveling out. What will be left, it seems, is a landscape marked by little but its even, unrelenting flatness.

I wonder at that, because I think that part of what God loves about us is the stuff that makes us complicated and complex—the things that give texture to our terrain. By and large, we humans are not simple, are not smooth going, do not make things easy. I have a hunch that God takes a shine to us because of this: God likes a good challenge. And so the prospect of a landscape that is uncomplicated, that is flat, that does not have any meandering paths that take me to places I had never imagined going yet where I find God nonetheless: this strikes me less as a heavenly vision than a vision of a place far removed from paradise.

And yet. And yet. As one who not infrequently is prone to making my life more complicated than it needs to be, I find myself pondering Isaiah’s words, and pondering them again. In this season of preparation, Isaiah and John challenge me to consider: amidst the complexities and complications of my life, is there something I need to do to make it easier for Christ to enter my terrain and to be known in this world? Is there some path through my soul that I need to straighten, to smooth? Is there some mountainous obstacle that needs to be brought down—not to flatten my soul into a stultifying sameness, but so that Christ may meet less resistance within me?

It may be tempting to think that we should prepare ourselves more strenuously to encounter and welcome Christ than to meet anyone else. This season, however, beckons us to remember that the incarnation takes place anew each day, and that Christ comes in the form of those whom we meet on our path. How are we preparing ourselves to encounter Christ in them? How do we ready ourselves for this sacrament, this mystery, this miracle? Amid the graced and necessary complexities involved in being who God has created and called us to be, how do we make a space for the One who desires to approach and meet us in this and every season?

Blessings and peace to you on your path of preparation.

[For related reflections on this passage, visit these posts at The Advent Door: The Pilgrim’s Coat, A Way in the Wilderness, and Door 9: Making Way.]

[To use the image “Preparing the Way,” 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, Book of Isaiah, lectionary, religion, sacred time | 9 Comments »

Contemplating Christmas

November 30, 2009

It’s official: as of yesterday, Advent has begun. As I set out into the season, I’m aware of how often I’ve lived out this scenario: I’m in church on Christmas Eve, catching my breath as the intense weeks of December come to a close, and I think, “Okay, now I’m ready for Advent to begin!”

This Advent season isn’t likely to be any less full than previous ones, but I’m working to discern how to move through it in a mindful fashion, one in which I can catch my breath earlier and more often. I have found myself thinking of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who composed an astounding series of journals before being sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where she died in 1943. In one of those journals, Etty wrote, “…sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.”

On this Advent night, I’m taking a few deep breaths, and I would love your company. As a way of offering a space of rest and reflection amid these days, I’ve designed a video called Contemplating Christmas: Finding Quiet in a Season of Mystery and Hope. The video intertwines images from The Advent Door with a piece of stunning Christmas music from my sweetheart, Garrison Doles. For a few short minutes—six, all told, and hopefully a few beyond that—I invite you to breathe, and to ponder, and to rest.

In addition to the version of the video above (which is linked from YouTube), I also have a large-format, high-resolution version available for use in worship and other settings where you might like to invite others to enter some creative quiet. You can find this version by visiting Contemplating Christmas Video.

The song on the video is the title song from the CD The Night of Heaven and Earth, a wondrous collection of Garrison’s original Christmas music. You can find the CD and listen to samples here: The Night of Heaven and Earth.

On this day and all the days to come, I send you many blessings and pray that God will draw you into spaces of rest and delight. A Merry Advent to you!

Posted in Advent, art, Christmas, lectionary, religion, sacred time | 10 Comments »

Advent 1: A Path of Blessing

November 28, 2009

Image: Night and Day We Pray for You © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Epistles, Advent 1, Year C: 1 Thessalonians 3.9-13

While I was in New Brunswick, Canada, last weekend (a wondrous place to prepare to enter into Advent), I had the opportunity to preach at a United Church of Canada congregation in Riverview. One of the pastors invited me to be part of the children’s time in worship, during which several of the children asked me a few questions. One of them asked me, “Do you like writing or making art more, and why?” As I shared my response, I told her what I often tell folks who ask me if I enjoy writing: I say, “I enjoy having written.”

