Psalm 113: ADVENT 4

Psalm 113: ADVENT 4

Monday, December 23, 2024

Hallelujah.

Praise, O servants of the LORD,

praise the LORD’s name.

May the LORD’s name be blessed 

now and forevermore. 

From the place the sun rises to where it sets,

praised be the name of the LORD

High over all nations, the LORD,

over the heavens His glory.

Who is like the LORD our God,

Who sits high above,

Who sees down below

in the heavens and on the earth?

He raises the poor from the dust,

from the dung-heap lifts the needy,

to seat him among princes,

among the princes of his people.

He seats the barren woman in her home

a happy mother of sons.

Hallelujah.

LOVE: Advent 4, 2024

LOVE: Advent 4

Sunday, December 22, 2024:
Luke 1.26-56

My soul proclaims your greatness, O my God,
    and my spirit has rejoiced in you, my Savior,

For your regard has blessed me,
    poor, and a serving woman.

From this day all generations
    will call me blessed,

For you who are mighty, have made me great.
    Most Holy be your Name.

Your mercy is on those who fear you
    throughout all generations.

You have shown strength with your arm,
    You have scattered the proud in their hearts’ fantasy.

You have put down the mighty from their seat,
    and have lifted up the powerless.

You have filled the hungry with good things,
    and have sent the rich away empty.

You, remembering your mercy,
    have helped your people Israel,

As you promised Abraham and Sarah.
    Mercy to their children, forever.

Inciting Joy: ADVENT 3

 ADVENT WEEK 3: JOY

from Inciting Joy, by Ross Gay

I’ll never forget a woman at a reading in a public library in April of 2016 in Claremont, California – one of those weird, beautifully ugly sixties California buildings; it was a rancher of a library, maybe with some faux stone on the front, maybe white brick – I suspect she was in her late sixties or early seventies. And as she asked me to inscribe Catalog, she was crying, just a little, not very able to talk. And she said, quietly, wiping her face, “I didn’t know you could write about joy.”

~ ~ ~

My hunch is that joy is an ember to wild and unpredictable and transgressive and unbounded solidarity. And that that solidarity might incite further joy. Which might incite further solidarity. And on and on. My hunch is that joy, emerging from our common sorrow – which does not necessarily mean we have the same sorrows, but that we, in common sorrow – might draw us together. It might depolarize us and de-atomize us enough that we can consider what, in common, we love. And though attending to what we hate in common is too often all the rage (and it happens also to be very big business), noticing what we love in common, and studying that, might help us survive. It’s why I think of joy, which gets us to love, as being a practice of survival.

JOY: Advent 3, 2024

JOY: Advent 3
Sunday, December 15, 2024:
Isaiah 61.1-11, Luke 4.16-21

“In the Christian tradition,” writes Walter Brueggemann, “Christmas is the rebirth of the new governance.”

And that’s why, in this third week of Advent, we get Luke 4, which takes us back to Isaiah 61:

The LORD’s spirit is upon me

as the LORD has anointed me

to bring good tidings to the poor,

to bind up the broken-hearted,

to proclaim freedom to the captives,

to the prisoners, release,

to proclaim a year of favor for the LORD

and a day of vengeance for our God,

to comfort all who mourn.

“It is no wonder that the angels sang,” writes Brueggemann.

The angels aren’t the only ones singing in Luke’s Gospel. There’s also Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Canticle, and the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon.

“The songs,” writes Brueggemann, “are about promises being kept just when all the promises appear to have failed.”

And notice that the singing helps bring about the revolution of epistemology we talked about last week, bypassing the overly rational parts of our brain to connect to our very souls: “It will not be explained but only sung about. … It comes to those who will settle for amazements they can neither explain nor understand.”

And this is dangerous to the privileged and powerful: “The song releases energy that the king can neither generate nor prevent. … Tongues long dumb in hopelessness could sing again.”

Can we learn to sing this new song with joy? 

Will we embrace God’s Jubilee, or will we see it as a threat to our privilege?

That is the question.

Let It Come Like Wildflowers: ADVENT 2

 ADVENT WEEK 2: PEACE

“Wildpeace,” by Yehuda Amichai (translated by Chana Bloch)

Not the peace of a cease-fire,

not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,

but rather

as in the heart when the excitement is over

and you can talk only about a great weariness.

I know that I know how to kill,

that makes me an adult.

And my son plays with a toy gun that knows

how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.

A peace

without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,

without words, without

the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be

light, floating, like lazy white foam.

A little rest of the wounds —

who speaks of healing?

(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation

to the next, as in a relay race: 

the baton never falls.)

Let it come

like wildflowers,

suddenly, because the field

must have it: wildpeace.