Living Wittily

Advent in 100 Words: December 9

Those in between moments when the sun is rising or setting. Accompanied by the rhythm and splashing of the sea. A sea on which there is one small fishing boat, sailing towards the horizon, afloat on an ocean of possibility.

Standing alone, watching and listening, caught up in the natural movements of the world around, the sense that every day, week or year, we too are afloat on an ocean of possibility.

Advent is the season for both impossible, and new possibilities. The impossible truth of God come amongst us; the adventure of newness as we sail towards new horizons. 

Prayer of Intercession Before the General Election

 

Our Father in heaven, Giver of life and creator of all things:

For years now our country has been divided and unsettled. We thank you we live in a country where we are free to vote, and in which we can speak truth to power, hoping it will be heard.

We are troubled by the divisions that pull communities apart; concerned that truth and trust are so badly damaged by lies and broken promises; we grieve at the rise in child poverty and the broken hopes of the poor.

We know that the problems we now face are beyond the solving of any one leader or any one party. We need the moving of your Spirit of wisdom, and to learn again the ways of humility and truthfulness, if we are to build a better future.

We pray that you will give us wisdom in our understanding of the things that matter as we vote later this week.

Remind us, as your children, and as followers of Jesus that we are called to be peacemakers, ministers of reconciliation, carers for the poor, voices on the side of justice, and those who pray ‘your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’

This Advent season we rejoice that the Government is on the shoulders of the one who is Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Whatever Government is elected

may they learn how to care for the poor, support the vulnerable and look after those who are the least and last and lost;

may their rhetoric and public discourse recover the qualities of trust and truthfulness;

may their policies be more just and the decisions they make be wise and for the common good;

may they learn to heal divisions rather than exploit them;

whatever the outcome of Brexit and whatever the future of our United Kingdom, may we through all this pain and turmoil and uncertainty, with all its fear, anxiety and anger, come to realise the importance of being a constructive and outward looking people, welcoming of others, and committed to peace and justice.

Lord we have no idea what Thursday will bring; you have been our help in ages past, and you are our hope for years to come. Grant us wisdom and courage, Amen      

Advent in 100 Words: December 8

"Joy to the world! The Lord is come...let heaven and nature sing." Advent isn't only about darkness and waiting. It is also about excitement and anticipation. Advent energises and pulls us forward to new horizons and possibilities, new ways of looking at the world.

Joy is deeper than happiness, more durable than pleasure, resides in a heart fuelled by peace, justice, and reciprocated love.

The opposite of joy is hard to describe; but it includes cynical loss of trust, negative expectations, complaint as default setting.

Advent joy is rooted in patient trust, persistent hope and  is propelled by praise. 

  

Advent in 100 Words: December 7

Advent is a time of intentional waiting, when hearts educated in longing, await one who is absent.

As Winter cold awaits Spring warmth, as gloom reluctantly gives way to dawn, as seeds struggle towards light, waiting becomes expectation, and stirs the beginnings of hopefulness.

This year Advent waiting and the sense of absence are made more acute by grief, our continuing sense of loss following the death of our loved and lovely daughter Aileen, this time last year.

As people walking in such darkness, we pray that upon all whose hearts are broken, the light of God's love will shine.

Advent in 100 Words: December 6

Yesterday I arrived at University, the morning sky still glowing pink and yellow. Advent is longing for dawn, hunger for light, a stirring at the core of our being where seeds of hope are nurtured through the darkness towards the light of life.

The library is a place where the mind seeks illumination, enlightenment, wisdom, love of truth. Christian faith is rooted in Jewish faith, and borrows its vocabulary: "Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you." (Isaiah 60.1)

Advent happens when hope shines with the reflected glory of borrowed light. 

Advent in 100 Words: December 5

Emil Brunner on the difference Advent makes:

God is with me,

so that there is no longer any despair for me.

God has done what needed to be done,

so that there is nothing in this world,

not even its darkest aspects,

that he has not himself gone through;

no place which he has not visited..,

so he also comes into your despair.

So Jesus Christ has entered into everything that is human,

even the most dreadful,

so that there may be no human place,

no human experience,

no difficulty,

no situation,

in which there is no relationship with God. 

Advent in 100 Words: December 4

Evelyn Underhill's poem Immanence takes the reader into the eternally love-filled purposes of God in Christ. Advent is about the God who comes, and through the transparent subterfuge of love and eternally patient purpose.

I come in the little things,

Saith the Lord:

My starry wings

I do forsake,

Love's highway of humility to take;

Meekly I fit my stature to your need,

In beggar's part

about your gates I shall not cease to plead --

As man, to speak with man --

Till by such art

I shall achieve My immemorial plan.

To pass the low lintel of the human heart.

Advent in 100 Words: December 3

 

Thyself from Love Thy Heart didst not defend,

From Heaven to earth it brought Thee from Thy throne ;

Beloved, to what sheer depths didst Thou descend,

To dwell with man, unhonoured and unknown :

In life and death to enrich us without end.

 

Homeless and poor, with nothing of Thine own.

Thou here didst come alone.

For Thou wert called

By Love unwalled.

That all Thy heart did move.

— And as about the world Thy feet did go,

'Twas Love that led Thee, always, everywhere ;

Thy only joy, for us thy love to show,

And for thyself, no whit alone to care.

(The poem is 101 words - but it is such a beautiful reflection on our Lord's Incarnation. Written by the 13 C Italian Franciscan poet, Jacopone da Todi translated into English and included in Evelyn Underhill's spiritual biography of Jacopone)

Advent in 100 Words: December 2

"The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not."

The older King James Bible elegantly translates the ambiguity of a word meaning both 'overcome' and 'understand.'

Darkness cannot extinguish the light that contradicts it. To darkness, light is incomprehensible, a reality beyond its known categories.

Advent is a celebration of hoped for light, long longed for peace, delayed but coming justice, the advent and adventure of God, taking up again the tools of creation to begin the new creation.

This time not by fiat, "Let there be...". "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us..."

Light shineth! 

Advent in 100 Words: December 1

"For there was no room at the inn".

The entire Christmas card industry depends on that poignant, near sentimental explanatory aside.

Whether the baby was born in a stable, or the shared accommodation animal space in a poorer house, there was nothing cosy or quaint about it.

A teenage single mother, heavily pregnant had just travelled 70 miles on the say so of some Emperor a thousand miles away. That same decree set the whole world moving. No one needed the inconvenience of an unwanted pregnancy.

"He came to his own, and his own people did not welcome him." Typical!

Thomas Merton Explains 21st Century Dystopian Politics.

And here, in wise words from half a century ago, is what is wrong with our politics and the rise of opinionated inerrancy.

"We are living under a tyranny of untruth which confirms itself in power and establishes more and more total control over people in proportion as they convince themselves they are resisting error.
Our submission to plausible and useful lies involves us in greater and more obvious contradictions, and to hide these from ourselves we need greater and ever less plausible lies.

The basic falsehood is the lie that we are totally dedicated to the truth, and that we can remain dedicated to the truth in a manner that is at the same time honest and exclusive: that we have the monopoly of all truth, just as our adversary of the moment has the monopoly of all error." (Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 56)