#adventapertures2025: day 23

Watch, dear Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and let your angels protect those who sleep. Tend the sick. Refresh the weary. Sustain the dying. Calm the suffering. Pity the distressed. We ask this for the sake of your love. St. Augustine So the Wise-Ones were directed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Continue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 23”

#adventapertures2025: Sunday 3

‘It was said of Rabbi Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha’olam – “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote: V’anokhi afar v’aefer – “I am but dust and ashes.”  He would take out each slip ofContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Sunday 3”

Christmas Eve: for reframing

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to me.Is someone here? I ask.The moon. The full moon is inside your house. My friends and I go running out into the street.I’m in here, comes a voice from the house,but we aren’t listening. We’re looking up at the sky.My pet nightingale sobs like a drunkContinue reading “Christmas Eve: for reframing”

day 6: for fear

I wonder why you brought me to these splintering days, this age of dearth-death and default extinction and the smothering of constellations nostalgia claws at me screaming send me back then I sense a fire that doesn’t consume, a cloud of breath-taking holiness passing across the face of a mountain and it says I putContinue reading “day 6: for fear”

gospel 8: My signs

I AM Good. I AM News to be proclaimed.  Use the GoodName of I AM for it has power to transfigure and transform, power to reach all peoples in all places.  I AM accompanies you.  I AM your Companion as you share Me.  I AM your Companion as you speak about Me, of Me, withContinue reading “gospel 8: My signs”

day 5

Once in the Advent seasonWhen I was walking downA narrow street I met a flock of childrenWho all came running up to meSaying that they were prophetsAnd for a penny theyWould prophesy I gave them each a penny They started outBy rummaging in trash-cansUntil they foundA ragged piece of silk It’s blue, they saidBlue isContinue reading “day 5”

adventapertures2019: Sunday 1

I was passionate, filled with longing, I searched far and wide. But the day that the Truthful One found me, I was at home. Lal Ded (a 14th century Kashmiri, translated by Jane Hirshfield)   ‘How can this be?’ If an Archangel appears in my living room speaking of me as the fulfilment of anContinue reading “adventapertures2019: Sunday 1”