Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

(this is a part of my series on advent. if you’d like to contribute, comment below.)

i first met bethany in the fall of 2001, when we were but freshman in college. over the next four years and some particularly ridiculous nicknames, she became a deep and true part of my life. when i moved to waringstown, bethany was my most faithful pen pal and i squealed with joy when one of her decorated envelopes dropped through my post box. since my return to the states our lives have moved in very different directions, but her wisdom and grace still reign strong in my life. we both love music and musicals, gilmore girls and adventure.

photo credit: gjeewaytee on and off

We have reached the first weekend in December, and already the verbal wishes are flying: “Merry Christmas,” “Happy New Year,” “Have a joy-filled holiday,” etc. The radio stations are blaring “Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas,” and every window display has a grinning Santa. While I would never wish anyone a miserable Christmas, I feel that sometimes the worldly expectation of happiness overshadows our ability to celebrate the season of Advent, which is a time of preparation. We are preparing for the joyful celebration of the birth of Christ, but it doesn’t mean that we must or should be exclusively happy during the time of preparation.

The Israelites certainly didn’t feel constant happiness while they waited for the Messiah. Their aching cries for deliverance can be heard over and over in the Old Testament and even in our familiar Christmas carols (“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”). And many people today have difficulty commanding themselves to be happy during the month of December while they suffer from depression, eating disorders, addictions, abuse, and the loss of loved ones.

A year ago at this time, my husband and I were trying for our second child. I was certain to the depths of my soul that, even though we hadn’t had a positive pregnancy test yet, we would be a family of four by the following Christmas. When we woke up on Christmas morning, Tim leaned over and whispered to my stomach, “Merry Christmas, baby.” The positive pregnancy test came a few days later, but our joy lasted less than two weeks due to an early miscarriage. God has since blessed us with the gift of another pregnancy, but for me the coming of this season has also brought feelings of pain and loss; last December, I was expecting not only baby Jesus, but my own baby as well. God has done miraculous work in my heart since that time, and I have been able to minister to other women who have lost children, but the preparation of my heart for His work is not always easy, and it is certainly not always happy.

Thus far Advent has been, for me, a time of joy and reverence rather than happiness.  My favorite definition for reverence is “profound, adoring, awed, respect.” Reverence for Joseph as he trusted God to care for a child that wasn’t “his”; reverence for Mary as she traveled long miles and delivered her baby in a barn, far away from her family; reverence for the wise men who had such a sure faith that they not only traveled to seek the King but had the depth of understanding to know what gifts would suit Him best. And above all of this, reverence for a God who would send His Son into the world to walk beside us in the midst of pain, loss, poverty, and longing in order to bring us closer to Himself.

Other than Christ’s return, there can be no greater joy than His coming, so I WILL wish you a very merry Christmas. However, I will also wish that you feel the level of adoration that Mary felt as she held her newborn baby for the first time and the awe of the shepherds as throngs of angels fill the sky. This Christmas, may you be filled with reverence.

“This Flower, whose fragrance tender, with sweetness fills the air,
Dispels with glorious splendor the darkness everywhere;
True man, yet very God, from sin and death He saves us
And lightens every load.”

(this is the first in my series of guest posts on advent. if you’d like to participate, comment on this post.)

my friend suzanne is brilliant. no, really. she is. this is evidenced not only by the fact that she graduated as the truett female student of the year, but also by the fact she is working on a master’s degree at oxford university (perhaps you’ve heard of it.) we met years ago in a fairly dysfunctional life-group and then slowly began to do life together in beautiful ways. a founding member of the onion, there is a definitive suzanne-shaped hole in our waco lives. she blogs at aurora’s torch.

The morning air is cold today. So cold, it crystallizes into foggy puffs at every exhale. The snow drifts slowly to the ground and the lights of the observatory create a yellow haze in the gray dawning light. It is quiet and I smile as I hear the crunch of the snow under my boots. They had predicted a cold winter, and as assumed the unseasonably warm autumn gave way into a frigid winter with snow blanketing the entire country, grinding transportation to a halt and delaying flights. Nevertheless, there is something about a first snowfall that clings to my mind and heart. Things are quiet. Life seems to slow down for just an instant and with wonder I loose myself in the peaceful respite I find in the silently falling snow.

With similar awe I find myself standing quietly in advent this year. The expectant hope of God becoming human settles in my thoughts with a comfort and nearness I have not felt in many years. For the first time in a long time, I can feel God funnelling all the brilliance and glory into this one single moment and all I can do is stand in wonder. God with us. The power of something new, of something that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but hovers at the horizon of my hope makes life slow and the full power of the event sweep over my soul. God drawing near; God wearing skin; God walking among us.

