The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighbourhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
true from start to finish.
-John 1:14 (The Message)
The Christmas season tends to evoke a range of emotions in us. While we express tidings of comfort and joy, we may feel anything but comforted or joyful. It’s good to pay attention to those unsettling feelings and listen to what they are saying.
“Why would I want to do that?” you may ask. “Won’t that get me into trouble or make me feel worse?”
Perhaps you recall this train from Campus Crusade’s Four Spiritual Laws. Fact is the engine, Faith is the coal car, and Feeling, the caboose. The point of the illustration is that Christians need to rely on the truth of God’s word to guide them, no matter what they are feeling. “The train will run with or without a caboose,” the booklet explains.
This is helpful advice for times when our emotions overwhelm us and threaten to derail our faith. However, we need to take another look at the feeling caboose. We still don’t want it driving the train, but we have to stop uncoupling it from our lives. Our feelings, even the unpleasant ones, are holy ground. We can encounter God in them.
To do that, we must first become aware of God’s presence. St.Theophan the Recluse, a nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox priest, said, “To pray is to descend with the mind into the heart and there to stand before the face of the Lord, ever-present, all-seeing, within you.” So begin there. With your mind, imagine yourself meeting Christ in the core of your being. Stand before him. Look at him looking at you with love.
In his loving presence, tell Jesus about the event that incited the strong feeling you experience. It may help to picture the emotion as an angry cat, hair-raised and pacing. Now name the feeling. For example, it could be jealousy or loneliness. Don’t judge it or analyze it. Just let it hiss and meow there with you and Jesus. When there is a bit of space between you and your feeling, ask it what it wants to tell you. You may hear something like “I feel invisible when other people get the attention I crave” or “There’s something wrong with me; that’s why I’m alone.”
Watch how Jesus responds when he hears what your feelings say. Notice his compassion. What does he do and say next? Underneath your words is a longing Jesus wants to fill.
Once you’ve been with Jesus there, you may find your feisty feeling curled up in your lap, as harmless as a kitten. And you, having encountered the living God, will be transformed.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
– Psalm 139: 7,8 (NIV)
This Advent, God’s been inviting me to live in the reality that Christ is in me, with me, and for me. I noticed, when I undertook a task or wrote a post, that I was not alone. I felt accompanied as I found the wisdom or words needed.
Recognizing God’s presence in those simple activities ignited a flicker of joy in my chest. That joy made me stop and breathe in that moment of awareness: I am in Christ, and he is in me.
As I did, I recalled the image of myself as a leaky bucket in the ocean of God’s love and remembered: all I long for I already have.
The part of me which focuses on my cracks reacted to that thought. I could provide a list of things I long for but don’t have, not possessions per se, but virtues. I wish I wasn’t so self-preoccupied, for example.
But the grounded part of me that sees God’s ocean of love welcomed that thought. Knowing my imperfections are bathed in love gave me hope. I am being transformed.
In Presence and Encounter, David G. Benner notes we often don’t recognize Christ’s presence because we lack awareness. Awareness “creates space and openness that allow us to be present to more than our usual self-preoccupations.”
“Hallelujah!” my heart cried when I read that. God’s gift of awareness is quieting the negative chatter in my head and freeing me to be more present to what’s before me.
No wonder I’m being led away from a busy life. God is slowing me down to make the turn onto a new road on my pilgrimage, where Christ reveals that every moment is eternal and every place ground holy.
Take off, take off your shoes
This place you’re standing, it’s holy ground
Take off, take off your shoes
The spot you’re standing, it’s holy ground
–Holy Ground
Words by Woody Guthrie, 1954, Music by Frank London (The Klezmatics), 2003
After the angel Gabriel’s visit, Mary woke to a new reality.
The pondering of her heart emerged on her lips as she washed the dishes and passed by the beggars on her way to fetch water.
“My soul glorifies the Lord,” she sang to herself. “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away. From now on, all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” The Saviour is in me! What a wondrous thought.
But weeks passed and nothing changed. Mary began to wonder if it had all been a dream, until one morning a wave of nausea propelled her out of bed just in time. She threw up in the garden, then leaned against the clay brick wall, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as perspiration cooled her brow.
It happened the next day and the next. Mary hadn’t dreamt it; she was pregnant with God’s Son. That first Advent, Mary wasn’t waiting for Christ to come. He was already there, her growing belly a testimony.
In our Advent, we, like Israel, cry, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget us forever? How long will you hide your face from us?” We keep looking for God to come in power and fill the hungry with good things. Meanwhile, the Holy Spirit has already overshadowed us, seeding Christ in us.
And now it is God who is waiting for us. God waits for us to awaken to a new reality, a wondrous thought that Christ is in us, with us, and for us.
We are being filled full of God.
I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us. –Ephesians 3:18-20 (The Message)
What if the one you are waiting for never comes?
It was only choir practice at the little United Church a mile away. My friend Edith and I were thirteen years old and proud to be the youngest members. Every Thursday, at seven-forty-five, after a couple in our church had milked their cows and changed their clothes, they would pull into our driveway to give me a ride.
That winter evening, at seven-forty, I got ready and waited in the kitchen. Ten minutes later, I was overheating and took off my toque and mitts. Five minutes after that, I needed to use the bathroom but didn’t dare leave my post. We would be late now, and they’d be in a hurry when they arrived.
