AventWord::Celebrate

Celebrate
Christmas is a feast of the senses! It is a celebration of our ability to see and know and taste and touch the power and glory and revelation of God. It is not just about a birth that happened long, long ago and far, far away. It is about the way in which God manifests himself to us in the person of Jesus as friend and food and hope and love. It is a celebration of our ability to grasp God and to sense him with all our being.

-Br. James Koester

However you celebrate The Glorious Holiday, may you be filled with joy and peace knowing the earth shook and history changed for ever on the day the Savior was born, Emmanuel. May love permeate each fiber of your being and may you have fun in the celebration.

When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy. And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him.  Matthew 2:10

AdventWord::Prune

Prune
We prune to let go of growth, letting die what is alive but not growing in the best direction. We prune to let go of death, letting go what is dead but still taking up space. Pruning is a form of dying in order for the tree to more fully live and bear more fruit.

-Br. Luke Ditewig

I'm a big believer in pruning. God has taught me so very much about my life while at the tasks of the garden. I see the hard cut back of January as the first step toward the blooms of spring. 

The first time I cut roses back I did it by the book. I did the pruning. Gingerly. And then my beautiful rose-tender-of-a-neighbor, Bob, came over and told me to go harder. Angling my pruning sheers properly and removing all but about 14" of the plant, I cut, believing in his urging, kinda. A few months later, the roses were gorgeous and profuse.

Pruning then, applies well in my life. Cut back, even what's alive but not growing in the best direction. All of it becomes fodder for the sheers. Unnecessary complexities, clusters of "do," the things I take on, the stuff I collect, that thing that is dead and taking up space. Not as simple and pure as the garden work, certainly. 

Christ speaks these words in John 15:  “1 I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. 3 You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

5 “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. 7 But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! 8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.

9 “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10 When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you." 

Reflecting and consuming these concepts, I have to place it all on the Gardener's altar. Allow His wisdom and love to show me where to make the cut and which angle to use so that new growth is not halted, but prepared in the right season. The waiting is not without anxiousness, but filled with joyful expectation.

AdventWord::Simplify

Simplify

A simpler lifestyle can be a way to share with those who have less and a way of returning to them what is usurped by unjust social and economic structures. Assuming a stance of under-consumption can be a provocative invitation to others into a conversation about affluence, poverty and social justice.

-Br. Robert L'Esperance

AdventWord::Open

Open

When we open our hearts enough to truly love, our enemies can open up the possibility for our healing. It’s not just about treating our enemies a certain way; it’s about the fruits of relating to each other, to everyone, in the fullness of Christ’s love. When we practice loving fully, our great reward is being free from holding onto feelings like anger and hatred.

-Br. Nicholas Bartoli

And when we open, we can be beautiful. We afford others the opportunity to grow and blossom too.

AdventWord::Embrace

This beautiful woman met me standing outside the church at the University of San Francisco. I had coffee. I was banished. It was cold.
She took the opportunity to enter my standing cafe and my life -- beautifully interrupting with her love and joy. It was an I-Thou moment, reminding me of His presence. Filled with grace.

Embrace

We are a manifestation of Christ in the world. Our mission is not to bring Christ to people, but to help people come to know and embrace Christ already present.

-Br. Mark Brown

AdventWord::Awaken

Awaken
Jesus calls us to live into the fullness of our humanity, to embrace what we, in our brokenness, experience as physical, psychic, or spiritual limitations. Jesus urges that, rather than seeking to be cured of our limitations, we ask God to heal us in them, and waken us to the spiritual gifts hidden in them.

-Br. Jonathan Maury

Not unlike the unfolding of the Narcissus. These were tucked in a bag, purchased in November and forgotten with a couple of ornaments. They tried to sprout, to grow. But they needed the light. They needed the water. 