Even though I’ve understood myself as a writer nearly from the time I could first hold a pencil, and experience it as being at the core of my vocation and calling, the practice of writing is oftentimes a place of struggle and resistance for me. For the most part, I much prefer reaching the end of a piece of work than being in the midst of it. I have come, however, to understand this wrestling as part of the process: navigating and negotiating the struggle is part of the creative work. Still, there are moments of pleasure along the way that come as pure grace and help stir up my energy: times when the words come together in just the right way and I’m able to articulate—or to allow the Spirit to articulate—what it is that I want to say.

I’ve spent most of this year working on a new book. It’s been a tremendously engaging process in that it’s brought together much of what I’ve been studying and pondering and praying with and chewing on for the past fifteen years. At the same time, it’s probably the most demanding writing project I’ve ever undertaken. It has tapped every reserve of creative persistence I possess, and has compelled me to search for sustenance in ways I haven’t had to before.

Many of the moments of grace and pleasure that I’ve found in the persevering—and that have helped stoke my endurance—have come in writing a series of blessings for the book. The book consists primarily of reflections that draw from the often hidden wellsprings of women’s history and experiences in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Each reading closes with a blessing. With nearly two hundred readings, this means I have written a bunch of blessings. I won’t say that the blessings have come easily. Yet I find that crafting blessings is more like composing poetry than like writing prose. Poetry seems to come from a different place in my soul than prose does, though they are kin and live in the same neighborhood. Whatever or wherever that poetry-generating place in me is, it’s a space in which I move about with rather less resistance than when I’m writing prose, and that’s been tremendously refreshing.

I also love the way in which writing a blessing is a very personal act that intentionally honors the reader. These blessings have come from my guts (to use a technical term): they’ve come from my deepest self in hopes of blessing the deepest self of another. I don’t know into whose hands this book will make its way, but I have written each blessing with the desire that the words will come to the reader as a moment of grace amid whatever is stirring in the landscape of their life in that moment, and will help provide sustenance for the path ahead.

Whenever we offer a blessing, it is an intimate act that acknowledges that we are connected with another and that we desire the wholeness of that person—or that place, or whatever it is that we are blessing. A blessing is a reminder that God has not designed us to live by our own devices: we are bound together with one another and with all of creation, and we are called to work for the well-being of those whom we share this life with—and those who will follow. Offering a blessing is an act of profound hope. In blessing one another, we recognize and ally ourselves with the presence of God who is ever working to bring about the healing of the world.

In their introduction to the “Blessings and Invocations” section in their lovely book Earth Prayers, editors Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon speak to the interconnectedness that characterizes creation, and how blessings are a way of responding to what one writer has called our state of being “inexplicably inextricable” (Southquest blog, “Cold Calling”). “Some scientists,” Roberts and Amidon write, “now recognize that each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object. All events are in some way interdependent, and everything we do affects the whole.

“Invoking the powers of the universe,” they go on to say, “or bestowing our blessing on the Earth or other beings is neither a simple benevolent wish nor an act of hubris. Rather it is an act of creative confidence.”

An act of creative confidence. In his first letter to the church at Thessalonica, Paul offers such an act. Having written of the gratitude and joy that he feels because of the faithfulness of his beloved sisters and brothers there, and telling them of the prayers that he offers for them night and day, he offers powerful words of blessing. Praying that God may “direct our way to you,” Paul (who is also writing on behalf of Silvanus and Timothy) tells his friends,

And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he so strengthen your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless before our God and Father and the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.

