Tangled Up in You

December 25, 2008 by Jan Richardson

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!]

Visit ◊The Advent Door◊ home.

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

Christmas Eve: Longing for Light

December 24, 2008 by Jan Richardson

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 by Jan Richardson


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 by Jan Richardson


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 »

Home for the Holidays

December 19, 2008 by Jan Richardson

Image: A Home for God © Jan Richardson

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

Thanks so much for the blessings and good wishes and virtual treats I’ve received while being out of commission this week. They continue to be good medicine for body and soul. Cootie Girl is on the mend and slowly easing back into the swing of things. I have to say that while I would like to have been the determiner of my down time (and I really had been planning to have some anyway this week, honest), getting sick in the thick of Advent is not without its benefits.

Advent shares common ground with Lent in that, as a season of preparation, it invites us to a time of reflection and to let go of what insulates us from God. Caught up as many of us tend to be in the intensities of the pre-Christmas pace, doing that reflective work sometimes gets lost along the way. When feeling my worst this week I didn’t feel much like reflecting (I didn’t feel much like doing anything at all), and I don’t want to put too much of a philosophical or theological shine on feeling crummy, but it was instructive to be confronted with such an interruption of my plans, and to look through some doors that opened in a way I hadn’t orchestrated.

At my ickiest I didn’t even feel like reading, which for me is really saying something, but later in the week I did spend some time with a few of my art books. I figured that even if I was taking a break from producing I could at least feed my eyes and fill my creative well a bit. One of the books I pulled off the shelf was a delicious tome of a book titled Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-1557), published to accompany a major exhibition of the same name that was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2004. As with the exhibition, the book gathers a massive and stunning collection of artful artifacts from the Byzantine Empire, whose capital was Constantinople, and presents them by categories including sculpture, liturgical implements, icons, illuminated manuscripts, and liturgical textiles.

Yum.

As I paged through the lavish illustrations, it occurred to me that each medium to which these medieval artists gave themselves was their way of making a home for God. The book, the bowl, the icon; the triptych opening to reveal holy faces worn by centuries of lips pressed in reverence; chalice and paten, reliquary and sanctuary: each form offered an invitation to the sacred, beckoning it to draw close and be perceived, touched, kissed, met. These artists knew that we cannot capture or contain God within any medium. Their creations reveal instead their desire to offer, amid the strangeness of being in this world, a habitation for the God who calls us here.

It’s this kind of desire that we encounter in this week’s reading from Luke 1.26-38. The story of the annunciation to Mary tells us of how, with her own body, Mary makes a home for God. The medium of her own flesh becomes a habitation for the holy. It’s not simply her willingness to become pregnant and give birth to Jesus, however, that makes Mary someone who provides a dwelling for God. When Gabriel greets her, he says to her, “The Lord is with you.” Already God has found a home with her.

In response to Mary’s perplexed query about how it can be that she will bear a child, Gabriel tells her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” His words provide a dramatic resonance with last week’s reading from Isaiah, in which the prophet proclaims, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners…” By her assent, her not merely willing but audacious yes, Mary sets in motion these very actions and others that Isaiah lists. Liberty, release, healing, an end to oppression: these are the wonders that Mary goes on to sing about in the Magnificat that we hear this week: the actions of a God who brings restoration and redemption to a world that has become deeply disordered.

Mary’s yes to Gabriel, her assent to God, her willingness to make a home for the divine within her own self: these all give the lie to a history that has too often depicted her as meek and mild. Her response to God, and the work that she takes up, are the actions of a prophet, in the ancient Hebrew sense of it: one who recognizes the presence of God in the world, who points it out to others, who does not give up hope that the people will come to know God. Meekness and mildness are not enough to sustain Mary in the prophetic work God has called her to do.

Her actions are not only prophetic, but priestly as well. I remember what a jolt I received one day in seminary as I sat among the stacks in the theology library, reading an article I had just found titled “Mary and the Eucharist: an oriental perspective.” The author, Orthodox theologian Sebastian Brock, limns the links between the Mother of God and the sacrament of Eucharist. He notes, for instance, that in the Liturgy of St. James (one of the Eucharistic liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox tradition), the priest prays to God to “send your Spirit so that he may overshadow and make this bread into the life-giving Body, the saving Body, the heavenly Body, the Body which brings salvation to our souls and bodies, the body of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ….”