AdventWord::Trust

She met him when she was a tiny eight week old and from the first day, curled up in his belly or tail for sleep. He wondered about her. Maybe even worried. But in the not so long run, they found love and trust. Some clear, wordless agreement founded that no matter what, she belonged to him -- he would protect, and he belonged to her -- she would provide fun and love.


Trust

God’s love, like any love, involves real trust. And in relationships, trust requires mutuality. Sometimes it may require a part of myself that I don’t necessarily want others to see. This same vulnerability, intimacy, and mutuality should characterize our love for and trust in God.

– Br. Robert L’Esperance

AdventWord::Surprise

Surprise

The egg took me by surprise. I was puttering in my garden, picking strawberries when I noticed it. The blue color striking. The brown dots in line with what I think a Robin might produce. But I'd never expect to see it. I've never seen one in my yard. The Bluejay grasps my attention. This was a moment of God's providence for me. God knows me and that I'm very often surprised by what becomes joy. Things that come from small things, like color, or a word, things noticed, kindnesses, love, eggs.

This thing, sticking with the One who turns the world upside down is a lovely thing. Sticking with Him, takes me to places where I'm startled and confused and surprised. I want to find Jesus as I come along with him, as he has come to me with love. I want to look and listen and find him in the unexpected way.

Here, I live in delight.


God comes to us as a vulnerable human baby to an unlikely couple in an obscure place. And in doing so turns the world upside down. Jesus says: Stick with me even if I am different, confusing, or surprising. I have come, and I am coming to you today with love! Look for me. Listen. I am coming in an unexpected way.

-Br. Luke Ditewig

AdventWord::Mend

Mend

Restoration is our calling. In the tension of potential defeat, we move to do what can only be done because of love. Sometimes that restoration requires leaving pieces of what's broken behind for something new. With grace.


Christianity is really all about mending. That is what redemption means: mending something which is broken. Every Christian is called to share with God in mending that which is broken: mending our relationship with God, with one another, and mending the torn canvas of God’s broken world.

-Br. Geoffrey Tristram

AdventWord::Rely

Rely

Every once in a while, I notice the sticks in my yard where the anemone was. Seasons change. Sticks occur. And I wonder about what I need to do to help them come back. Really? Water. Wait. Rely.



When we are inconvenienced, we have to rely on God. When we have to rely on God, the impossible becomes possible, and we find that we are able to do and achieve that which we never could do or achieve on our own power. We have to have God’s help.

– Br. John Braught

AdventWord::Glow

That glow, the one of littles expectant with story, the fiance at the asking, the first notice joy, is from an inner fullness in what we have. A deep kind of gratitude. A deep beauty. Contagious. It spreads the light to us, the witnesses. Knowing who we are and to whom we belong, we can glow in the exchange of that knowing love. May you glow.


Glow
As children of the light we have the opportunity to either squander God’s riches or to capitalize on them by being ministers of God’s light, life, and love for all people.

-Br. Jim Woodrum

AdventWord::Befriend

Befriended.

I've learned something with these earnest friends. Love requires presence and the ability to see the (inherent) value of the other. 

Befriending and living in friendship, or relationship, can be so much more simple if we keep it thus. We carry our needs and wants, expectations and demands into relationship. I'm working to enter each encounter with gratitude for who the other is in my life before anything else. It requires being awake to the moment. (A worthwhile task.) And in that, I have a change to encounter the beauty of God's creation within you.

He comes for petting and sometimes, my hands/our hands and minds are too full. Other times, the boy lays on the floor. Available. An undemanding and forgiving friendship ensues.

AdventWord::Promise

Promise
God gives us the responsibility of doing something ourselves about those faithless fears and worldly anxieties that are holding us back. We don’t have to do this alone. We have God’s promise of holding our hand and of helping us.

-Br. David Allen

Parenting? Dog husbandry? Air travel? All hold the promise of the unknown. The adventure. The anxiety. But just knowing the Ruler of the Universe, the High King has my back makes me giddy right there with the anxiousness. So, let's also grab the hand of the one next to us and remind with gentle love: we don't have to do this alone.