Amid the struggles of the early church, Paul offers words that he has chosen with great care and love in order to encourage and sustain the community. It is clear that these Thessalonian friends have been a tremendous source of blessing to Paul because of their faithfulness and their care for him and for his companions in ministry. He offers these words—and this whole letter—as a blessing to them in return. And that’s how blessings work: we offer them in recognition of the gifts we have received, and in hope of passing these gifts along, that others may flourish.

Paul offers us a powerful blessing and challenge to take with us into the coming weeks. As we enter the season of Advent this Sunday, Paul’s words beckon us to ask, what blessings have we received? What blessings might we need for our journey through Advent? Who in our lives might be in need of a blessing that we can offer, and how will we offer it? In word, in action, what can we give to another that will honor our inexplicable, inextricable connection and will sustain them on the path ahead?

In these holy days, know that your presence on the path is a joy to me and that I pray for you. May God strengthen your hearts this Advent, and may our very lives be a blessing for the wholeness of this world.

[To use the image “Night and Day We Pray for You,” 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, lectionary, religion, sacred time | 8 Comments »

Advent 1: Practicing the Apocalypse

November 23, 2009

Image: Apocalypse, Again © Jan Richardson

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

As I write this, I’m en route from Orlando to New Brunswick, Canada, where I’ll be leading a women’s retreat as we prepare to enter into Advent. It seems fitting that my journey into Advent, a season characterized by waiting, is beginning with flight delays. The delay in Orlando turned out great not only because the extra hour and a half that I spent there provided one of the calmest interludes that I’ve had amidst the extra-full pace of the past few weeks, but also because it reduced the amount of time I’m currently having to spend laid over at an airport that shall remain nameless.

The airport is absolutely crammed with people, and my inner introvert is reeling. I’m usually really good at being able to find a semi-quiet spot in any airport, but this evening I’m doing well just to have found a few square feet of space here on the floor outside a door marked “Bus Hold Room” as I eat my second turkey sandwich of the day. (Not because I have a hankering for turkey; let’s just say that the airport could do with a few more food options at this terminal.) Amid the masses, it feels like I’m in some cosmic way station. I find myself marveling at the endless variety by which humans can take shape, and also overwhelmed by their sheer numbers, close proximity, and noise.

All in all, I’m finding this a good place to think about the apocalypse.

Each year, the lectionary for the first Sunday of Advent gives us a version of Jesus’ words about the end of days. This year Luke does the honors. In Luke 21.25-36, we read of celestial signs, cataclysms of nature, and distress upon the earth. Jesus speaks of fear and foreboding that will come upon the people. He tells of how, in the days to come, the powers of the heavens will be shaken.

Along with its parallels in the gospels of Matthew and Mark, this passage forms part of what is sometimes called the “little apocalypse.” It seems a sobering and grim way to welcome us into a season that in the Christian tradition is a time of expectation and celebration and that the wider culture typically depicts as cheery. Yet in greeting us as we cross the threshold into Advent, this apocalypse-in-miniature reminds us that this season bids us not only to remember and celebrate the Christ who has already come to us, but also to anticipate and look toward the fullness of time when he will bring about the redemption of the world.

That’s what Jesus is really getting at in this passage, after all: he is not offering these apocalyptic images in order to scare the pants off people but rather to assure his listeners that the healing of the world is at hand, and that they need to stay awake, stay alert, and learn to read the signs of what is ahead. He is calling them not to crumble or quail when intimations of the end come but instead to “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Jesus urges his hearers—and us—toward practices that help them stay grounded and centered in their daily lives so that they won’t be caught unawares in the days to come.

This is the message that the lectionary gives us each year as we enter into Advent. Again and again, we are called to circle back around the apocalypse, to revisit its landscape, to take in its terrain. With its annual return, and its repetitive challenge to us, this passage puts me in mind of an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Preparing to save the world yet again, a weary Buffy has this exchange with Giles, her Watcher:

Buffy: How many apocalypses is this now?
Giles: About six, I think.
Buffy: Feels like a hundred.

