The Dawn From On High
This Advent Season…
The Dawn From On High
A brief daily meditation to help us stay awake and aware, to make this a season of hope and expectation—and not of hype and exhaustion. Look for these reflections—every day in Advent.
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What Time Is It?
In the Sunday school chapel at Saint Luke’s Parish, my former congregation, there was a Calendar of the Church Year, a giant clock with colored segments marking the different seasons and a hand that swept around that clock, ticking off the 52 Sundays of the year. Twelve o’clock is blue Advent, then a tiny white […]
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Luring the Squirrel
“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” When I was in graduate school many years ago, I spent whole days at my desk. One day a squirrel skittered across the porch roof, peered in my window, then rushed away. I was fascinated by […]
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How Not To Be a Zombie
The first candle of Advent is lit. Something is about to happen, something essential to life. Yet most of us will fall asleep and miss the shining moment. So Jesus says, “Keep awake.” You don’t know what time this will happen. No one can tell you the day and the hour. No matter how smart you […]
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Hope is Not Optimism
This is Advent, the season of hope, but hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism needs some bit of good news to go on, to extrapolate from. Hope burns even in moments when nothing in the circumstances would suggest any reason for optimism. Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, once spoke of Adam […]
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Something Greater
ADVENT: DAY TWO The great cry of Advent is maranatha, an Aramaic exclamation dear to early Christians. It means, “O Lord, come!” The first believers had seen the death of Jesus and received the promise of his coming again. They lived with an imminent sense of Christ’s return, yet they did not see it, nor did […]
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Whisper Wow
ADVENT: DAY ONE The house lights go off and the footlights come on. Even the chattiest stop chattering as they wait in darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the violin bows are poised. The conductor has raised his baton. In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the […]
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Just in Time for Advent–a Daily Series
Advent is just days away. It’s my very favorite season and I’m delighted this year to offer a reflection for every day of Advent. The series is called “The Dawn From on High.” Each day’s brief reflection will appear here, so look for a bit of quiet, question and wonder to help you stay awake […]
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Chop Wood
“Purity of heart is to will one thing.” -Soren Kierkegaard Winter is coming and I am splitting wood and stacking it in three sheds. Each log is slightly different. Some are straight and clean, some are gnarled with knots where the wood swirls and the clean grain is lost. Where to set the cleaver on […]
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You Can Dance
The history of religion is basically a story of people trying to become holier than God. Last Saturday night I was dancing. It was a wedding—not some dance club for serious shimmiers, not dancing with any stars, just a wedding. But I was dancing, and that’s still a big deal for me. Because I didn’t […]