Nov 7, 2016 | Advent, Christmas, liturgy
I’m ready for Advent — Christmas too, but Advent especially. I find that the season’s wild imagination and perilous possibilities confront my pessimism, my complacency, my worry, and they challenge: “Well then? If you perceive the world’s...
Dec 24, 2015 | Advent, Christmas
Bless you, Mary, mother of God, for your courage and effort to give life to God in impossible circumstances: in full knowledge of the glory, in complete certainty of the pain. Bless you, Mary, for bearing God into the world and bless us to follow your...
Dec 23, 2015 | Advent, faith, psalm
And when the world is over, when life changes so utterly that we no longer recognize it, when the heavens break just as disastrously as our hearts, when the earth trembles and buckles and knocks the wind from our sails, when death descends to the bitter silence of the...
Dec 22, 2015 | Advent, grace, prayer
Smile at me today, O LORD, and I will dance forever. Touch me gently like a mother brushing her child’s feverish forehead, and I will leap from my sickbed to serve you. Guide my feet over this treacherous way, and I will follow you beyond the horizon. Say that I...
Dec 21, 2015 | Advent, nature, psalm
The sun rises as the day’s ostinato. The juncos interject their staccato. The clouds soar in descant, whistling from the west. The fox barks out a tempo, the squirrel chatters out of time. Melting snow pings out its melody along the roof and down the rainspout....