The season of Advent gives us the apocalypse each year not only so that we might recognize it, should it come, but also—and perhaps especially—that we might enter more mindfully into our present landscape and perceive the signs of how God is working out God’s longing in the world here and now. The root meaning of the word apocalypse, after all, is revelation. And God is, in every time and season, about the work of revealing God’s presence. The one who came to us two millennia ago as Emmanuel, God-with-us, and who spoke of a time when he would come again in fullness, reveals himself even now in our midst, calling us to see all the guises in which he goes about in this world.

Advent reminds us, year in and year out, that although we are to keep a weather eye out for cosmic signs, we must, like the fig tree that Jesus evokes in this passage, be rooted in the life of the earth. And in the rhythm of our daily lives here on earth, Christ bids us to practice the apocalypse. He calls us in each day and moment to do the things that will stir up our courage and keep us grounded in God, not only that we may perceive Christ when he comes, but also that we may recognize him even now. There is a sense, after all, in which we as Christians live the apocalypse on a daily basis. Amid the destruction and devastation that are ever taking place in the world, Christ beckons us to perceive and to participate in the ways that he is already seeking to bring redemption and healing for the whole of creation.

As we enter the season of Advent, and spiral yet again around the landscape that this first Sunday gives to us, how might Christ be inviting you to practice the apocalypse? What are the habits that keep you centered in God, that sharpen your vision, and that help you recognize the presence of Christ in this world? How do you participate in the redemption that God is ever working to bring about within creation? What is it that you long for in these Advent days?

Blessings and peace to you in this coming season.

[For last year’s reflection on Mark’s version of this passage, visit Through the Door.]

[To use the image “Apocalypse, Again,” 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, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, religion, sacred time | 9 Comments »

Tangled Up in You

December 25, 2008

advent-door-blog-2008-cmasb
Tangled Up in You © Jan L. Richardson

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

Of all the artful treasures passed down in the Christian tradition, some of the most amazing are the early medieval Gospel books from Ireland and its neighbors. The Book of Kells, the Book of Durrow, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Gospels of St. Chad: fashioned by monks living in such places as Iona and Lindisfarne between the seventh and tenth centuries, these and other Gospel books offer a remarkable testament to the power of the Word to inspire devotion and beauty. Monks undertook the creation of these books as an act of prayer, lavishing their artful attention on the pages over the course of months and years. They drenched the pages with colors derived from the things of the earth: flowers and seeds and leaves, precious stones and minerals, even inks made from insects.

A distinctive feature of the Celtic Gospel books is the intricate knotwork that adorns the pages. Serving not merely as decoration, the knotwork connects the words and images so intricately that the boundary between them breaks down: words become images become words. All manner of forms and symbols twist through and among the knots, telling their own stories: animals and angels, crosses, chalices brimming with vines, and human figures including Christ, Mary, and the four evangelists. Some of the knotwork marries the silly with the sublime. Mice play tug-of-war with a Communion wafer, cats bound from page to page, intertwined men tug at one another’s beards. And everywhere there are books, reminding the viewer not only of the power of the Gospel but also of the enduring presence of the Word who took flesh and became incarnate in this world, a living Word for all to read.

The most ornate pages of these Gospel books are labyrinths that beckon readers to enter the mysteries of this Word, to lose themselves and find themselves again within the twisting pathways of the Gospel story. These volumes not only stand as a stunning sacrifice of skill and devotion; they also offer a way of approaching the Gospel story. With their intricate and intimate interplay of words and images, the Gospel books proclaim the story of the God who came to become entangled with us. Page by page, knot by knot, they tell the good news of the God who desires to be thoroughly intertwined with us.