The magnitude of this should be the impact of an avalanche whiting out my mind, but it is not violent or soul shattering this season. Instead the idea of God with us is a quiet, peace filled moment, like experiencing a first snowfall, silently watching unique little miracles pile up, covering the withered life of the past. For me, this advent I am experiencing the daily miracles of hope pile up, covering the withered life of my past. The dead dreams and hopes, the unmet expectations and assumptions, the horror and sadness, the loss and pain, the disillusionment and disappointment are quietly covered in the silently falling snow of incarnated hope. Things look beautiful again, clean, innocent, happy. I find myself standing quietly in advent with hope drifting into my heart, knowing that God is restoring a battered faith and creating new life. My cynicism and bitterness lessen daily as I remember how to hope and how to embrace that hope.

1. nothing is more exciting this week than the fact that Elizabeth Keliah has graced us with her presence! it was a high honor to be a small part of the process of her transition from womb to world and one I will never forget. I love this family and who they are in my life.

2. the fact that as this posts I am in Nashville recruiting for Truett. the recruiting is not as exciting as seeing favorites I have not seen in a while.

3. Parenthood is the best show on TV you’re not watching. I’d recommend starting immediately.

4. Harry. Potter. Or I should say the anticipation of the movie, which releases TODAY but I probably won’t see until I’m back in Waco.

5. getting hand-written letters in the mail. i have a beloved who is not tech-connected for the next few seasons and to write back and forth to him is becoming one of my favorite daily rituals.

~*~

special shout-out to my favorite baby brother today who turns twenty-four! he’s definitely also a favorite.

Last summer, So You Think You Can Dance featured a song by Sara Barellies called “Gravity.” I had heard the song before (the CD is one of my favorites), but I had never thought of it that particular way before. Choreographer Mia Michaels envisioned a routine about addiction as the evil entity in the song. The video below is K’upono dancing as addiction and Kayla dancing as the addict.

I SOBBED at this video. We watched it in silence and paused the television after, rewound at watched it again. I cannot express how profoundly this dance and this song describe what I know of addiction. The desperation to get away, the need to not be controlled by the addiction anymore; these are daily realities for addicts.

There’s something to be said that we’re all addicted to something and that some addictions are just more socially acceptable than others. That’s true. But this video talks about the debilitating addictions; the ones that rob you of self and security and family and hope. The ones that kill you even while you’re still living. I love people who live with those addictions and I can tell you that I’ve seen those looks on their faces. I pray I can continue to be a voice of hope in this midst of their darkness and to help them provide the strength they need to not be pulled down by the gravity of the addiction. Some days I am very good at this, but most days not.

Loving addicts is not something which is talked about often enough and someday I hope to remedy that, but today I want to focus on my beloveds who know what it’s like to not be the one who inhabits their own skin. May we all love graciously and provide healthy communities and speak honestly and help provide them the strength to stand on their own and not fall apart into that gravity.

~*~

The prompt I’m following was ‘a song that makes you cry,’ so allow me to include the lyrics.

Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.
No matter what I say or do I’ll still feel you here ’til the moment I’m gone.

You hold me without touch.
You keep me without chains.
I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your rain.

Set me free, leave me be. I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity.
Here I am and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be.
But you’re on to me and all over me.

You loved me ’cause I’m fragile.
When I thought that I was strong.
But you touch me for a little while and all my fragile strength is gone.

I live here on my knees as I try to make you see that you’re everything I think I need here on the ground.
But you’re neither friend nor foe though I can’t seem to let you go.
The one thing that I still know is that you’re keeping me down
You’re on to me, on to me, and all over…
Something always brings me back to you.
It never takes too long.

I’ve had a few emails and comments questioning this thing I call ‘The Onion.’ Several of you wanted to know about how it started, what is it and why it’s so important. I wrote some of this for an essay asking about my understanding of church leadership, and I thought I’d offer that here. It’s a little long, so I’ll offer a page break for those who don’t want to read.

A little over two years ago, I belonged to a local institutional church. Through a series of more than unfortunate events, I had to leave that institution. Several of my friends chose to leave as well and we felt incredibly unmoored. We had lost our family, our community and the place which we had been dancing out our faith for the previous years. Another friend of ours who was outside that particular institution but who saw our grieving suggested we gather once a week over a meal and the reading of Scripture. He thought community could be healing and that, if nothing else, healing began with a safe place to heal. Over the past few years, we have grown together and created authentic community. We call it “The Onion,” after a passage in the Japanese novel Deep River.

There are elements of homogeneity; for instance, we all have a connection to Truett and we are all caucasian and from Christian backgrounds. Most of us have a connection to that one specific previous institution, but some of us do not. There are differences of opinion and faith and experience. We gather at least once per week in the living room of one of our members, gathering over a shared meal and a topic of discussion. We certainly do not always agree, but we always, in the words of E. Stanley Jones, resolve to love.

