by Demi Prentiss

Oct 28, 2023, Pope Francis preached in the Casa Santa Marta, where he celebrates daily mass. He urged the church to be a place of open doors, and not of people who seek to control the faith.  He called for broadened expectations of how we might recognize saints among us:

We need saints without veils, without underwear. We need jeans and sneaker saints. We need saints to go to the movies, listen to music, and hang out with their friends. We need saints that put God first and stand out in University. We need saints who seek time to pray every day and know how to fall in love with purity and chastity, or who consecrate their chastity. We need modern day saints, 21st century saints with spirituality embedded in our time. We need saints committed to the poor and the necessary social change. We need saints who live in the world, sanctify themselves in the world and who are not afraid to live in the world. We need saints who drink Coke and eat hot dogs, who are internet users, who listen to iPod. We need saints who love the Eucharist and who are not ashamed to have a beer or eat pizza on the weekend with friends. We need saints who love cinema, theater, music, dance, sports. We need sociable, open, normal, friendly, joyful, fellow saints. We need saints who are in the world and know how to taste the pure and good things of the world, but without being worldly.

Pope Francis is urging us all to be “people of the Incarnation” – people who embody their faith in the ways they choose to live their daily lives.  Seeking to live faith daily narrows the gap between our bodies and our spirits, our world and the promised reign of God. In this season we have moved from the Feast of the Incarnation – Christmas, the celebration of the Word made flesh – into the season of Epiphany – the January 6 celebration of the visit of the Three Kings begins the season of God’s self-revelation. We are immersed in the mystery of human flesh becoming a home for divinity.

Richard Rohr, an American Franciscan priest and writer, described the transformational power of an incarnational worldview in a recent daily meditation:  An incarnational worldview is one in which matter and Spirit are understood to have never been separate. Matter and Spirit reveal and manifest each other. This view relies more on awakening than joining, more on seeing than obeying, more on growth in consciousness and love than on clergy, experts, morality, scriptures, or prescribed rituals.

In the weekly summary of meditations for the closing week of 2023, Rohr’s meditation practice encouraged sitting with our breathing as a way to participate in the mystery of incarnation:

Every time you take in a breath, you are repeating the pattern of taking spirit into matter, and thus repeating God’s creation of humankind (in Hebrew, ‘adam).

And every time you breathe out, you are repeating the pattern of returning spirit to the material universe. In a way, every exhalation is a “little dying” as we pay the price of inspiriting the world.

Your very breathing models your entire vocation as a human being. You are an incarnation, like Christ, of matter and spirit operating as one. This, more than anything we believe or accomplish, is how all of us — either knowingly and joyfully, or not — continue the mystery of incarnation in space and time.^[1]

---

^[1]  Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2019, 2021), 99.

by Brandon Beck

As I sit typing this reflection, the material remnants of Christmas Day and The 12 Days of Christmas are scattered about. Burnt Advent candles, an unfinished 12 Days of Christmas puzzle, a Nativity scene, empty candy dishes, cardboard boxes galore.

I’ve just finished constructing the new playset in the backyard (with a lot of help from friends and family).

And as much joy as I receive from watching the kids play with the Nativity set and light and blow out the Advent candles, climb in and out of the cardboard boxes, work on the puzzle in fits and starts, jump and scream and slide and swing on the playset, I find myself struggling to stay in the moment.

My tendency toward anxiety creeps in. Will they start fighting? Will the three neurotypicals bully the two with autism? Will the one girl get left out? Will the new puppy get trampled? Will the new puppy’s puppiness scare one of the little ones? Who will have the next toddler or autistic meltdown?

Will I be able to keep regulated so that I can help them regulate when they need it?

According to The Gospel of Thomas, Logion 2, Yeshua says, “If you are searching, you must not stop until you find. When you find, however, you will become troubled. Your confusion will give way to wonder. In wonder you will reign over all things. Your sovereignty will be your rest.” (Trans. Lynn Bauman, PhD)

I take a deep breath and say this Logion to myself. I remember that this is the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. Every moment with these kids is, if I stay in the moment.

I can let go of all my anxieties and stay in the moment by seeking Jesus in them. I cannot stop until I find Jesus in the little children. Even when I become troubled, I begin again and again because I know Jesus is there even in the trouble. This is where I co-regulate with them. “I love you,” I say. “You are doing great,” I say. “I wonder what… I wonder how… I wonder if…,” I say. And in wonder, I have a new mastery over my thoughts, feelings, and actions. I step into a freedom to play with the kids rather than worry about them, and that play is so restful!

