Hey, you missed a few!

It's been a busy Advent this year, making it hard to get to moodling here. But I have a sweet story that I've been thinking about all week.

Last Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Advent, two fellows I had never seen before joined us for Sunday morning liturgy at the Community of Emmanuel. Or maybe I had seen them before, but many of our community are irregular in attendance, coming and going depending on their circumstances.

These two came in last minute and sat toward the back of the room, chatting with each other, clearly friends who were happy to come in from the cold and have a cup of coffee together. I wasn't really aware of them at first, busy as I was greeting people, singing the Magnificat to the tune of Wild Mountain Thyme, and supporting Farley in his music ministry during our weekly service.

It wasn't until we were into the Eucharistic Prayers that one of the fellows decided that something was wrong with the Advent Wreath and its three lit candles. In his assessment, the fourth candle and the white Christmas candle in the middle had gone out and needed to be relit. The two buddies conferred and one came forward as Quinn was praying, took the rose Advent candle, and lit the two remaining candles. Satisfied that he'd made things right, he turned around and headed back to his seat. He didn't see Quinn promptly blow out the two he'd lit.

When the candle-lighter got back to his seat, he looked back toward his handiwork and did a double take -- there were still only three candles lit. Huh? He looked bewildered. But his buddy waved him on to go make things right, so he got up and tried a second time. He picked up the rose candle, lit the last purple one and was going for the white Christmas candle when Quinn reached out and gently took the rose candle from him, saying, "We don't light those two yet."

I stepped forward and whispered a quick explanation about how the Advent wreath's four candles are lit on four different Sundays leading up to Christmas, and it was only the Third Sunday so far. "Oh, my bad," the fellow replied, looking sheepish, and I said, "It's okay, you didn't know, and you were only trying to help."

Later on, I saw him and his friend outside, and we had a little conversation about the Advent Wreath and the Mother of Jesus being everyone's mom, which made him happy because he misses his own mom. I invited him to join us for the lighting of candles for the next two weeks. If he comes, I hope we can get him to light those last two candles for us. I'll be watching for him!

A blessed last week of Advent to you all!

Sunday Reflection: Burning hearts

What does it feel like to have a burning heart?

To be consumed with love
when the voice of God speaks?

I think it happened to me this morning,
several times
as various words from scripture
filled my eyes with tears
and a longing for your presence...

Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord...

You gave me room when I was in distress...

The Lord has set apart the faithful for himself...
the Lord hears when I call...

I will both lie down and sleep in peace;
for you alone, O Lord,
make me lie down in safety.  (Psalm 4)

Lord Jesus, open the Scriptures to us: 
make our hearts burn with love when you speak. (Gospel Acclamation)

Peace be with you... (Luke chapter 24)

And the second verse of  "Sing of One who walks beside us"

"Strangers we have walked beside him
the long journey of this day
and have told him of the darkness
that has swept our hope away.
He has offered words of comfort
words of energy and light,
and our hearts have blazed within us
as he saved us from the night.

I'm not sure why all these words hit me as they did,
but I am grateful
that you still speak to us today
of light, love and peace
in a world that so needs them.

Thank you, O God.

+Amen

A ten p.m. rainbow

I was having tea with my friend, Darcy, and catching up on three years worth of life at the dining table when she said, "Look out there!"

Here's what she saw. A rainbow so late at night? How unusual!

We called my girls and husband to come look, and spent the next half hour marveling and running out into the rain to get a better view and take a few pictures. It was a bright double rainbow (my camera didn't capture the "double" very well) in the southwestern sky, with pinkish clouds because of sunset. To the east, the sky was a glittering pinky-gold.

The sun sets in Edmonton at 10:07 these days, so we knew we had a few minutes to watch it before it faded. We set our chairs near the dining room window like it was a small movie screen, and continued our conversation as the rainbow slowly faded away. "Is it still there, or just imprinted on our retinas?" Darcy asked at one point. Even after the rainbow was gone we remained at the window, comfortable in conversation.