The Onion has become family for me. They have seen me through unspeakable trauma and pain over the past two years. We are, by every definition of the word, a community. We do life together, gathering for game nights or homework nights outside of our designated gathering time. We ‘circle the wagons,’ so to speak, in the event of trauma and buy the confetti in the event of celebrations. To be perfectly blunt, without these people, I would have left Truett and potentially the Christian faith after what happened to me at that previous institution. The Onion shows me Christ and has helped me redefine ‘church’ to be community and body and I treasure that redefinition.

As we are a community which seeks to live life together, boundaries have had to be set. We must be able to trust each member to carry the weight of our truths and to keep secrets shared within. For the first year and a half of our gatherings, the original members were not in emotional places to invite other persons. We guarded our meetings carefully and received some criticism for that. Our critics asked how we could call ourselves ‘church’ if we turned people away and we replied that we were not turning people away from church, we were simply setting boundaries on our community. Since January of this year, we have invited four individuals to join us, one on a temporary basis and three on a permanent one. These people were invited at the complete consensus of the group and our terms of membership were communicated explicitly to them. To be a member of The Onion, we asserted, meant joining a family and committing to do life with this group of people for the duration of your membership. All of the invitations have proven to be incredibly beneficial to the group and I, personally, cannot imagine my life without any of those individuals.

~*~

So there it is; my Waco family, my church, my community. I hope you have these kind of people and this kind of community, especially if you are someone who belongs to an organized faith.

I had planned a long post for today, but life got a hold of me. Instead of my normal Wednesday afternoon activity of playing with Bucket, I made Irish Stew for the Onion. The stew has become of my culinary trademarks here in Waco and it’s a bittersweet process making it.

One of the things I discovered while living on the island was that “irish stew” is a diverse entity. It always contains potatoes, onions, carrots and some sort of meat, but the combination is diverse. I remember a coffee shop in Lurgan where the soup contained almost no broth and pureed potatoes and a pub on the North Coast where the meat was lamb. No matter what, however, the meal tasted like home.

As I stood at my stove in Waco, stirring the broth and preparing the potatoes, I found myself lost in my memories – even muttering to myself in a Northern Irish accent at times. We gathered at the Onion this evening to celebrate food and how the eating of food should always be a communal entity. I’ve written about that before and I’ll write about it again – perhaps even sharing on here what I wrote for the Onion.

However, after being up to my elbows in broth most of the day and then sharing the meal around the table, I am tired and unable to articulate all I wish to this evening. So keep your eyes peeled for future posts on food and family, dear readers and enjoy a good rest on this Wednesday evening.

I’m combining two prompts; one about a photo that makes you sad and one that makes you happy. I wanted the juxtaposition because this season is not one for dwelling on sadness. However, as I looked through my pictures, I ran across so many that made me sad for so many reasons. I found photos of a wedding I went to once that does not represent the happiest day of anyone’s life. I found pictures of children bathing themselves in feces-infested waters. I found incarnations of my past selves, some of which are just sad and some of which carry shame.

After much consideration, I thought about single experiences which carry both emotions. After much consideration, I chose my time in Rwanda. The Land of a Thousand Hills is not a place I speak about often on this blog, but it has shaped so much of me. On my second journey there, our team made a trek out to a small town on the border with Tanzania. That particular village, Nyarabuye, was the site of one of the more intense episodes of their genocide. We took a tour of their make-shift museum and found ourselves at losses for words. How do we express sorrow? Do we even have the right to grieve when we did not directly lose people in the event?

For me, however, the photo which sums up the whole experience is this:

This bag is full of bones. They had been uncovered a few weeks before our visit on the grounds of the church. Through choked back tears, the guide explained this bag contained the bones of a family who lived not far from the church. Father, mother, daughter and son. They had fled to the church for refuge, only to find their end.

I don’t think “sad” begins to cover how I feel about that bag and the situation surrounding that bag.

However, in this picture, I find hope.

These women belong to a group called Rwanda Women Network, a group of women who have committed themselves to emotionally course-correcting their country. They’ve provided homes and hope for widows and orphans, created job opportunities when there were none. Providing legal support, community development and skills towards economic empowerment, RWN is a hope.

I need to say that Rwanda is full of RWNs. Full of organizations – NGOs and otherwise – which are run by indigenous persons who are committing that 1994 will never repeat itself. Please do not assume that the entire reality of the country is contained in that bag. But to ignore that a large piece of its story is anything other than tragic would also be folly.