Amen.

by Pam Tinsley

As I walked along the undercroft beneath our church’s nave with its display of preschool books, a title caught my eye. The book’s cover looked like a painter’s palette, with colors in a circle, perfect for a small child to touch. Its title, You are Light^[1], spoke to me of the physical qualities of light – especially as we move through the winter solstice with hours of daylight just beginning to cease their waning.

More significantly, as we moved through Advent to Christmas, the book’s title spoke to me of light’s spiritual qualities: We reflect on the light that was coming into the world at the first Christmas. Since then, the poetic words from John’s Prologue have been whispering to me: The true light, which enlightens everyone, is coming into the world!

I’ve also been reflecting on what Christ’s light means for us today. Too often it feels as though we’re sitting in darkness in the shadow of death. Our country is being torn apart by political divisions, leading to threats of violence and threats to our democracy; wars rage around the globe; and concerns about the impact of climate change on our planet are raised daily.  

Although at times it seems next to impossible to believe that the light breaks through, the Incarnation and the Resurrection assure us that the light – the True Light – has not only broken through but cannot be overpowered by darkness.

Not only that, but we are also part of the ongoing light of Christ that shines in the darkness. The newly baptized are often given a candle, lit from the paschal candle, with the words “receive the light of Christ.”

We, the baptized, continue to bear Christ’s light into our dark and broken world, offering hope through our words and through our actions. We are light. We are Christ’s light in the world. And so, I invite you to reach out to those you know and love and to those you encounter in your daily life with the same love with which God looks upon you. Then you might just cast the light of Christ upon someone who feels as though they live in darkness. Because “You are Light!”

---

^[1] Becker, Aaron. You are Light (Somerville: Candlewick Studio, 2019)

by Demi Prentiss

I’ve been thinking a lot about vocation during these weeks of Advent, and the season has shifted my sense of how I’m seeking to live into the call God has placed on my life.  What is my Advent vocation? And how does that shape my life as a “child of God, beloved and called” during the other seasons?

Some of the Advent vocations from our lectionary’s Year B Advent Gospel readings that have sparked my imagination:

• To practice engaged waiting, like the faithful doorkeeper – “Keep awake!” (Mark 13:37) – Advent 1. How will I practice the role of doorkeeper? On my watch, who will find welcome – or a locked door – as they seek to encounter Jesus?

• To remember my baptism in the Holy Spirit. (Mark 1:8) – Advent 2. Having been “marked as Christ’s own forever” (BCP p. 308), how has that mark shaped me? And would the world recognize that I bear that mark? What evidence would they notice?

• To shout in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the LORD’s coming! Clear the road for him!” (John 1:23, NLT) – Advent 3. Am I – or can I become – a “way-clearer”? An “edge-walker”? Am I brave enough to shout? Would Jesus choose to walk the trail I’m blazing?

• To call on love to cast out fear…. For nothing will be impossible with God. (Luke 1:30, 37) – Advent 4. Grateful for the angel’s assurance that nothing is impossible, I have learned that if I can concentrate on the “loving” part, God works on the “casting out fear” part. When I focus on seeing where God is in action in those around me, fear loses its hold on my spirit.

A recent Advent reflection from the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) named for me the Advent vocation I find the most challenging – To be Christ’s light in a dark world. To shine Christ’s light, we can be a blessing. We can draw on the faces of compassion that Jesus modeled for us:

• When we see people marginalized and put down, we can be fierce in love and in our calls for justice – like the blazing sun.
• When we encounter pain and loss, we can be tender by offering warmth and hope and healing – like a candle in the night.
• When we face stuckness, we can be playful as we frolic through shadow and light, drawing those around us into joy – like the slivers of an eclipsed sun dancing in the leaves.[1]

The Advent 1 collect urges us, with grace and courage, to “cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (BCP, p. 211). Where will we be bold enough to offer a word or a sign that kindles a spark of hope? How will we share the light of Christ that is within us, acknowledging that the Holy Spirit’s power will magnify our small light?

My English born-and-raised friend from long ago shared a favorite song from her 1930’s Depression-era childhood that I like to remember when I’m feeling challenged to be Christ’s light:

“Jesus bids us shine with a pure, clear light, Like a little candle burning in the night!

In this world of darkness, so let us shine – You in your small corner, and I in mine!” Dear Lord, lead me to be the Light for someone who is seeking you.