What's not to love about a rainbow? The refracting of light into many colours through a prism fascinated me as a child. On the prairies, under big sky, I remember seeing lots of rainbows and double rainbows, but here in my city, trees hide them too easily. When Edmonton used to have a High Level Bridge waterfall, a friend and I walked across under the water. When we looked down over the edge of the bridge, we saw complete circle rainbows!

Wasting hose water to spray rainbows into the sky got me into trouble a few times when I was young. Recalling that, I don't scold my own girls for "making rainbows" in the back yard (unless they're inadvertently spraying me). When an aunt gave us a multifaceted crystal to hang in a window, my daughters' delight at finding themselves spangled with rainbows on a sunny day made me smile: "Look, Mommy, I'm a rainbow!" one exclaimed.

If God is light, and I believe she and he is, then a rainbow seems to me a special sign of God's love, regardless of Noah's story. Love in many colours.

I'm glad Darcy spotted this one. It seemed a fitting ending to a day of friendship... a rainbow to embrace us all.

Have a rainbow day!

Moving into darkness

Now that we've passed the autumn solstice, we're moving into days of more darkness than light in this part of the world. We feel it when we get up in the morning, and when the sun sets four hours earlier than it did at its summer zenith. I don't much like darkness, and we've had a lot of it lately with our rainy autumn. I don't remember ever using the kitchen lights during the September daylight hours as I did this year. We've moved into winter darkness in a bigger hurry than usual, it seems.

So is it a God-incidence that I'm reading Mother Teresa - Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta (2007, Doubleday, ISBN 978-0-385-52037-9)? I am finding myself amazed by the tiny saried woman many knew as Mother Teresa. While I have often found myself rather irritated by the overly-pious accounts of the lives of what the Church calls Saints with a capital S, this account of Mother Teresa, taken mostly from her own writings (with a bit too much commentary from Father Brian Kolodiejchuk) is awe-inspiring.

I have always loved Mother Teresa. What isn't to love? A quiet, humble, in-the-background kind of woman, she unobtrusively got a lot done in her 87 years, founding the Missionaries of Charity and caring for the poor in slums all over the world. I can't count the number of spammy emails I've received that quote her in some way, and I read recently somewhere that there's a Mother Teresa film festival happening in Mumbai.

But reading this book, I get the feeling that the world has trivialized her too much by holding her up as an icon of holiness without really understanding from where that holiness springs. When she was 32, she made a personal, private vow "not to refuse God anything." Then she spent the rest of her life quietly listening for what God wanted her to do. Not that God told her in so many words. She did have a short period of time where she listened to a "voice" that asked her to leave her comfortable life as a member of a European religious community and start an order that lived with the poorest of the poor among the people of India. But once the Missionaries of Charity began their work in the streets, the voice became silent, and Mother Teresa found herself in spiritual darkness and emptiness, trying to "Come, be my light" even when God seemed absent to her.

The thing that really moves me is that her "darkness" went on for almost 50 years, but she remained committed to her work and to God. I don't know about you, but I would probably give up on everything if I had a long-lasting sense that there was no God, or that God had forsaken me. Mother Teresa struggled with her darkness for a long time, but eventually came to understand it as God's way of helping her to identify with the poor that she served, many of whom had no one and nothing for support. She embraced the darkness, and kept on "smiling" for the sake of Jesus, her one true love. She kept her sense of humour and joy in the midst of the pain of feeling alienated from her God, admitting at one point that though she was "married" to Him, "I sometimes find it very difficult to smile at Jesus because He can be very demanding." (p. 281). Only a handful of people had any clue that Mother Teresa felt icy, empty and alone when it came to God's presence; the rest commented on how she radiated that presence everywhere she went.

My friend Charleen is going through something very similar to Mother Teresa's darkness... only worse in some ways. Charleen might be feeling like Job did after losing everything. But Mother Teresa showed us that it is possible to learn to embrace the emptiness and darkness and live, if not in the light, in peace and joy. I believe that it's possible. And I hope and wish and pray it for you too, Charleen.