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November 30

“Daybreak Run”

Alone with my thoughts in the pre-dawn,

awaiting that first torrent of clear morning light

that will come down and cover it all.

The silence, broken only by the steady slap

of each foot as it meets the ground below,

affirms my freedom to be the day’s first witness.

Seeing houses with doors that lock

       the outside out, the inside in,

Dividing space into time . . .

       the drab present

from the promise of the future.

Gently the sky opens for business.

The shadows kick off their shoes

and tuck them away with yesterday.

Slowly, begrudging, like a child who begs

for a few more moments under the warm,

protective covers, morning stirs quietly

       with eyes half shut.

Like winks in the night, lights begin to dance

       from their safe refuge,

and today announces its arrival.

The dawn is greeted like an old friend

       or an estranged loved one.

As doors open and the darkness pours out . . .

morning floods in with gold in its teeth.

A new day with new promise begins 
again.                                                           
                                      —Nancy L. Rivers

Written from memories of when I used to walk or run laps around several streets in my neighborhood.  It always appeared no one else was awake.  But, by the second or third lap, I could see a light in a kitchen window, then another, and another as the neighborhood slowly awakened.  Soon, doors opened allowing the aroma of fresh brewed coffee to pour out and yawning, bath-robed neighbors venturing out to retrieve their morning newspaper,  setting the wheels in motion to begin their new day.

December 1

“Talitha cum!”

In Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:21-42 and Luke 8:40-56, we find the story of Jesus in a crowd being approached by a man, Jairus, the synagogue president. His daughter of twelve years was dying, and all Jairus wanted was for Jesus to come and touch her that she might be made well.  Jesus agreed to go.

As he worked his way through the crowds, a woman who had been hemorrhaging for twelve years, hoping to simply touch Jesus and be healed, did so.  She was immediately healed.  Jesus felt the power go out from him.  He asked who touched him, and the woman responded.  She explained her situation, and Jesus responded with, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace.”

While all of this is happening, Jairus receives word that his daughter has died, so he should not bother Jesus anymore.  Jesus tells Jairus not to fear, but to have faith and she will be saved.  Upon entering the house with Peter, James, and John, Jesus announces that she is only sleeping.  He takes the three with him into the room along with Jairus and his wife.  Jesus took the girl by the hand and said, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up.”  She immediately got up and was given something to eat.

“Talitha cum,” Jesus says to the little girl.  “Little girl, get up.”  Some sources say these are the same Aramaic words that the girl’s mother would have used to wake her up in the morning.  What an intimate, yet ordinary way to do something miraculous!  Yet isn’t that the way God works?   From the stable to the well, from the hillside to the bedside, Jesus was always about making the ordinary seem extraordinary and the extraordinary seem ordinary.  Jesus called the little girl’s essence, her spirit, to return to her, and according to our gospel writers, it did.  Some have said that Jesus, while God incarnate, was the example of what we are supposed to be and do.

Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood, I have sensed Christ’s call, “Little girl, get up.”  There are several major events in my life that could have deformed me rather than formed me.  At times I chose bitterness instead of “betterness,” but eventually I opened my heart to God’s redemptive call, “Talitha cum!  Awake! Awake!”  This call that echoes in my heart and mind is that of the Holy Spirit breathing life into my truest self.

Rachel Naomi Remen puts it well in the introduction to her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings:  “We do not serve the weak or the broken.  What we serve is the wholeness in each other and the wholeness in life.”  For me, “Talitha cum” is another way of calling out a person’s truest self, their wholeness, the person God created them to be.  When we listen, when we help nurture the strength in another, we are saying, “Talitha cum.”  When we provide resources to empower others to accomplish something on their own, we are saying “Talitha cum.”  When we imagine with another what God’s intends for us to be, we are saying, “Talitha cum.”

Remen says, “By making a place for wholeness within our relationships, we offer others the opportunity to be whole without shame and become a place of refuge from everything around them that is not genuine.  We enable people to remember who they are.”  Talitha cum.

What does all of this have to do with Advent, awaiting the birth of Christ?  Everything.  The dawning of the day Jesus was born was the dawning of hope for the world.  Jesus came to remind the world of its truest identity.  “Awake!  Awake!”  Because God has said, “Awake! Awake!” to us through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can in turn say it to others.                                                                         

                                           —Rachel Sciretti

December 2

“to awaken”

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.  For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.
                             --Romans 13:11-12a

        crusty-eyed rollover,

       noodle limbs,

       and a few seconds of delirious deliberation:

       the snooze?

       there are tightnesses

            and aches to push through,

       a welcoming darkness.

       Dawn will come and go

                                      
                                      —Chris Homiak

December 3

 “One Step, One Meal at a Time”

In 1982 Ganga Stone was looking for a job to do for God. She wanted to do something to comfort people – maybe dying people.

One day in May, 1985, when she was volunteering with hospice in New York City and the AIDS epidemic had just begun, Ganga was asked to take some food to Richard, a young man with AIDS who was hungry.  She got a bag of food – including flour, yeast and other baking ingredients - from a church kitchen and took it to Richard, who looked horrific with different colored lesions on his body.   When Ganga gave the bag of food to him, he looked at each item and said, “What can I do with this?” and threw it down.  He couldn’t cook; he needed prepared meals – like hundreds of others in the city.