Photo credit to my Dear Husband who is off on an adventure himself.

AdventWord::Hope

Hope

Converted anxiety is hope. Anxiety is dreadful expectation; hope is expectant desire. They are like cousins to each other. Pray for the conversion of your fretful anxiety into promising hope. If you are anxious just now, you are almost already hopeful.

– Br. Curtis Almquist

What could be added? We plant, anxious to see fruit (or in this case, flowers), fret for the bud to bloom and then, well, we breathe. It really was always going to be fine. I choose converted anxiety.

AdventWord::Act

Act
What will we do with the blessings God gives us in answer to prayer? When we pray and God heals us, what will we do with our restored health? When we cry out of our need and God meets that need, what will we do with the resources that have come to us in answer to our prayer?

-Br. David Vryhof

It would seem the call is to response.

AdventWord::Be

Be
People in trauma need our presence and our prayer rather than our preaching. We will bear a much more comforting witness to someone facing deep loss by simply being with them, and in so doing, representing God Emmanuel – God with us – by our being with them. Not by our words, but by our presence.

-Br. Curtis Almquist

My experience is this: we're not exactly alike, really. And, I notice the white of the white and the purple of the purple, the qualities, when we're sitting close, being, not homogenized in look or feel. When we can simply be what and who we are in creation. There is the breath of grace of this. 

AdventWord::Commit

Commit

In Advent, reflect on a commitment you are considering accepting, or a commitment that needs renewing. In building the house of your life on the rock of God’s committed love, you may discover that you are called to commit; that you cannot claim the Life that God desires for you without it. -Br. Keith Nelson

We wrote words on the back sides of rocks at Mother Daughter camp about six years ago. We promised to nurture or honor the other's dream. She wanted to be more serious about singing. She has a lesson again tomorrow.

The commitment of parental love is deep/steep. God's faithfulness and constance allows me to follow in His wake, doing my best to remember that her dreams were planted by Him. My joy is in my commitment to help her see them to fruit.

Oh, and I still have my rock.

AdventWord::Touch

Touch

As followers of Jesus, our responsibility is to listen for those calling out to us, and to respond in love by reaching out and touching the untouchable, reminding them by word and deed of their sacred identity.

– Br. Nicholas Bartoli

I'm touched, constantly by depth of this woman's faith and her love.

She's the first person who held me, who taught me about touch and comfort -- my mom. She is and has been gracious that way, with her touch, her hands, full of gentleness and care. She sent some amazing energy through her fingers when she'd rub my feet or back as a little. To calm or quiet my busy self. And to this day, if she's at my house and the situation affords the moment, I'll put my head in her lap and she'll rub my head as she has for oh, these many years. Instant peace.

She taught me that a touch can say far more than a word. That a gentle brush of her hand across my arm which sometimes came with words of assurance, brings comfort.

She loves me. She wants me to be the hands and feet of the Savior. She provided the example.

AdventWord::Play

He heard (as did she) the words, make a joyful noise to the Lord.
And he played his trumpet, and sang.
And she sang from the very beginning.

Play. Sing. Send all glory right on back to the One who provided the gift in the first place.

AdventWord::Light

We will be a more luminous epiphany of the love of Christ not only when we love, but when we recognize Christ present in the loving hearts of others, whatever their beliefs or understanding of God.

– Br. Mark Brown

Light your lantern but do not look for love. Trespass into the dark. Bring light where darkness reigns. You're the answer you're looking for.
- John Patrick Shanley

So, from the words of my childhood worship, the language of my heart: Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. Matt 5:16 KJV

I love the thought then forming in my head from five or six as our Episcopalian pastor spoke those words. My light, coming from the very Light of the World, can shine. With joy and grace and peace, the light from within me isn't my creation, but a further expression of Christ in me. His response, his responsibility. My job is to allow the glow and not to extinguish it. Oh how simple it could be.