Overshadow. The word that tells what the Spirit does within Mary, now used to describe what the Spirit does in the sacrament of the table, not only within the bread but also within us. Overshadow, inhabit, dwell: this is how the Spirit works, seeking to make a home among us. One that is not an exclusive residence or a walled shelter, either; we hear, after all, Paul’s words to the Romans this week, in which he writes of “the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed” (from Romans 16.25-27). It is a spacious home that, like Mary, we are challenged to offer: a dwelling that reveals the presence of God rather than hiding it away.

So how is God seeking to make a home in you in this season? What audacious yes might God be inviting you to offer? How does making a home for the sacred help you find a place for yourself in this world? What sustains you in this prophetic, priestly work?

In this and every season, may we, like Mary, be a home for the God who desires to dwell with us. Blessings.

[For another reflection on the Annunciation, visit Getting the Message.]

[To use the image “A Home for God,” 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, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, medieval, religion | 1 Comment »

Merry Cootiemas

December 16, 2008 by Jan Richardson

In an unwelcome Advent surprise, I am truly sick for the first time in years. So much so that I actually went to the doctor this afternoon, which I hardly ever do in between annual visits. The nurse called me Cootie Girl. (I like her, I didn’t mind, except I could do without having cooties in the first place.)

Going against my natural tendency to plow ahead (which may have contributed to how I got here in the first place), I’m giving myself a break. Getting plenty of rest and drinking lots of fluids, like Mom says.

I’m aiming to return before long with some new art and reflections, so please don’t go away. Cootie Girl is not contagious in cyberspace. In the meantime, I’m reprising a couple of posts from last year that offer art and words for the two lectionary readings from Luke that turn up this week as well. Scroll on down to check them out.

And if you can figure out how to email me some homemade chicken soup…

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

Mary, Magnifier

December 16, 2008 by Jan Richardson

Image: Magnificat © Jan Richardson

Canticle, Advent 4: Luke 1.47-55

Instead of giving us the expected psalm among this week’s readings, the lectionary offers us a song from the Gospels: the Magnificat. Taking its name from the Latin version of its first line, Magnificat anima mea Dominum (“My soul magnifies the Lord,” NRSV), this is an ancient song of praise that we hear on the lips of Mary, the woman who will give birth to Christ.

Mary’s Magnificat joins an intriguing treasure trove of scriptural songs that are commonly known as canticles. Spanning both testaments, the canticles are present in almost every form of biblical literature, including the preaching of the prophets (in joy as well as in lamentation), the wisdom sayings, historical narratives, epistles, and apocalyptic visions. These songs both interrupt and adorn the text; the imagery and rhythms of their poetry heighten and illuminate the drama of the passages in which they are embedded. Though ranging across the entire Bible, the canticles form a textual body of their own. Along with the Psalms, they offer a vibrant core of poetry from which the church for centuries has drawn to give voice to our joy, sorrow, praise, and hope.

In her essay in The Canticles (a collection published by Liturgy Training Publications more than a decade ago—and later suppressed, but that’s another story), Irene Nowell, OSB, writes of how the canticles “function like a bridge between telling our story and turning to God in prayer. In form and style,” she observes,

they resemble psalms, but they differ from the psalms in their setting…. These prayers are set in the mouths of specific people in specific situations. They both interrupt the flow of the story and add to its meaning. They are bridges over the gap between life and prayer.

I keep this collection of the canticles on a small table by my door. Usually I leave it open to one of the wonderfully haunting monotype prints that artist Linda Ekstrom created to adorn its pages. But for the past couple of days it’s been open to the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary, the song in praise of the God who turns the world upside down.

Mary offers this song in response to a blessing. Luke tells us that when Mary finds herself alone in the wake of the archangel Gabriel’s visit, she goes “with haste” to see her kinswoman Elizabeth, who is experiencing a strange pregnancy herself. As soon as she hears Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth intuits what has taken place, and she lays a mighty blessing on Mary for how she is participating in the work of God. “Blessed are you among women,” Elizabeth cries, “and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Elizabeth continues in a powerful benedictory vein for some verses.

