Day 12 -- Wilderness on This Twelfth Day of Advent

Wilderness gets a bad reputation in much of literature. Think of Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and Dante waking in the middle of a dark wilderness. Before I lose readers in my literary allusions, I'll cut this reminiscence short with the comment: the wilderness is only scary if one is lost or the woods are on fire (Bambi).

Mary and Joseph are not lost; they're simply on their journey to Bethlehem at my house and encountered a bit of "wilderness." The wilderness can be a time of paying attention, of being reverent. Barbara Brown Taylor writes in An Altar in the World: "We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do, all of which feed our illusion that life is manageable. Meanwhile, none of them meets the first criteria for reverence, which is to remind us that we are not gods" (24). The wilderness, much as Advent calls us to do, beckons us to slow down and take in the beauty.

I would say the Creator of the wilderness blessed it with an atmosphere of refreshment and wonder. For the most part, the wilderness remains so. One still has to pay attention; it is, after all, a wild place, a place we can not tame.  There are natural cycles of drought and rain, cycles of fire and growth, but there are also surges of unnatural dryness created by cement jungles and unnatural fires born out of greed -- perhaps these are our vain attempts to be in control.

However, as I wait during Advent for the celebration to come, I will wait for the days when "the beasts of the field will not be afraid, the pastures of the wilderness will spring forth, the trees will bear fruit.." (Joel 2:22).

I will practice knowing that God is present in the wilderness. I will practice slowing down and paying attention. I will practice reverence. 

Can You Remind Me What God Is Like?

Last week I received a text from a good friend: "Can you remind me what God is like?" I had to chuckle at my phone's automatic response choices: "Sure"; "Sorry, no"; and "Talk later."

Given circumstances in the world, my friend's request wasn't that unusual. I gave her a longer version (because that's what I typically do) of what children's television host Mr. Rogers said about looking for the helpers. I look for signs of the Imago Dei, the image of God, and I look at His handiwork.

Those familiar with art know that the painting above is a Caravaggio without seeing his name. The Nativity with Saint Francis and Saint Lawrence bear all the markings and attributes of Caravaggio's work. So, too, with God's handiwork. His creation has marks of His handiwork: beauty, goodness, and incredible skill. Sometimes it bears the marks of astounding mathematically precision, and at other times, it is the irregularities which are amazingly wondrous.

Those irregularities are quite common in people, yet as Dallas Willard writes: "The obviously well kept secret of the 'ordinary' is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows" (14). But, some friend will cry out: "This week we have seen humans where no mark of the divine seemed anywhere close!" The divine in them was given over to tin: tin men and women mechanically carrying out what they had been trained to trust in -- a god of hate.

"...C.S.Lewis writes, our faith is not a matter of our hearing what God said long ago and 'trying to carry it out.' Rather, 'The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to "inject" His kind of life and thought, His Zoe [life], into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin'" (Lewis, Mere Christianity, qtd. by Willard, The Divine Conspiracy 20).

Still tin. We walk around daily with much tin in our lives. We don't look like we carry the Imago Dei within us. The beauty of a Caravaggio painting is his mark of reality: Mary is weary, no halo or crown above her head. C.S. Lewis's words from "The Weight of Glory" apply: "Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is Monday morning."

What do I do with my Monday mornings (and Tuesdays and all the other mornings)?

"A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point" (Lewis).

The Beauty of Hope -- Day 7 of Advent

On this seventh day of Advent, I want to post pictures of beauty. Most of the time, I try to find photos I have taken myself (thus, the quality may be less than desired :D). However, this picture above (and one other photo of my sister and I running from the ocean waves in the November 22 post "Where Did My Year Go?) was taken by a former student and professional photographer Melissa Johnson. I chose this photo to connect with Frank Laubach's letter from May 24, 1930:

"One thing I have seen this week is that God loves beauty. Everything He makes is lovely. The clouds, 

the tumbling river, the waving lake, the soaring eagle, the slender blade of grass, the whispering of the wind, the fluttering butterfly, this graceful transparent nameless child of the lake which clings to my window for an hour and vanishes for ever. Beautiful craft of God! 

And I know that He makes my thought-life beautiful when I am open all the day to Him." 

As this first week of Advent comes to an end, but our journey continues, I close with this blessing from 2 Thessalonians 2:16  --

"Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work."