NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

I am overwhelmed! Overwhelmed by awe.   Overwhelmed by angst. Overwhelmed by the season. All at the same time. The awe of birth   Of giving birth to another being A being that is alive At once the same and yet very different Their own being from the start. Knowing that this is how it has ever been. For Mary, for me,   For all mothers that have been and ever will be. Overwhelmed again by awe! The angst overwhelms me too! Why are the trappings of the story so important? The cattle, the star, the number of magi, the stable~ Why? Why? Why? The angst of not seeing, Not seeing the importance of upholding these impossible details: The star that could stop directly over a place, Heavenly beings singing in the night sky. Yes, the story is lovely. But that's all it is, a story. A story told in retrospect   A story to bolster a reputation A story to uphold the importance of a birth. If he had never been born, ...

“A candle is burning, a candle of LOVE , A candle to point us to heaven above A baby for Christmas, a wonderful birth For Jesus is bringing God's love to our earth.”   ~words by Sandra Dean The theme of Advent IV is love. Not the soppy, sentimental love we see around Valentines Day  but the Greek word agape that we translate as love and which   means brotherly[sic] love, the love of God for humanity and of humanity for God. “But I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love, love is one of the pivotal points of the Christian face, faith. There is another side called justice. And justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts agains love.”   ~Martin Luther King Jr. How do we show this kind of love in our lives, this love that wills the good of another, that wills justice for everyone? One thing I know is that it isn't that love we feel when we see a kitten or puppy or eve...

“A candle is burning, a candle of JOY, A candle to welcome brave Mary's new boy Our hearts fill with wonder and eyes light and glow As joy brightens winter like sunshine on snow” ~ words by Sandra Dean The word that jumps out of this verse to me is the word ' brave' .   And so when I think of Mary at this time of year, I think of how scared and confused   she must have been. Unlike today's society there were no baby showers, no classes to prepare first time mothers for what was happening to their bodies, no modern medical facilities to aid in the birth. As well there is the presumption in Matthew’s account that Mary had committed adultery.  Yes, she was brave! I well remember my stay in the maternity wing on a local hospital in the mid-1960s, with a skeleton staff working between Christmas and New Years. The nurse looked at me, and said, 'You teenage girls have no business getting pregnant and then coming in here expecting us to look after you...

“ A candle is burning, a candle of PEACE,   A candle to signal that conflict must cease   For Jesus is coming to show us the way   A message of peace humbly laid in the hay” ~words by Sandra Dean What conflict does our society see as needing to cease? Many see a conflict within their family, where peace can be brought about by expelling/silencing someone who is the cause of the conflict, who is unwilling to go along with the family’s expectations or who is unable to abide by them through mental illness or addiction. Peace to them means quiet because no one dares to challenge the status quo. “All I want under my tree Peace and love and harmony Wrap it with a ribbon please I'll share it with my family." ~Chorus from ‘With my Family’ by Rita MacNeil, 1993 Peace for the country happens when the powers that be are in charge, making decisions that are followed unquestioningly by the proletariat   - no riots, no strikes, no protests there. ...

"A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, A candle of HOPE in November's dark night While angels sing blessings from heaven's starry sky, Our hearts we prepare now for Jesus is nigh” ~ words by Sandra Dean Or as Desmond Tutu said, "Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness."    What hopes, I wonder, do we as a society look for? As the days in the northern hemisphere grow darker with the shortest day of the year occurring on December 21 this year, we are reminded that the light will come again. Not only will the light come again but that it is a coming we cannot control!   Indeed we believe in that hope so fervently that we are assured not only that the light will come again, but that it will be accompanied by the warmth and the harvests. Profits are hoped for, particularly by the retail sector, as we approach the biggest shopping season of the year. In fact some retail businesses rely on the profits of...

Nothing can raise my ire faster than some of the church signs out there - especially if they represent a congregation that I have some connection to .  While I sometimes have to cogitate a bit as to why some of them annoy me, that didn’t happen with this one! ‘All our seats come with a first class service.’ First of all, it was false advertising. How often do we see that in  society? Something is always being touted as the best, world class, ground-breaking, when in fact it is only mediocre compared to others in the same field. I am familiar with this church and while the service is fine, it is not first class. The music is not first class, the physical plant is not first class, the preaching is not first class. This is not denigrating these things. While the congregation finds them acceptable or even better then acceptable, they can’t begin to compare to what can be found elsewhere in larger, more affluent churches. That designation of a ‘first class service...

“Jesus said, ‘No procrastination. No backward looks. You can’t put God's kingdom off till tomorrow. Seize the day.’” (Luke 9:62 MSG) As part of a meditation, focusing on prioritization, we were to ask ourselves "What would you do if this were your very last day?"  The idea was that we could then remove those things from our ToDo list  that weren’t really necessary, that were busy work.  The idea being that a lot of the things that we fill our day with, other than the necessities of life, are things we have control over, and mixed in with those things we want and need to do, are those things that are only busy work or fillers. So just what exactly would I do today, if I knew it was my last day? More importantly perhaps what if I knew it was my last week, my last month, my last year to live? Everybody’s list will be different, because we are all different people, living different lives in different circumstances and with different core values.   But in one ...