The intricacy of these books testifies to the complexities of the Gospel story. With roots that twist deep into the Hebrew scriptures, the Gospel texts have layers of meaning that we can hardly begin to understand if we have not studied the texts that came before them. Symbols, stories, patterns of God’s relationship with God’s people, the ancient hopes and struggles and journeys that the people of God have undertaken: all of the tales and literary traditions that the Gospel writers inherited helped to inspire and inform the stories that they told. The Celtic Gospel books acknowledge this, intertwining pre-Christian imagery and allusions with symbolism drawn from the New Testament. The very design of these books serves to confound our assumptions that we entirely understand what their Gospel texts contain. With their complicated pathways, intricate knots, and dizzying spirals, these books remind us that the Christian life is an ongoing journey of initiation, and one that only grows more mysterious and complex the deeper we go.

For all its complexities, however, at times the Gospel story stuns us with its simplicity. It startles us with the clarity by which it reflects and speaks to our ancient human yearnings and fears and hopes. So it is with the story we hear on this day. In a dark time, John tells us in his gospel, God came to us. God put on flesh and was born among us. And this God is life. And this God is light. For all people.

And the light shines in the darkness.

And the darkness did not overcome it.

God came to get tangled up with us, to become entwined with us, to be knitted and knotted into our lives. The knots are not always tidy. I can admire the wondrous and beautiful patterns that the Celtic artists accomplished, but the patterns and entanglements of my own life, and my own art, tend to be far less orderly. Yet amid the complexities and complications and conundrums that life offers us, God twists and turns, walking the labyrinth with us and helping us find our way through.

On this Christmas Day, where do you find yourself on the twisting path? How do you experience the God who desires to be intertwined among all the elements of your life? Are there any tangles that could do with some attention? How might it be to invite God into those? If you were to paint or draw or collage the pattern of your life right now, what would it look like? What story, what good news, does that pattern contain and proclaim?

On this and all days, may you know the presence of the God who came to us and who goes with us still, entangling us and entwining us. I am grateful to you for sharing this Advent path, and I invite you to continue to journey with me as I return to The Painted Prayerbook, exploring the intertwining of words and images in the year to come. Blessings and deep blessings to you. Merry Christmas!

[For last year’s reflection on this passage, visit Door 25: The Book of Beginnings.]

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

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Posted in Advent, art, Christmas, Gospel of John, lectionary, medieval, religion | 8 Comments »

Christmas Eve: Longing for Light

December 24, 2008

advent-door-blog-2008-cmas
Who Walked in Darkness © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, Christmas Eve: Isaiah 9.2-7

Some years ago, I wrote a prayer for one of my books in which I asked that in those times when we are so focused on providing hospitality to others that we neglect ourselves, God would help us to tend the pilgrim in our own souls “who longs for a welcoming fire and for shelter in the dark.” While the book was in production, I received a note from one of the folks who was working on it, asking me to change that line, as the publishing house avoided the use of language suggesting that darkness was bad.

I understood the concern, being familiar with the ways our culture has long equated lightness and whiteness with goodness, and darkness and blackness with evil. That’s part of what the book was addressing in the first place. With the title Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, the book was something of a hymn to the deity who dwells in darkness as well as in daylight, the God who challenges us to search and know with all our senses and not just with our eyes, the Holy One who says, “I will give you the treasures of darkness, and riches hidden in secret places” (Isaiah 45.3).

I told the person at the publishing house that, committed though I am to finding the presence of God in the dark, I think it’s fair to want a little light sometimes, and to desire a place of shelter when shadows have fallen across the path.

I think it’s fair to want a LOT of light from time to time. I mean, it’s crazy, what’s asked of us: to live in a world, a cosmos, in which we know so little; to have faith that there is meaning and purpose and a sacred pattern in the chaos; to move forward without being able to see what’s ahead; to follow a God who lives in layers of mystery. It’s nuts for God to ask us to reach beyond our natural instinct toward self-absorption and attend to those around us, to extend hospitality to those who are strangers, to organize ourselves into functioning communities when history has shown us how difficult this is to sustain. How audacious, how wild of God to think we can even begin to do any of this.