---

[1] With thanks to Rob Voyle, “Compassion and the Crazy Wisdom of Jesus.”

by Pam Tinsley

Each Black Friday, instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to get the best Black Friday deal, our 12-year-old neighbor Lauren and her family get up early to prepare crockpots full of hot chocolate. While our consumption-driven culture pushes us to buy things we don’t need and spend money we don’t have, Lauren holds a Hot Chocolate Sale to raise money for an organization that’s important to her. Lauren has been doing this on the day after Thanksgiving for the past five years. It’s part of her and her family’s Thanksgiving tradition and a way for her to give back to her community.

This year Lauren is fundraising for the Low Income Housing Institute, an innovative Tiny House Shelter Program that provides warm, safe, secure shelter in tiny houses in community settings with case management that helps program participants find permanent housing and employment. Lauren says that she wants to support LIHI because “they provide places for people to live and support themselves while they get back on their feet. Also, because everyone deserves a safe, warm home, especially around the holidays.”

In a culture that has become increasingly self-centered, it’s both comforting and reassuring to see a new generation recognizing that they have a responsibility to their community. Community is where and how we share our values. Community is where and how we care for one another. Community binds us together.

When we as Christians profess to love God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves, we profess that community – is vital. To follow Jesus means loving our neighbor in both word and action. And, as Jesus so often reminds us, the neighbor – the community – we’re called to love includes those whom we often overlook or prefer not to see. Community is where love and justice come together.

Lauren’s Hot Chocolate Sale shows us how simple, ordinary actions can lead to meaningful transformation of hearts and minds. Her fundraiser began as an act of thanksgiving for medical care that she’d received and has become an expression of who she is as a person – someone who teaches others that Gratitude Friday might just be more rewarding than Black Friday. She teaches us that gratitude is the soil in which joy thrives[1].

---

[1] Signboard at Central Bible Church, Tacoma, WA.

by Demi Prentiss

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus tells the story about the wise and foolish bridesmaids waiting for the bridegroom (Mt 25:1-13). The five wise young women brought their lamps and flasks of oil. The foolish young women brought only their lamps. When the bridegroom is late in arriving, the five with no flasks of oil realize their lamps will go out soon. While they go to purchase more oil, the bridegroom arrives, enters the hall with the five lamp-bearing bridesmaids, and locks the door behind them. When the bridesmaids arrive with more oil, they are refused entry, and the bridegroom says he does not know them.

Hearing this parable, I’m worried about the oil. How much might the wedding party need? Why wouldn’t the wise bridesmaids share? How many lamps were actually needed? Why didn’t they extinguish all but one lamp, so their oil would go farther? Where were the oil-less bridesmaids going to find oil in the middle of the night? And as Diana Butler Bass comments in her weekly post, the wedding described sounds more like a parody, “the worst wedding ever”: no bride, no guests, and a rude, tardy groom berating the bride’s attendants and locking his party guests inside the hall.

Perhaps the parable is not about the oil, about being prepared, about being in control of the details even when the unexpected happens. Maybe the foolishness of the oil-less bridesmaids is not that they failed to bring extra oil. Maybe their foolishness lay in allowing a lack determine their actions, in seeing scarcity controlling their response.

What might have happened if, when their oil threatened to run out, the bridesmaids had decided that their being present for the groom’s arrival was more important than how many lights greeted him?  What if, instead of more light, they had offered a song, or a dance, or beautiful flowers? What if they had focused on the resources they did have, rather than what they did not have?

What might happen in our own lives – especially when we are facing obstacles or lack of resources or rejection – if we could sharpen our awareness of what we do have. Does concern over what we lack prevent us from being present and offering who we are?  What might God do in us and through us when we recognize the gifts at hand? Might what we perceive as lack of resources turn out to be a gift?

by Brandon Beck

We’re made in the image and likeness of God. We’ve been told that since The Beginning. Each and every person is made in the image and likeness of God. We read this in The Beginning. John reminds us that “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And we are made in that image and likeness.

When Samuel is sent by God to seek Saul’s replacement, God, and I’m paraphrasing here, tells Samuel, “Quit using your eyes and judging these people-books by their skin-covers! Do as I do; after all, I made you in my image! Look at other people’s hearts!” (1 Samuel 16:7b)

But what does that mean? How do we know someone’s heart? What even is a person’s heart? How do we get to it in this world where we’ve been taught to cover our nakedness with metaphorical fig leaves?

I love the way (forgiving the patriarchal language of his time) Bernard Silvester, twelfth-century poet and philosopher, describes the heart:

The animating spark of the body, nurse of its life, the creative principle and harmonizing bond of the senses; the central link in the human structure…mainstay of our nature, king, governor, creator.