In response, Mary sings.

My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor
on the lowliness of his servant…
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the
thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful
from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly. (Luke 1, excerpts)

I find this scene among the most potent in all of scripture. The image of Elizabeth offering her words of blessing, and Mary responding with song: this moment epitomizes the power of the act of blessing. With her gesture of grace, Elizabeth the Blesser challenges us toward similar action: to recognize where God is working in the world, and to participate in bringing this work to completion.

The blessed Mary sings about the God who is doing a new thing, but her song is not entirely original. Within its cadences we hear the ghostly echo of a more ancient song. In one of the first canticles to appear in the scriptures, a woman named Hannah offers praise to God for responding to her plea for a child. After she leaves her long-awaited son Samuel at the Temple to begin his training as a nazirite, Hannah sings, in part:

My heart exults in the Lord;
my strength is exalted in my God.
My mouth derides my enemies,
because I rejoice in my victory…

The Lord makes poor and and makes rich;
he brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
he lifts up the needy from the ash heap,
to make them sit with princes
and inherit a seat of honor. (1 Sam. 2.1, 7-8b)

With a voice of longing and exultation that links them across the generations, both women are singing not only about pregnancy and physical birth. For Hannah and for Mary, the massive change within them is linked to a radical transformation beyond them. There is a congruence between what God has stirred within them—in their wombs, in their souls—and what God is stirring in the world.

I find myself wondering about that kind of congruence, and how God is calling it forth in my own life. Regardless of whether we’re called to give birth to physical children, God challenges us to cultivate an interior spirit that is intimately linked with the world beyond us. In this Advent season, what’s stirring inside me that connects me with the world around me? What is God seeking to bring forth in my life that enables me to participate in the transformation that God is working in all creation? And how is God challenging me to be both Elizabeth, Blesser, and Mary, Blessed?

I think I’ll leave my copy of The Canticles open to the Magnificat for a while yet, on its table by my door. In these Advent days, perhaps the words of Mary’s ancient song will be a visible blessing—invocation, benediction—as I pass back and forth across the threshold, from exterior to interior and back again.

May you have cause to sing today. Blessings.

[For a further reflection on the Magnificat, visit Door 14: Remembering Forward.]

[To use the image “Magnificat,” 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, Christmas, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, poetry, religion | Leave a Comment »

Getting the Message

December 16, 2008 by Jan Richardson

Image: Getting the Message © Jan Richardson

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

One of the things that intrigues me about medieval artwork is the way that it has its own stories to tell. In depicting biblical scenes (which provided the material for so much artwork in the Middle Ages), medieval artists sometimes incorporated visual stories that we don’t find in the Bible. Though without an actual scriptural basis, the symbolic text the medieval artists gave us can engage the imagination, raise questions, and illuminate a given story beyond what the written text provides. It works something like an artful midrash that invites us to imagine the worlds between the words.

Here’s my favorite example. In many medieval (and Renaissance) depictions of the Annunciation—that moment when the archangel Gabriel comes to Mary to ask her to become the mother of Jesus—Mary is depicted reading. (The chronic reader in me loves this.) Usually she’s depicted with a book that indicates that she’s at her prayers when Gabriel shows up. Sometimes, in a wonderful bit of anachronism, it’s a Book of Hours that Mary is reading. (The Book of Hours was a popular prayerbook in the Middle Ages. Often lavishly illustrated, Books of Hours always included a section of prayers in honor of Mary, with artwork that illustrates scenes from her life…including the Annunciation, in which the artists depict her reading…a Book of Hours…) Other times, her book is open to Isaiah, specifically to the passage in which the prophet says this to King Ahaz:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. (Isaiah 7.14)

The Christian tradition came to interpret this passage as a foretelling of the birth of Jesus, God-with-us, to Mary. In depicting her reading this very text, the medieval artists did some intriguing time-twisting, opening an imaginative portal between the sign given to King Ahaz and the miracle given to Mary.

