With every step
you take,
this blessing rises up
to meet you.
It has been waiting
long ages for you.
Look close
and you can see
the layers of it,
how it has been fashioned
by those who walked
this road before you,
how it has been created
of nothing but
their determination
and their dreaming,
how it has taken
its form
from an ancient hope
that drew them forward
and made a way for them
when no way could be seen.
Look closer
and you will see
this blessing
is not finished,
that you are part
of the path
it is preparing,
that you are how
this blessing means
to be a voice
within the wilderness
and a welcome
for the way.
—Jan Richardson
The weeks leading up to Christmas are often so juxtaposed; laying bare the reality of both light and darkness, rarely in equal measure. One of the reasons the Jan Richardson poems are so poignant for me is reflected in this very reality. And perhaps it is your reality. What we offer here is not sentimentality, but light. Light that you will either be strengthened from or light you will add to by your very presence.
Next weekend we will have several important services to help you either find or bring the light into your life. On Friday, December 20, Margalie our Intern Minister will be offering a Blue Christmas Service, designed to bring comfort to those who have lost a loved one in the past. Then the next evening, on the winter solstice Saturday December 21, Rev. Shelly and Marjorie Partch will offer a late afternoon/early evening of labyrinth walking as it is laid out in its splendor in our sanctuary. And the following day, on Sunday December 22, I will return to the pulpit to offer reflections on the coming of the light.
We have just passed the third Sunday of Advent now. The four Sundays preceding Christmas are dedicated to Faith, Hope, Love and Joy. Faith that we will once again celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, Hope that the year before us will bring the changes we desire and need, Love that we have one another to journey with us, and Joy that we have finally arrived at the birth, the day of the longest night, and the greatest promise. As some of you have expressed to me over these past few weeks, we pray that peace and love will come to all the world, even if it isn’t in our lifetime.
In this third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Love, I was reminded of what Jan Richardson once wrote after losing her partner in December 2013, “What we choose changes us. What we love transforms us.” Darkness, this present darkness, is about more than expectation, it’s also about transformation. We are transformed by the darkness, in the womb ready to be born, we come out of the dark into light. So it has always been and so it will be again.
I have sat with many of you through this season. It has and will always be my humble honor to do so. I love Christmas because it is blessed by Advent first. Waiting for the light is always worthwhile. Like Jan Richardson I find meaning in comparing our waiting for the Christ child to the journey of John the Baptist, who preceded Jesus in his ministry of hope and renewal. As Jan Richardson wrote:
“Although the Advent path leads us through the desert, deprivation is neither the focus nor the final word of the wilderness. As the honey-eating John knew, the desert offers its own delights. What the wilderness gives us is a path that helps us perceive where our true treasure lies. And does not merely give us a path: empties us enough so that a path is made within us. Through us. Of us. A road for the holy to enter the world. A way for the Christ who comes. What’s in your way these days? If you were to imagine your life as a path, a road, what would it look like right now? Is there anything cluttering your way? Is there something you need to let go of in order to prepare the way for the Christ who enters the world in this and every season?” (from The Advent Door “A Road Runs Through It”)
See you in church, Rev. John