But even more so, I love the description of the heart from the 2019 UK release of the Wellcome shortlisted memoir/cardiology text Heart: A History by Sandeep Jauhar, MD (2018), in which the above quote is the epigraph:

The spark of life, fount of emotion, house of the soul – the heart lies at the centre of every facet of our existence.

We have to know our own heart before we can look at other people’s; we have to look at our own heart in order to be open and receptive and perceptive of the heart of someone else.

And, yet, the system of humanity is a closed and interconnected one. My heart and your heart are of One heart within the heart of God – named or unnamed, known or unknown.

So, as I get to know my own heart, I, inevitably, am getting to know each and every other person’s heart as well.

In 1998, musician Geoff Levin released “The Coach,” a spoken word piece with his group Celestial Navigations on their album Chapter II. He performs the role of football coach motivating players before a game and helps them visualize the whole universe in their pockets and eventually says this to them:

What is small and insignificant here – you or that BB that you have in your pocket? I think we all know the answer to that. So when some dude comes up to you and says, “Wow, don’t you feel small and insignificant compared to the universe?” You say, “Hey. Now listen here dude, I got the whole universe in my pocket the size of a BB and I don’t even remember which pocket.”

And that’s just it, friends. In the Beginning, was the Word, and we each were part of that and still are and always will be. We’ve got it in our pockets. In our hearts. And we’re called to look at what’s in the pocket-hearts of others. That’s not so tough after all, because what’s in them is the same as what’s in us – the image and likeness of God.

Amen.

by Pam Tinsley

On November 1 the Church celebrates the Feast of All Saints’. On All Saints’ we remember all the saints – past, present, and yet-to-come – and well-known and revered saints with a capital S, as well as lesser-known saints. Saints with a capital S include apostles, such as Peter and Paul; the Church fathers, such as Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory the Great; or prominent women who shaped the Church, such as Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila. Most folks, including non-church folks, can come up with the name of a saint with a capital S.

Last week, on October 25, the Church remembered a lesser-known saint: Dorcas, in Greek – Tabitha, in Aramaic. We learn in Acts that Tabitha was a member of the early Christian community in Joppa, a coastal town of Israel. She was a disciple and was also known for her acts of charity, in particular for making garments and giving them to needy widows. She fell ill and died, and Peter went to see her; prayed over her; and raised her to life.

As I was re-reading the story from Acts, I realized that in the past I’ve always paid more attention to Peter than to Tabitha. After all, Peter not only heals Tabitha, but he raises her from the dead!

However, reading more closely, we hear that Tabitha’s healing isn’t the end of the story. Because of her healing, Tabitha is now able to continue her ministry in daily life – her acts of charity and her work as a seamstress making clothing for the needy. And as she engages in her ministry, she also bears witness to a miraculous healing that can come only from God. It’s pretty easy to recognize the extraordinary contributions to God’s Kingdom that the apostles and saints – with a capital S – have made. But, without God’s lesser-known saints serving as Jesus’ hands and feet in the world, the essential work of the Church can’t be done. In fact, the “Tabithas” of the church – you, me, all of us – are the heart of the Church. Although Tabitha and her ministry as a seamstress may seem ordinary, she’s extraordinary in God’s eyes. We, too, are extraordinary in God’s eyes and our own small acts of service – that is, our ministry – matter, and we just might inspire others!

by Demi Prentiss

Seeds – We need Jesus’ resurrection power in order to face tomorrow. Resurrection comes small, like seeds and leaven. One little word of encouragement, one affirmation, perhaps evoking one smile or laugh. One little gift can change us. – Br. Luke Ditewig, SSJE

Day after day, the news we consume fills us with fear and grief – news of insurrection, retribution, indiscriminate violence, political misbehavior, crippling moral failings. How can any person find a glimmer of hope, the source of resilience and resurrection?

Our failure to deal with our fear and our grief begets anxiety that becomes chronic.  As Seth Godin wrote, “Anxiety is experiencing failure in advance.” Perhaps our calling in an increasingly turbulent and anxious world is planting seeds, or kneading leaven into the dough of our lives. Receiving a seed – a little word of encouragement or affirmation, a smile or a laugh – is a gift. A gift that can change us, if we dare to receive it and allow it to grow.

Even more so, having enough hope to offer such a seed is a transformational act. Perhaps our willingness to be such a courageous giver is the power of God at work through us.

May the resurrection seeds you receive grow and blossom. May the seeds you offer to others leave a trail of hope that marks your path through life.