Sunday Invitation: Hope and longing

Today's moodling is just a quick invitation to Advent Prayer. Join me online, live at 7 pm MST this evening, or anytime afterward at the link below... I will post the video at the link, and it can be viewed for the next few weeks.

We will be praying with beautiful songs of hope and longing from the Taize community, with scripture, and silence. If you're online, you can also post your personal prayers so we can keep each other's intentions in mind.

All are welcome -- for the rest of Advent too.

https://www.facebook.com/events/430838638423614

Advent hope, peace, joy and love to you all!

Re-Moodling: Simple Christmas Idea #9... Attend an Advent prayer

For the past five years, a group of churches in my neighbourhood has welcomed Christians of all denominations to pray in their worship spaces one Sunday evening each month (except June to August) in the style of prayer that originated in Taizé (pronounced Tay-ZAY) Community in the Burgundy region of France. The beautiful music and the spirit of the place draws people from all over the globe to go on pilgrimage to the tiny village every year (see www.taize.fr).

I would like to invite you to come and join us for a musical, meditative, internationally flavoured way to pray this Advent.
We will gather at 7 p.m. next Sunday, December 11, at Ascension Lutheran Church, 8405 83 Street.

Music is the foundation of the prayer that flows for an hour, interspersed with psalms, a gospel reading, silence and intercessory prayer. At the evening's conclusion, we sometimes gather as neighbours and friends for conversation and refreshments. Honestly, it's one of my favourite ways to pray, because I've always been strongly drawn to music as a form of worship... and because there is no preaching. We sing and listen to the scriptures and let them speak to us of God in the silence of our hearts.

Please consider joining us, and bring friends!

Holy is the name of God, sing out my soul, praising God evermore!

Holy is the name of God, sing out my soul, giving praise to God!

Oh, those O Antiphons!

When I woke up in this morning's deep darkness to the radio news, I wanted to cry. Death in Sydney's chocolate shoppe. Much more death in a school in Peshawar. Bad news everywhere. I lay there listening, feeling an ache in my chest that had nothing to do with the common cold that arrived after our beautiful and joyous L'Arche Christmas Pageant last night.

The darkness of winter is so hard on the human spirit. Whoever came up with the idea of moving the celebration of Christ's birth into the depths of December from its more likely March time frame -- the season when Jesus was likely actually born, as shepherds were in the fields assisting at the births of their lambs -- should be commended. We need something to celebrate in this yearly darkness, something to unite us and lift our spirits when darkness and violence overcome too many souls, all seems bleak, and light is dim.

And we need words of hope. Which is why I love the O Antiphons that are found in the ancient prayer of the church. You know, the ones heard when we sing, O come O come Emmanuel. Every year, the antiphons arrive just in time for the darkest days. But the version I really like is the newer, more inclusive one below, which is taken from the People's Companion to the Breviary, Volume One (1997, Carmelites of Indianapolis, ISBN 1-8886873-09-7).

Words of hope in the darkness, one set at a time, prayed from tomorrow until December 23rd... but I'll pray them all together this week. Pray with me?

O Wisdom, Holy Word of God, you reach from one end of the earth to the other with providential and tender care. Come and teach us to live in your ways.
O Adonai and Leader of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush and gave him your Law on Sinai, come and free us with your outstretched arm.
O Root of Jesse, you stand as a sign for all people. Before you rulers keep silence; from you all nations seek help. O come to free us and do not make us wait.
O Key of David and Scepter of the house of Israel, you open and no one shuts. You close and no one opens. Come and deliver us from the prisons that hold us, for we are seated in darkness, oppressed by the shadows of death.
O Rising Sun, splendor of Eternal Light and brilliant Sun of Justice, come and light up the darkness concealing from us the path to life.
O Ruler of all nations and true desire of our hearts! You are the cornerstone binding us all into a home for God. Come and free us whom you formed from earth.
O Emmanuel, Giver of a new law to all nations, come and save us, for you are our God.
Come Lord Jesus, come!

You who are unity, love, and life, remove from our hearts and our world the division, fear and violence that splinters your beautiful creation. Make us one.

+Amen.

Praying more slowly

The Magnificat window in the Church of Reconciliation, Taizé.
See John and Jesus?

Last night we had a gorgeous, Advent-y Taizé prayer at the First Church of God, our first visit to a wonderful worship space. The Advent chants we sang included many simple canons that have multiple layers – at least eleven independent voices are required to do justice to the secondary canons in Prepare the way of the Lord, which is an amazing piece of music.

But only one voice is needed to read the Prayer by Brother Roger, founder of the Taizé community. Unfortunately, last night it was read too quickly for the meaning to really sink in.

It’s such a beautiful prayer that I’m repeating it here, for your Advent enjoyment. Prepare the way of the Lord!

You are the God

of every human being

and, too bright for us to look upon,

you let yourself be seen

as in a mirror,

on the face of your Christ.

We are eager

to glimpse a reflection of your presence

in the confusion of people and events:

open in us the gateway to transparency of heart.

In that place of solitude
which there is in each one of us, 

come and refresh the dry and thirsty ground

of our body and our spirit.

Come and inundate us with your trust

till even our inner deserts burst into flower.

+Amen.

Awakening to Advent

When your mental judgmental grid and all its commentaries are placed aside, God finally has a chance to get through to you, because your pettiness is at last out of the way. Then Truth stands revealed! You will begin to recognize that we all carry the Divine Indwelling within us and we all carry it equally. That will change your theology, your politics, and your entire worldview. In fact, it is the very birth of the soul.

-- Richard Rohr 

Charleen's book club (of which I am a member) met this first Sunday of Advent to discuss Richard Rohr's Falling Upward (2011, Jossey Bass ISBN 9780470907757), a very inspiring book about the journey of life. Reaching the second half of mine, I find that his words are an encouragement -- and a freedom -- to ignore the judgmental voices that are always talking in my brain, comparing me to others and forgetting that I am turning into the person God made me, just as others are the people God made them. We all carry the Divine Indwelling within us equally, and that means that we are called simply to love rather than to live in fear of others or of our mistakes.

I feel an affinity for the author, Father Richard, because he's a follower of St. Francis of Assisi, who was, like Jesus, a rebel in his time. And like Francis and Jesus, Father Richard gives us permission to question and find truth outside of the rules we live by in the first half of our lives -- that period that helps us to figure out who we are and what we value. Once we reach the second half of our life, we begin to understand that life really isn't under our control, that we are never going to be perfect, and that it's okay to step outside of some of the boundaries we accepted in our youth, and to fall into the good, the true and the beautiful by facing our shadows and widening our perspectives. We can't put new wine into old wine skins, so sometimes we have to wake up, toss our old rules, structures and often misbegotten ideas away and use what we've learned (from our failures, sins and mistakes) to start fresh.

In the season of Advent, which begins again today, we awaken and await the coming of something and someone new -- someone who is always saying, "Be not afraid," and inviting us to step outside of all that we think we know to enter a new relationship with a God of surprises, who loves us beyond our understanding. May this Advent season be a time of allowing God to get through to us!

O God,

you made us, 

with all our struggles and joys,

our shadows and light,

so that we can find our way home

to you.

In these Advent days,

show us what's important

and what isn't

and let us seek your face

in those you have placed in our lives.

Knock down our walls

and widen our hearts enough

that you may dwell in them.

Let your joy and grace

overflow through us 

to touch all those you love,

especially those who feel unlovable.

In other words,

help us to stay awake

and be ready for you!

+AMEN