Though the image of Mary reading at the moment of the Annunciation doesn’t appear in the biblical text, I love this artful notion of the reading, praying Mary. It reveals something of the medieval view of Mary, and it offers evidence of a kind of visual lectio divina the artists did as they pondered Mary’s story. In depicting her with a prayerbook or with the sacred text of her tradition, the artists conveyed the compelling idea that Mary was already immersed in the word before the Word became immersed in her.

This image of Mary challenges me to ponder what texts—written or otherwise—I’m steeping myself in. What words, what images do I give my attention to: on the page, in conversation, in the course of my daily life? In a culture that inundates and sometimes assaults our eyes and ears with messages in all manner of forms, how do we read in a way that keeps us attuned to the sacred?

Am I, like the medieval Mary, immersing myself in the word in a way that helps me notice when a divine messenger shows up with an outrageous invitation? That’s what the word angel means in the original Greek: one who comes with a message. How do I cultivate an openness to that message, to the Word that longs to find a home in me, in us?

Blessings to you.

[To use the image “Getting the Message,” 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, Gospel of Luke, lectionary, medieval, religion | 1 Comment »

Raising the Ruins

December 14, 2008 by Jan Richardson

Image: Raising the Ruins © Jan Richardson

Reading from the Hebrew Scriptures, Advent 3: Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11

They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations.
—Isaiah 61.4

When I made my trip to Rome several years ago, one of the things that fascinated me was the presence of ruins. The Eternal City offers a layered landscape; everywhere we went, the strata of history were visible to us. Past and present inhabit the terrain as companions. I had more than one occasion to wander around the Forum, where there’s a particularly high concentration of ancient ruins: basilicas, triumphal arches, temples of gods and goddesses, the House of the Vestal Virgins.

I’ve been mentally revisiting those ruins as I’ve contemplated this week’s passage from Isaiah 61. The text overwhelms with its imagery of repair and restoration; the author lavishes the reader with his stunning litany that lists the ways that God will bring healing and release to those in captivity of various kinds. To those who have lived with imprisonment, oppression, and grief, the writer offers a prophecy of how they will receive garlands instead of ashes, the oil of gladness, the mantle of praise. He tells of how God has garbed him with the garments of salvation and covered him with a robe of righteousness like a bridegroom decked with a garland, like a bride who adorns herself with jewels. There is further visual fare: “For as the earth brings forth its shoots,” he exults, “and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before the nations.”

In the midst of this dizzying litany, the writer tells of how those whom God heals and frees “shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” It was this image, amongst the many that he drenches us with, to which I kept returning as I pondered this passage. And it was the Roman ruins that I thought of, those leavings that persist in the present landscape, reminding their visitors of what has gone before.

I wonder what it does to a person’s psyche to live in a place that’s old enough to have ruins, how it is to be perpetually reminded that we humans are part of a pattern of history. And I wonder what it does to a psyche, and to a soul, to live in a landscape that is largely devoid of ruins—in the typical sense of them, at least—as those of us living in the United States largely do. The absence of ruins makes it more challenging to remember how we inhabit our history, and to recognize and reckon with what haunts us. The ruins we do have, we tend to hide: the burned-out buildings, the falling-down dwellings, the places not considered worth building up. We route traffic around them, or sometimes construct walls along the freeways so those who pass by don’t have to see them.

It’s easy to become romantic about ruins when they are ancient, when they are lovely, and when we have a less immediate sense of the events that brought about their ruination. In the absence of really knowing those who first lived among them, it’s tempting to project our own ideas and imaginings onto what is left behind and to smooth away the sharp edges of memory. Largely removed from the visible past, we don’t have to wrestle with it so much.

But there are plenty of ruins that we carry inside, individually and collectively. It’s sometimes harder to see them, more difficult to discern the interior terrain of people and families and communities and churches marked by loss, abandonment, struggle, private battles, migration.

What does it mean to rebuild those ruins? When it comes to the losses and devastations that we harbor within us, how do we discern what God might be inviting us to restore?

