Month: December 2021

I am traveling over the 4^th Sunday in Advent. So far this month I have offered an on-line weekly zoom meditation but the travel we have planned will keep me out in the world and not near my computer during the time I normally open up the Zoom conference window. Of course I sent an email out to the handful of folks who have indicated an interest in the meditation and I called the weekend “Quiet 4^th Sunday” on the subject line without a lot of thought.

And now I’m thinking about it.

If we went to worship, we’d probably hear the Luke text about Mary’s journey to her cousin, Elizabeth. Both are pregnant in unexpected ways. Elizabeth is too old to be pregnant and Mary carries the impossible within her. Elizabeth’s child leaps about in Elizabeth’s womb as Elizabeth greets her cousin and the child with a prophesy of salvation. Mary responds with the Magnificat, the speech that claims that God is restoring hope and righteousness for all of God’s creation. 

That’s a lot of talking for a quiet 4^th Sunday in Advent.

Its safe to say that I’m the one looking for the quiet when the church is busy proclaiming this weekend.

Or even more honest to say that I’m looking for a different kind of quiet. 

Continue reading “Advent C4 – Quiet Time”

The incarnation of God in human body is a mystery.
I don’t have a better way to say this.
Unless I add the adjective Impossible to modify the word mystery.
Because the world does not contain God.

The world can’t contain God. 
The world is smaller then God. 

However, God may be in the world, testified to by the world, but be sure. God is not just the world or the universe or star dust. We’re star dust, God is something different from all that.

Which is a whole other mystery.
Or several mysteries actually…

Like Where does God come from?
Like Why does God exist and can we even use that word“exist” which implies limitations  of life and death or being and not being?
Like What does God want from us? 

Continue reading “Advent C3 – Mystery”

As I begin the first draft of this meditation, I want to start with telling you that it is 10:24 in the morning on the 30th of November and a big wind storm is blowing through Munich.

With Snow.

Which swirls up in grand circles or rushes by in straight lines both marking the wind’s energy and passion.

My apartment is on the top floor of a 110 year old building that was remodeled over 40 years ago. The window frames do not seal well and the wind pushes its way around the edges. The clouds are thick, low, and even. It is true winter light bouncing off the snow on the ground, in the air, waiting to fall.

I look at this and think, this is the weather of all the old Advent carols. Maybe if we were alive in those times, we’d trudge through snow and head off to the village church or along very cold monastery halls to the chapel to make repentance or listen to the end-of-the-world readings in order to be ready for the God-baby.

Continue reading “Advent C2 – Real Advent”