Nativity

Today we had our yearly Nativity play by the younger members of our congregation aided by a few of the more elderly.

This year however it wasn’t so historically accurate. We had two female magi and no shepherds (partly due to the fact she forgot her lines but I believe it was because she felt it was too cold for her sheep to travel to the nave alter, I mean manger).

It was acted out this year through mime and rhyme, Joseph had a few cups of tea and we had the  Arch angel Gabriel and the star doing a mini version of “Heads, Shoulders, Knee and Toes”.

Yet ever year I think of what it would have been like that cold evening for the expectant parents: tired, weary, fearful yet I believe, ready. Bless Mary, the young girl, and from all accounts we’ve come to realise she may have been as young as 14, who accepted the role as Mother to the Saviour of the world.

Think about the same situation into our society today, let me break it down this way: a young mother unexpectedly pregnant, a young man thrust into fatherhood before he was thinking about it. We see it all the time, young parents, but we walk past them and, I think unintentionally sometimes, sneer or look down at them, without knowing their story, how can we do this to them and yet praise our Lord and light an Advent candle today for His mother Mary, who on the face of it, were in a very similar situation.

No News Is Good News…

First post of 5: 

     I was listening to a favourite band of mine, New Found Glory, at work whilst thinking “I need to get a post up on lovebloomsbright soon when I realised this is the basis for my first post.

The song who’s name forms the title for this post came on and I started thinking, isn’t this similar to what my view of the commercial Christmas is?

The lyrics that got me were:

We all give in,
We all complain,
We sit and wait,
For things to change,
We’re waiting,
We’re waiting.All along, we follow blindly,
All along, we follow blindly

(full lyrics)

 This Christmas season I have become increasingly aware of so many people, including myself, who are getting frustrated by the commercial aspect of the season. It starts with the hints in October, then leads up, the advertising increasing, until this weekend, where the shops are full, the shoppers are fretful and people become angry and will snap at your for the smallest of reasons. When did it become like this? The pressure to buy more presents, to do more and be more is too much at times. I’m good for a small exchange of gifts after church on Tuesday.

On the same thread, I’ve noted a few newspaper articles discussing the decreasing awareness of “the reason for the season”, I think it was the Times that gave the statistic of only 1 person out of 8 who knew the story or baby Jesus.

A shocking statistic.

I often wonder why Easter isn’t the same.

Light and darkness

During Advent I have been very aware of light.  These thoughts started with the Christmas lights in George Square, Glasgow.  As I waited to cross the road on the way to work, I realised that I could see the coloured lights on the edge of the square.  They did not make much sense, like the cliche they looked like the back of the tapestry, just a mixture of colour without any pattern.  To me they looked like the false lights of Christmas, set up well in advance of Christmastide, with no idea of Advent as a time of waiting and expectation.  Missing the point.

But I became more aware of light generally as the days went by.  The days last weekend, when the sun did not appear to rise above the horizon.  Monday when the sun bright, but low.  The darkness of the evenings as I make my way home.

Thoughts of what the Bible says about light and darkness: The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?  (Ps 27:1) 

The central thought came last Thursday evening as I sat in a candlelit church:  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (Jn 1:5).  In the darkness aware of the light all around knowing that night is not dark to God, we wait again for the celebration of the coming of Christ, who is with us as we wait.

This light of Christ that is the true light.  Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’  (Jn 8:12)  The light that is worth the wait.

A God who comes

If you want God, and long for union with him, yet sometimes wonder what that means or whether it can mean anything at all, you are already walking with the God who comes. If you are at times so weary and involved with the struggle of living that you have no strength even to want him, yet are still dissatisfied that you don’t, you are already keeping Advent in your life. If you have ever had an obscure intuition that the truth of things is somehow better, greater, more wonderful than you deserve or desire, that the touch of God in your life stills you by its gentleness, that there is a mercy beyond anything you could ever suspect, you are already drawn into the central mystery of salvation.
Your hope is not a mocking dream; God creates in human hearts a huge desire and a sense of need, because he wants to fill them with the gift of himself ….

You yourself are the place of desire and need. All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that he may fill you. It is not your desire that makes it happen, but his. He longs through your heart …. He is on the inside of your longing.

- Maria Boulding

I first encountered this passage when a dear friend asked me to read it at an Advent service. I found it intensely moving, and when I returned to my place I saw the tears on my friend’s face. It carries for me all the longing and all the reassurance of the season.

Overshadowed by the Spirit

This is a meditation I read at the reflective service for Advent we had in St Mary’s on Tuesday. It was a good night. Darkness and candles. Prayers and Singing. And the lovely bellringers pealing out good news into the night at just the right moment. Complete serendipity.

Advent is a time of waiting. Of darkness and light.

Historically, Advent has been understood as a time to contemplate the last things – eschatology and our own mortality. But tonight I want to attend to another movement. Rather than mortality, let us consider our natality. Our birth.

The philosopher Hannah Arendt asks us to consider our role in creation. Our role is natality – we are all born. We are all someone’s child. And this attention to birth brings us to our creativity – our ability to begin anew. To begin again.

The flocks

 

 

So, this bloke, this townie, says: ‘and how did you know they were your two ewes when you found them in old Sam’s flock?’  Well, you can’t say what springs to mind can you?  I mean he wasn’t to know better, I suppose, and ‘how do you find your bum with both hands?’ well,  it wasn’t going to help.  So I just said: ‘Well each sheep is different, isn’t it?  Each face?  And the body and the way the tail hangs.  But more than that, they didn’t look right at home in Sam’s flock – and of course when I called, they looked straight up and at me.’

Well, of course they did.  My sheep. 

Awkward little sods, sheep.  If they do go missing it is always in vile weather – too hot, too cold, the first really wet day for months.  And then they are always looking for an opportunity to die – get stuck, get tangled up, hurl themselves of a bit of rock,  anything will do.  And then they are always needing something – feet sorted, wool off, fed, something.  Endless ruddy work. 

But just call, and they will follow.  My sheep just follow me.  The hardest thing I need to do, each year, is to decide which animals go for cull.  Each year, we breed a few more than we need.  For the good of the flock, you need to pick out which are to go – to die.  Sacrificed, you might say.  One or two actually are, of course, sacrificed.  But each one that goes, it’s a sacrifice to make the rest stronger, healthier.  Poor ruddy sheep.

Advent Eve

Evening falls on Anticipation
flurry of wings and a song.

This is the time of deep darkness
when we are pushed towards the edge of despair
till we learn to see hope in a star’s light:
the truth of salvation draws near.

We must each find our way in this darkness
a still hush that will hold
till we feel the brush of an angel’s wing
and are filled with the promise of God.