At eight o’clock, a car drove by in the opposite direction. I watched the red taillights disappear down the gravel road.
At eight-fifteen, I took off my coat and boots and headed upstairs to my room.
“I thought you were going to the church,” my dad said.
“My ride didn’t come,” I replied. “I guess they forgot about me.”
I must not be that important, I thought and added that thought to all the other evidence I had collected that proved I didn’t matter.
For years after that Thursday night, waiting for anyone made me nervous. Finally, I learned to have a backup plan, even if it was only telling myself it wouldn’t be the end of me if they didn’t come.
This Sunday, Advent begins. It’s a whole season of waiting, and I am thrilled. I am thrilled because I know the One I am waiting for will come. He always does.
For hundreds of years, Israel waited for their Messiah. Finally, he came. The angel Gabriel announced the good news to a young virgin named Mary. She became pregnant by the Holy Spirit and gave birth to the Saviour of the world in Bethlehem, just as the prophets said.
Jesus came to earth because we matter. His Spirit remains with us now because we always will.
The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned…
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
— Isaiah 9:2,6
To love
and be loved.
We were made for this.
Love created the earth, the stars, the seas.
Everything and everyone was made of You,
from Love
by Love,
for Love.
Love is the one thing needed,
the command that keeps all others.
To see what love does–
there is no greater miracle,
no greater need.
So when Love happened,
as it did last week,
I didn’t have to imagine Your gratitude,
I felt it.
When we held the sadness
of a devastating loss, a marriage ended, a costly accident,
when we celebrated the gift of loving leadership
that transformed a community,
when the clouds of pain parted
and a ninety-two year old got to be herself
and know, in a way she never knew before,
what it feels like to be cherished–
it’s a wonder to behold,
a gift deeply treasured,
a hope restored.
Lord, my God when Your love spilled over
into creation
You thought of me.
I am from love of love for love.
–Jacqueline S Bergan and S Marie Schwan,
Take and Receive Series
Hey friends,
Remember when I wrote about my mom loving me the way I wanted to be loved the day after I went for a walk with a friend and talked about accepting that she loves me the way she does? Well, this is a video of that conversation.
In that conversation I talked about the dream my dad had before he died. I wrote about that here.
I awoke to find a blanket of yellow
covering the lawn.
Other fading leaves still clung to the tree.
Eventually, they would tire,
loosen their grip
and be vulnerable
to the next brisk breeze.
Then, my dear tree will stand
naked
while rain pelts,
winds push and pull
and snow alights her branches,
chilling her to the bone.
Does she dig in her roots,
hold her bark together
until spring comes
to resurrect life again?
Or does she exhale in the wonder
that, for a season,
she provides an unobstructed view
of the sky?
Or maybe,
as she braces and lets go,
braces and lets go,
she speaks,
to her Creator,
–also suffering on a cross–
as one friend speaks to another,
about dying,
desire
and grace.
*A colloquy, according to Ignatius of Loyola, is a conversation with God, friend to friend, from the heart. — The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola
In one section of the Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius invites us to feel sorrow for the ways sin has impacted us personally and globally, recognize our complicity in the web of evil, and wonder that God has not given up on us. Even now, Christ is healing and reconciling everything.
In Annotation 54, Ignatius directs us to colloquy with Jesus on the cross. In the past, that seemed impossible to me, when I saw him as the victim of my folly and felt flooded with guilt and shame. But I no longer see Jesus blaming me, nor do I believe Jesus had to appease an angry God to atone for my sin. This time, I felt I couldn’t talk with Jesus on the cross because I didn’t want to bother him with my stuff while he was in so much pain.
So I spoke with Jesus about this, as one friend to another. Then I saw that Christ does not minimize my suffering. We are co-sufferers. God sees that we, too, are on a cross of suffering because of what’s been done to us and what we keep doing that we wish we wouldn’t. God doesn’t take that lightly or leave us alone in it. –Esther
The very thing I think I can’t tell you
is what I need to.
The very thing I fear will bring
judgment and rejection,
brings compassion and connection instead.
Sharing our stories,
being vulnerable,
being needy, afraid, hurt and discombobulated
and not having to hide it,
not having to fix it,
not having to be it–
Can you imagine such freedom?
Oh, there are those
who will judge us,
call us self-absorbed.
Let them.
They heard our stories,
and they can’t unhear them now.
It’s too late.
Love has slipped in
and set the captive free.
You can survive on your own; you can grow strong on your own;
you can prevail on your own; but you cannot become human on your own.
–Frederick Buechner,
Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner
My friend Rod Janz and I went for a walk on the Okanagan Rail Trail in Vernon. Here is some of our conversation. (The title photo is of Fred and me in Banff National Park.)
By the way, you can find the blog post about belonging that I was referring to in our conversation here. You can find a Living from the Heart podcast (in which Rod interviewed Brent Unrau and me talking about belonging) here.
One more detail. The snake in the photo looked way bigger than it actually was. (Otherwise you would have seen a way bigger reaction!)
 | Esther Hizsa on An Old Story |
 | bettyhj on An Old Story |
| Esther Hizsa on What Was |
 | Ron Frehner on What Was |
| Esther Hizsa on Come In |
An Everyday Pilgrim 