New Ways

I had a thought while reading about the Epiphany. (A mini-epiphany).

I am intrigued by all things surrounding the Magi. Who they were, where they came from, how the gifts were selected, the preparation for the journey, their star gazing activities, how they associated celestial events with kingship, their escape from Herod's plan to use them to destroy the object of their quest. They fascinate me.

What caught my attention today was not the Epiphany of the wise ones to Jesus but their expedient selection of a new way, a new road to travel, once they had found Him.

And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way. Matthew 2:12

Finding Christ we too turn aside and travel in a different direction. For us it is along a narrow way leading to eternal life. There is always a redrawing of the map of our life and journeys other than we ourselves would have selected or others would select for us.

An evil king did not get the last word here. The Magi traveled by a way that took Herod off the map for them. So should it be for us. Taking the God road will always take us farther away from those things that steal our hope, joy and usefulness.

Let us allow the Word to warn us, guide us, point the way and make course corrections should we stray.

If you wander off the road to the right or the left, you will hear his voice behind you saying, here is the road. Follow it. Isaiah 30:21

May the approaching new year be filled with ways that take us deeper into Kingdom territory and God's many promises.

Herod who?

The Deep Place of Christmas

Remember the one night that burns all the darkness away
Remember the one peace that dissolves all worry and fear
That light and peace are asleep in the hay
That light and peace are asleep in the boat
That light and peace are deep, deep within
where all is calm and all is bright

Luminous Night by Christina Rogers

It is the day after Christmas. For some there will be an emotional letdown. For others the distress of overspending financial resources and overextending physical resources is just beginning to make itself felt.

Just after Thanksgiving I landed a dreadful cough and cold that slowed me down and drained off much of the energy I would have extended over the Christmas season. The cough kept me up and upright. I couldn't sleep lying down so I spent many nights sleeping (or not) in a chair in the living room.

I read through several devotional blogs I follow, started a new book by Eugene Peterson (Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places) and haunted the Psalms, all from my coughing chair. I was tired but inspired. The result was that I slid into Christmas in slow motion this year.

There were no Christmas lights on our house but a candle was burning sweetly in my heart. The stable was swept clean and fresh straw was waiting in my manger-heart. Jesus settled in where He had been made welcome. Peace on the hay.

That peace settled nicely around me on Christmas eve. Midnight Mass has always been a favorite holiday event for me and this year I went with a friend. (John was to preach at the jail on Christmas day so he was home tuning up his message.) We went early to listen to the carols sung before Mass. There was an entire row right in front of the altar, in front of the manger, waiting for us.

The service was lovely, the music beautiful, but then there was the incense. Always my favorite part of High Mass, this evening it was special. There was so much more room in me for it to fill. The priest stood directly in front to us and waved the censer over us. Fragrant sacred incense swirled out and up and around us. We breathed it in and it filled lung and bone and soul.

It is all about making room. That is why the innkeeper is important to the Christmas story. How had I minimized him all these years? There he was hiding in the shadow of the angels and the Magi. Even a little room, a lowly room, is enough room to begin to go from hay to boat to deep, deep within where all is calm, all is bright.

John had given me roses earlier that day. (We were engaged 39 years ago on Christmas eve.) I had brought one with me to Mass-to the stable. As my friend and I went to the car that first hour into Christmas morning, Kim handed me the rose. I took the red rose petals and threw them up into the falling snow right there in the church parking lot.

I am the rose of Sharon...(Songs 2:1)

Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow....(Isaiah 1:18)

Mary took...an expensive perfume...poured it on Jesus’ feet...and the house was filled with the fragrance...(John 12:3)

We wasted that Christmas rose on Jesus then we drove home in the snow with just the faintest hint of incense clinging to our clothes but- with souls richly perfumed.

The snow has ceased falling but I suspect the rose petals have not. It is my prayer that they will drop daily into our lives, into your life, into the the deep, deep places within. Onto Holy ground.


This has been a luminous Christmas I will long treasure as I treasure the friends, the family and the Savior who have enriched my life.

With a deep gratitude.

Kathy


http://ambushedbygod.blogspot.com/2011/12/on-eve-of-christ.html

Midnight Mass

Come midnight we had censers
and Come All Ye Faithful
the manger was full
so were the pews
trumpet, organ and flute
greeted each other
with the sign of peace
and Heaven poured snow
anointing us with glory falling gentle
swirling round us as sacred incense breathed in
filled lungs and cells and bones
God's goodness had come
His beating heart pumping love
through us with every organ pedal and key
Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison
Christmas had come!











http://ambushedbygod.blogspot.com/2011/12/on-eve-of-christ.html

His AppleTree

In winter dead, life buried deep in snow
future blessings slumber down below
eye cannot see nor can hands hold
tomorrows daisy, rose or marigold
but Heaven smells the petals yet to form
and stores up fragrance released
when it is warm
my heart is like the barest branch
that longs for apples to appear
and sun to warm my frozen roots
like toes escaping icy boots
CHRIST has come to sit awhile
through all these days both bleak and dark
He tells me stories of the spring
of scented earth and song of lark
of life set free and buzzing bees
and love beneath the apple trees-

I am His apple tree.