As I seek to work in places with legacies of violence tied up with hope, I continue to remember my experiences in Rwanda. The despair juxtaposed with hope, the pain interlaced with joy, the death wrapped up with life.

Today’s prompt involves favorite things, 20 of them, to be precise. Ironically, this was the day I finally got around to watching Oprah’s Sound of Music special and Sarah and I sang loudly along. So, without further adieu and in no particular order, I present to you twenty of my favorite things.

phillies, clearly. specifically in their world championship incarnation, but i’m not picky

 

 

 

 

 

passport stamps, plane tickets and the adventure they represent

 

 

 

 

 

the onion. love these people.

netflix brings happiness via my mailbox

autumn. i love autumn and how it’s the season that forces me to let calm invade my soul

 

 

 

 

 

 

clinque makes being a girl significantly more ethical and easier. it does not make it cheaper.

eucharist and how family is represented in food

i’m going to let the central perk gang be a stand-in for all of my television favorites because if i listed them all, i’d seem increasingly pathetic. but “friends” is always funny, always healing and makes any day better. definitely a favorite.

clearly, northern ireland. no matter how frustrated i get with her, she is in my soul.

birthday week theme parties. love, love.

books. books are seriously favorites.

truett. even on days where it drives me crazy, i am so thankful for the gifts it has given me

chipotle is my favorite national chain, hands down.

eating healthy food and being a healthy person. both are still relatively new concepts to me and are definitely favorites.

the competition for the nut. one of the most ridiculous things about my family and one of my favorites

not just my iPhone (although it is pretty fantastic) but the ability to stay connected with far away friends. i love modern communication and am so thankful for it.

game nights with favorites

cheering for home teams in championships

dreaming of possible futures

hope

Decisions are made by those who show up. – President Josiah Bartlet

I’ve spent a large majority of my life collecting quotes. I have journals and Word documents full of them – funny, inspirational, thought provoking. For the “favorite quote” prompt, I had a hard time narrowing it down. So, in typical fashion, I’ve chosen a few.

The above quote is from season one of The West Wing, which is one of the most brilliant things to happen on television, ever. I’m reminded of it all the time, however. I think we, as a society, have a problem with showing up. Not just with physically being present, but with being emotionally present. While Bartlet meant it as a challenge to college students to participate in the political process (being that you can’t govern if you don’t at least try to run), I think it has broader meanings. I quote it often in class, thinking of how participation in the Kingdom is not a spectator sport. Decisions are made by those who show up, folks.

We read to know we are not alone. – C.S. Lewis

I’ve written about this one before. I believe books and ideas and words are the connective tissue of society. We read to learn; to learn how to love, learn how to be, learn who to be. We read so we understand things beyond our world and to experience lands both factual and fictional.

Missions is people being transformed by people being transformed. – Mike Stroope

A large part of my concentration at Truett is discussing how people engage cross-culturally. While I am not a fan of “missions” in a typical mode (white people bringing their definition of both faith and civilization to those in other parts of the world), I am a fan of redeeming the concept. This quote speaks towards a holistic concept of cross-cultural relationship for the redemption of all of creation, which is, in my opinion, the whole point.

We cease to exist when we become silent about things that matter. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the driving mantras of my life. I believe genocide prevention matters and education matters and other things matter. I cannot exist within the world as it is without being vocal. While I may not be part of every solution, I refuse to be a silent minority. This is why I sign petitions and attend rallies and write my congresspeople and write blogs. I attempt, every day and in my own little way, to contribute to things that matter.

I am not the same for having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

I have no idea who wrote this quote – my friend Suzanne told it to me years ago. I painted it on a sign in my bathroom, to remind me of how I have been shaped by the stamps in my passport. To know what a ghat feels like in Varanassi or how rains smells in Belfast, to have dear friends who do not speak the same language I do and many who do; I am better for these facts.

…but the greatest of these is love…

Love, my friends, wins. Always and unceasingly, love always wins.

Oh my goodness, this made my day.

It appears some wonderful fellow nerds have created a website called “The Harry Potter Alliance” seeking to live out some of the good and wonderful narratives of the series into real life. They’re specifically focusing Nov 2010 to July 2011 (the span in between the release of the two movies) to the “Deathly Hallows Campaign.” This is an effort to rid the world of seven of our collective horcruxes. The first one they’re attempting to tackle is convincing Warner Brothers to switch all HP chocolate products to Fair Trade chocolate.

I have clearly signed the petition and plan on participating in all of their future campaigns. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the series, I’d still encourage you to participate! For those of you who are, I do not see how you cannot participate.

Click here to sign the petition and get involved. Because as ridiculous as this may seem, the need for fairly traded and ethically handled food is serious. What better impetus than the fictional fight against all the evil of the world to get us going.