Rebuilding a ruin, literal or metaphorical, doesn’t allow for much nostalgia. Doing the work of restoration—redeeming a place instead of living with its remnants—gives us little room to hold on to the way things were, or how we thought they were. Reclaiming a ruin—tangible, intangible—challenges us to go into the rubble and to see clearly what yet remains: to discern what is yet solid, to find walls that can bear weight, to sort through the debris and retrieve what we can use. Rebuilding a ruin calls upon our imagination in a deeper, sharper way that romanticizing it does. To restore what has been destroyed, we have to resist seeing the landscape only the way it was, and learn to imagine what is possible now.

Isaiah has gotten me thinking about what has fallen into ruin in my life, and what God might be inviting me to rebuild. How about you? Is there a broken relationship, an abandoned project, a dream you left behind? How do you discern where God might be calling you to begin the work of restoration? Not all ruins are meant for redemption, after all; some are best to flee. How do we tell the difference? What helps us see the ruins clearly and to resist the hazards they may hold: the overabundance of nostalgia that keeps us from imagining what is yet possible in that place (or some better place), or the enchantments that deter us from moving on, or the pain that clouds our vision?

Luke tells us in his Gospel that when Jesus got up to speak in the synagogue, he opened the scroll to this passage from Isaiah and, after reading it, told his hearers that on this day, the scripture had been fulfilled (Luke 4.16-30). In this season and beyond, may you know the presence of the one who came as the embodiment of redemption and restoration. Blessings.

[To use the image “Raising the Ruins,” 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 | 4 Comments »

The Day of the Lady

December 12, 2008 by Jan Richardson


The Day of the Lady © Jan L. Richardson

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe! This day commemorates the appearances of Mary to a man named Juan Diego between December 9-12, 1531, in Mexico. Known by various names including the Mother or Patroness of the Americas and La Virgen Morena (The Brown-skinned Virgin), Our Lady of Guadalupe is a culturally unique and passionately beloved manifestation of Mary.

According to the legend, Our Lady of Guadalupe made her appearance to Juan Diego about a decade following the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores, who brought with them, among other things, the practice of Roman Catholicism. An early convert to the new faith, Juan Diego was walking from his village toward what is now Mexico City when, on a hillside, the Virgin appeared to him and, speaking in Diego’s native language of Nahuatl, told him to take a message to the bishop that a sanctuary should be built on that site. Diego made several visits to Bishop Zumárraga, who was naturally skeptical of this peasant man. Finally the bishop asked for a sign. The Virgin provided one. Sending Juan Diego to the top of Tepeyac Hill, Mary told him to pick the roses he would find there. Gathering the out-of-season blooms in his tilma (cloak), he set out once again to see the bishop. When Juan Diego opened his tilma in the presence of Bishop Zumárraga, the stunning December roses spilled forth, but Mary had one more miracle in store: to the amazement of those present, the empty tilma bore an image of the Virgin.

The Lady received her sanctuary.

In the succeeding centuries, controversies have attended the Virgin of Guadalupe, including disputes over the authenticity of her appearances and of the image on the tilma, which still survives. Her role as an indigenous manifestation of Mary receives much attention; emerging from the encounter of native Mexican religion with the Catholicism of the conquistadores, she is perceived by some as a sort of syncretistic, Christianized goddess. Whatever her origins and meanings, Our Lady of Guadalupe persists as a powerful presence of hope and a beloved sign of Mary’s love for the Americas.

In a bookstore several years ago, I picked up a small volume titled Felicidad de México. Published in 1995 to commemorate the centennial of the coronation of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the book is in Spanish, which I understand muy poquito and read just barely enough to be dangerous. I got it for the pictures. Filled with wonderful images of Mary, the pages offer many versions of the apparition of Guadalupe. In these depictions, the blue-cloaked Mary wears a crown, hovers above an angel-held crescent moon, and shimmers in a penumbra of sunlight with rays like knife blades. Always, there are roses.

Here at the midpoint of Advent, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe invites us to keep our eyes open for the variety of guises in which the sacred shows up. This day beckons us, too, to be mindful of our connections with sisters and brothers of the global church. On this day I am asking myself, To a world in which God is laboring to be born, what difference does my Advent journey make? And what wisdom might the Mother of God have to offer me about that?

A blessed feast day to you! May something miraculous come your way.

[To use the “Day of the Lady” 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, Christmas, religion, sacred time | 3 Comments »

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