And I think God knows this, too, knows how impossible it sometimes seems to live in this world that is strange and difficult as well as wondrous. And so God works to shine some light our way. In this season we celebrate God’s bright impulse in a big way, and with song and story and prayer and ritual we rejoice at the ways that God has illuminated our world. The passage from Isaiah that we read on Christmas Eve gives perhaps the most gorgeous words for what we celebrate on this day:

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them has light shined….
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named Wonderful Counselor…
Prince of Peace.

The light that Isaiah speaks about: the light that breaks the yoke, the bar, and the rod of the oppressor; the light that consumes the trappings of war; the light that comes in the form of a child of peace: yes, God, more of this light, please.

It’s important to note that the texts that originated with our Jewish forebears, the texts that Christians usually call the Old Testament, can stand on their own. They do not take on meaning for the people of Christ solely by our reading and interpreting them with our Christian eyes. What Isaiah offers here are powerful words for those in darkness in any time, in any place.

At the same time it’s right that we in the Christian tradition find particular hope, solace, and meaning in these words on this day. The vivid, brilliant imagery of Isaiah undergirds and resonates with and gives poetic expression to the images and stories that we receive from the other texts that we hear this week. He prepares us to hear the astonishing story of what has come in the person of Christ. Isaiah reminds us that the longing for light is an ancient human longing. He assures us that in the presence of the darkness of this world—be it friendly darkness or foul—God is present, working to help us know God more clearly and to live together with deeper compassion, justice, and peace.

May the light that we celebrate this Christmas help us to see, to widen our vision to all the ways that God shows up in darkness and in the day. When you have need of it, may you find a welcoming fire and shelter in the shadows, and may we offer these in turn. Blessings to you on this Christmas Eve and all the days—and nights—to come.

[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, Book of Isaiah, Christmas, lectionary, religion | 1 Comment »

Where the Foreign Meets the Familiar

December 23, 2008


Glory © Jan L. Richardson

Reading from the Gospels, Christmas Eve: Luke 2.1-20

Last weekend I finally put up my nativity set. I usually do this much earlier in the season, but this year found me laggardly. Perhaps it was the intense pace, or maybe it had to do with getting sick, or possibly it owed to the fact that it’s been really warm here in Florida, which, even for someone who absorbs herself in the Advent season, poses something of a challenge to getting in a holiday mood. Whatever the reason for my tardiness, the nativity players have finally taken their places.

It’s a sweet set, very petite, with figures about 3” high. Perfectly scaled to my studio apartment. I have a much larger set, a gorgeous one that was hand-built by a potter who used to have a studio near where I grew up, but when I toppled a couple of the pieces several Christmases ago as I was rounding my one-and-only table to get to my one-and-only closet, I decided to put it away until I had a proportionately larger place to house it. My parents, who had given me the larger set as a Christmas present, gave me the petite one as well, after I picked it out at a shop where they live that specializes in fair trade items. Made by artisans in Peru, the set depicts a Peruvian nativity. The shepherds wear knitted Peruvian hats (the kind that fit close to the head, with flaps that cover the ears; I have one that my friend Eric gave me when he lived in Peru; sadly, it won’t get much use as long as I live in the tropics). I’m not entirely sure what two of the wise men are carrying, but the third is definitely bringing a chicken to the Holy Family. Mary kneels before Jesus (who wears a little hat just like the shepherds’) as a somewhat worried Joseph hovers nearby, leaning on a staff. And of course a Peruvian ox and donkey look on, exuding a sense of calm.

I love seeing the Christmas story—and the broader biblical narrative—depicted in various cultures, with the characters appearing in a way that challenges my vision and unsettles my stereotypes. That’s part of what draws me to the work of artists such as He Qi, for instance, and to Manuel Garcia Moia, a Nicaraguan artist whose painting Gift of the Magi depicts a Nicaraguan scene in which the wise men offer an armadillo, a rabbit, and—I think it’s an iguana-? Particularly for those of us acculturated to envision the Christmas story in which the characters have blond hair and blue eyes, viewing the nativity narrative in a different context helps us to reimagine the story and to consider how the incarnation continues to occur amid the daily life of every culture in every place.