By Kat Cavanaugh LaMantia


A word for God's sleeping seed, safe with love coiled around you, "Flourish!"

God's Glory Sky

Even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. Psalm 139:12


God has night vision. He sees just everything. Daylight. Night light. No light. Thick inky blackness. All clear vision to love gone searching.

We can hide behind the thick walls we built brick by brick, sin by sin, offense by offense. We can disguise ourselves with arrogance, false laughter, religious banter. We can wrap ourselves in silence and live hushed as the grave. The Almighty One who sees to the other side of the universe stays locked on. He is not impressed by the elaborateness of our disguise or otherwise, nor is He distressed by the true dark-heart of it.

Shepherds under the dark Bethlehem sky saw the web between this world and the realm of Glory peeled back. Heaven was always there throughout all the long years of looking for the promise and despairing of it ever coming. What made that night different? Jesus was in the world.

There are accounts of people seeing to the other side before that Bethlehem night. Ezekiel saw some heart stopping things.  But this night was different. The One worth seeing, who made everything there was to see, parted the curtain, wrapped Himself in skin like ours and took His place among us.

Christ brought the light with Him. He brought the Father with Him. He would later promise to be with us to the end of the age. That same light is all round us, looking for a way in, looking to let us in. To swallow up our personal darkness in Glory. The utter amazement the shepherds felt is ours the moment we let His grace fill us and burn all else from our vision.

"Too dark" you say? There is no such thing. Jesus is Light itself, love at its best and brightest. Where He is invited there is no unyielding darkness.

He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him. Daniel 2:22

It is the eve of Christmas. Time to make Jesus welcome. Time to "Be" the place where light dwells. We are the night skies His Glory longs to fill.


Light shining out of darkness:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFAZOH65ql0

The Cupped Places

MAY GOD’S GRACIOUS PRESENCE wrap around and protect you.
May the promise of the holy Christ child
forever rest in the curve of your life.
May the sweet, fearless song of the Holy Spirit
sing you to sleep
and waken you in Advent dawns.
May you, and those you love and serve,
expect the good news,
Immanuel, God-With-Us.
Amen.

- Pamela C. Hawkins
Behold!

From page 28 of Behold!: Cultivating Attentiveness in the Season of Advent by Pamela C. Hawkins. Copyright © 2011 by Pamela C. Hawkins. All rights reserved.

" May...Christ...forever rest in the curve of your life." Let it be so Lord! This is more than a lovely poetic line I wish I had written. It is forming itself into a missive my heart is issuing back to me. That Jesus, our beautiful Jesus, lie softly in the cupped places of my life. That He be poured into all the spiritual pools which replenish my made-in-His-image self.

God within.

May His sweetness and goodness drench your last Advent week spilling its wonder into every open place.

k


(Sonogram of our then unborn grandson. Unborn but not unknown.)

A Tradition of Gratitude, The Fourth Sunday of Advent

Two of the dearest souls in all this wide world were my grandparents Cavanaugh. They had a tradition that covered Christmas and birthdays. It went like this: Leona bought herself whatever she wanted "from Tom" and Tom received something he already owned which Leona had wrapped up and put a tag on "From Leona". What can I say? They were happy and they made us happy.

Every family has its traditions. They comfort us, delight us, and call to us to remember things too significant to forget. At least they are supposed to accomplish that. Sometimes the significance is lost over time and a ritual is all that remains. Christmas can be like that. We remember presents and forget Presence. We make a gift list but forget God gave and why...maybe even what that gift really was.

The remembering part was always a big deal to God. We are encouraged so often in the scriptures to remember. The events God feels are important to remember are usually important because they are good for us, the ones whom He loves.

Remembering connects us in a sense of community with all of Heaven as well as to believers here on Earth. It says we belong to something, to one another. Those connections are immortal, eternal, love framed and hung in our hearts to be cherished. To be written about and talked about. To be played and painted and sung.

I am asking the Lord to encourage in me a grateful heart this Christmas. To make gratitude my tradition, my way of life. To cause me to remember every kindness, every favor, every mercy, every generous act ever done to me. To reach for the wonders He and others have cast into my life. To allow them do adorn my life and brighten my holiday and to be as gifts opened for the first time.

Gratitude is expansive. It always overwhelms its less desirable neighbors. It cultivates and plants and produces fruit. It makes room for God-stuff. Gratitude, affection, remembrance. These are the wise-hearted Magi gifts I lay at His feet and receive back as grace upon my own life.

Join me.


I will sing of your steadfast love, O LORD, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations. I declare that your steadfast love is established forever; your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens. Psalm 89:1-2