#adventapertures2025: day 16

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the pointContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 16”

#adventapertures2025: day 7

“Advent is a story of Old Testament prophecies. It is a story of cosmic fulfillment. The dream of a world repaired in the holy darkness of Advent. A whisper is heard, words are formed.” Rev Lisha Epperson Packing to go on holiday always induces fear in me as well as excitement.  It is the fearContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 7”

#adventapertures2025: day 5

I carry with me the awareness that many people find that this season brings not tidings of comfort and joy but of frustration and grief…. I believe… that in this season [we are invited] to carry the light, yes, but also to see in the dark and to find the shape of things in theContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 5”

Watchnight: for growth (unknowing)

I clear the surface of my desk and make a pool of light with my lamp.  I go off to fetch matches and light a candle.  One light is steady and sure, the other uncertain and flickering.  I open my notebook and work between these two poles.  On balance, it’s where I prefer to be:Continue reading “Watchnight: for growth (unknowing)”

Blue Christmas: for mourning

Grief is a response to an irreversible loss… To generate grief rather than sadness, the thing lost must carry great emotional weight, and it must pull back the veil that covers a transcendent aspect of the world. Breathe out to push the fog away from a brilliant pinpoint of light. … Gravity holds my feetContinue reading “Blue Christmas: for mourning”

day 12: for wisdom

In a vast untouched area like ours, you can hear what you need to hear. You can see for your own good. Messages come through your touch. You are soaked, submerged, immersed; full to the brim with beauty. Each visit can be a final answer, but the next visit brings you something else. It neverContinue reading “day 12: for wisdom”

day 11: for rediscovery

Some of what we love we stumble upon –  a purse of gold thrown on the road, a poem, a friend, a great song. And more discloses itself to us –  a well among green hazels, a nut thicket –  when we are worn out searching for something quite different. And more comes to us,Continue reading “day 11: for rediscovery”

day 4: for preparation

‘What comes into our minds when we think about God  is the most important thing about us.’ A.W. Tozer I reach for the empty suitcase, and wonder if today is the day when I will have enough energy to discern what needs to be put in it.   And then I run out of days.Continue reading “day 4: for preparation”

day 3: for change

The ancient Christian monastic traditions, especially desert, Celtic, and Benedictine, offer great wisdom for the journey of unfolding. They understood that the soul’s ripening is never to be rushed and takes a lifetime of work. The gift of the contemplative path is a profound honoring of the grace of slowness.  We can grow impatient whenContinue reading “day 3: for change”

well or w/hole? (part ii)

We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. ‘The Secret Sits’ Robert Frost For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the idea of essence: that there is a core, a kernel, a seed, a heart, a soul, which functions as aContinue reading “well or w/hole? (part ii)”