At the same time, the very familiarity of the Christmas story conjures memories that go deep. Each year, as I spiral back around the narrative that I have heard for more than four decades, remembrances of other Christmases come to the surface. This year some of the landscape of memory will take concrete form once again as I enact the rituals and habits that have shaped earlier holidays: the Christmas Eve service at the white painted church in the pines of my hometown, where the children will dress up for their own manger scene, after which Santa Claus will arrive (don’t ask; that’s how they’ve always done it); Christmas morning brunch (featuring homemade biscuits and sticky buns) with family friends; Christmas dinner at the home of my brother and sister-in-law, who live in the house that he and my sister and I grew up in. When I arrive at my parents’ in a few hours, they will have the nativity from my childhood set up, with a few extra pieces that my whimsical mother has added in more recent years: a giraffe and a moose are now among the creatures who attend the newborn Jesus.

I’m enacting some of my less pleasant holiday habits as well; I haven’t quite finished my shopping (I’m almost done, really), and I’m late as usual getting out of town. But even in an overfull day in an overfull season, there have been small wonders of the sort that spring up in the places where the familiar meets the unexpected.

Christmas offers a microcosm of what we’re called to in the Christian life. These days invite us to attend to the stories that help us know where we came from and what we’re about. As we listen, we are challenged to enter the deep familiarity of these stories that have been given to us. At the same time, these oh-so-familiar tales urge us to see how the Christmas narrative continues to unfold in our world, and to recognize when holy ones enter into our midst. They may come bearing good news of great joy, or in desperate need of hospitality, or offering a gift that only they could bring.

In this season, in any season, will we recognize them? Will we have the eyes to see how the story of the incarnation, the tale of Emmanuel, God-with-us, continues to play out in places both foreign and familiar?

As we draw near to Christmas Day, may we find something to comfort us and something to challenge us as we enter the story once again. May we, with the angels, have cause to sing of glory and peace. Blessings!

[For last year’s reflection on this passage, visit Door 24: The Secret Room.]

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

Visit ◊The Advent Door◊ home.

Posted in Advent, art, Christmas, lectionary, religion | 4 Comments »

Festival of Lights

December 21, 2008


Winter Solstice © Jan L. Richardson

Happy Winter Solstice to you! (And a joyous Summer Solstice to my neighbors in the Southern Hemisphere!) Around the world, nearly every culture has a celebration during the darkest time of the year. Typically it’s some form of a Festival of Lights, an occasion to find illumination and cheer in a time of shadows and to anticipate the return of the sun. Today I’m particularly mindful of my Jewish sisters and brothers who will begin their celebration of Hanukkah at sundown this evening.

On this solstice day, here’s one memory of a winter’s celebration:

Festival of Lights

We are dancing in the streets of the city of my college years. The downtown is lit up for the holidays, and the music blares as our feet repeatedly hit the hard surface of the street. Tomorrow we will long for hot baths to soak the soreness from our legs, but tonight we are dancing at the Festival of Lights.

In the years to come I will learn how necessary it is to keep dancing, how celebration is not a luxury but a staple of life, how in the grimmest moments I will need to take myself down to the closest festival at hand. I will go not to drown my sorrow or to mask my despair or to ignore the real suffering of the world or of my own self. I will go to beat out the message with my feet that in the darkness we are dancing, and while we are weeping we are dancing, and our legs are aching but we are dancing. And under the night sky we are dancing; lighting a match to the shadows, we are dancing; starting to sing when they have stopped the music, we are dancing; sending shock waves with our feet to the other side of the world, we are dancing still.

As we tilt toward the bright half of the year (or toward the dark in the south), may you find much to give you cause for celebration. Blessings!

[Reflection from Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas © Jan L. Richardson.]

[To use the “Winter Solstice” 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, religion, sacred time | Leave a Comment »

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