Ganga went to the deli and bought food that Richard could eat; then, with his help, she called a network of his friends and asked that each deliver a purchased meal once a week.  Through the hospice program where Ganga worked, she got names of other homebound individuals who needed similar networks. She went into top-of-the-line restaurants and asked them if they could pack meals to take out. “You won’t get paid for it,” she said.

After explaining the program, at least 40 places asked Ganga, “How many meals do you need? And what days do you need them?"  During the next months, Ganga rode her bike from restaurant to restaurant to get the prepared meals to deliver to AIDS patients even while she was six months pregnant.  She recruited other volunteers for the program and asked friends to put signs and cans in their stores for money.

There was no name for the program, and after seeing the sign “we deliver” on every place from pizzerias to book stores, Ganga said, “We are delivering to people who feel despised and forgotten by their friends and by God,  but we also come bringing God’s love.”  And God’s Love We Deliver officially began in New York City.

Since then, God’s Love has delivered more than 5 and a half million meals throughout the city’s five boroughs and New Jersey, never turning away an eligible person who requests a meal. They have expanded to include individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses.  Today 12,000 people are fed daily because one woman was “awake” to the needs around her and did something to meet that need.

When seven of our church members were in New York in November on lake Shore’s fifth mission trip to God’s Love, we chopped zucchini, helped prepare fish, dished up cranberry jelly for Thanksgiving, and helped with a survey in anticipation of delivering some frozen meals.  But we were also privileged to meet Ganga Stone, a very down-to-earth middle-aged woman with a teen-age daughter. She is a person who spent lots of energy nurturing her idea of preparing and delivering meals and selling the idea to others. Now she is content to serve in quiet ways.

Her years beginning God’s Love were frantic and crazy, but God was with her each step of the way, providing help when it was needed.  “I just took one step at a time," Ganga told us. "God was always there.”

                                        —Catherine Davenport

December 4

“Rise and Shine!”

Over the past two years I have come to value the tradition of traditions.  Now, this is a big step for me.  More often than not, I do something because it is non-traditional, perhaps even a bit “on the edge,” primarily because I get a great deal of satisfaction out of being different.  For instance, at forty, I still propel myself across grocery store aisles on the back of the cart—my children usually don’t observe this.  I dance to “funk” music and play in the sprinklers.  I have taken my fourteen-year-old nephew to a rated “R” movie (with his parents’ permission, sort of).

       Growing up, I vocalized my opinions to anyone and everyone, especially my parents and teachers.  I was the recipient of many “children are to be seen and not heard” sermons from my father.  After Andrew was born, I was the first person at work to take advantage of the childcare leave of absence—well before there was a law that stipulated companies had to allow a family care leave.  Years ago, I decided that Christmas brunch would be better than Christmas dinner because everybody does Christmas dinner, and I didn’t want to do what everybody did.  So you might say that I am a non-traditional traditionalist.

Yet, when I think about tradition (or non-tradition), I realize that a certain comfort exists in routine—a niceness about knowing that we can count on certain things.  It seems to me that Andrew and Matthew have a penchant for the things they can count on, like donuts on Saturday mornings and homemade pizza or tacos with family on Sunday nights.  One of the traditions the boys and I started last year is sleeping under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve.  Matthew told me recently that he was looking forward to doing that this year.  Our newest endeavor is “No Manners Night.”  If we’ve managed to use manners at dinner other nights of the week, we get to “let go” on Thursday nights.  Of course, we do have to clean up any mess that we make, and I must say that my floor gets mopped quite thoroughly most Thursdays.  While eating a meal with no utensils or napkins isn’t the most enjoyable event of the week, it is something that we anticipate with great excitement.

Other traditions I’ve started aren’t received with such enthusiasm—like reading Bible verses together before bed, like saying prayers together.  We don’t do that every day, but after my announcement that it’s Bible verse time and the perfunctory complaining about it, we often have wonderful discussions about God, life, family, the weather, war . . . or any other topic.

Perhaps for the boys the most disdainful habit I have established is my waking them in the mornings to “Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory,” in my most operatic voice, sometimes with the windows open so the world can hear.  Of course, more often than not, they greet this morning aria with groaning and complaining and don’t often rise with any shine at all.  Still, something about the routine comforts all of us.

Admittedly, it’s not always easy to waken and think about giving God glory.  Sometimes I awaken and wonder, “Where is God?”  Rather than get up, I snuggle deeper under the covers, thinking to myself, “I don’t want to get up; I’ve got eight more minutes.”  Frankly, in the crises of the past couple of years I’ve questioned whether there is God or not and if there is, why isn’t God helping me?

We do rise, however, and in spite of the frenzy of getting ready for the day, in spite of my worrying over how I will do it all, in spite of my concern that my boys will grow up to be good men, I have felt an unexplainable peace that can only come from God—the “peace that surpasses all understanding,” the peace that I could not imagine ever having again.  And in the torrent of that which we know as life, I am certain that God is good.  When that in which I have found my security crumbles, I know that God is good.  When I’m not sure what the world will offer this day, I know that God is good.  Maybe that’s the tradition to grasp; maybe that’s the routine that has provided me with undeniable comfort; maybe that’s the reason to rise and shine and give God all the glory.

                               —Caryl Miller-Reynolds

December 5

 “The Journey”

It was a very restless night.  Each time I looked at the clock, I knew in a few hours John Wise would arrive to deliver me and the urn with the remains of Curtis to the place he loved most, the Texas Gulf coast.

John had asked earlier in the summer if I felt Curtis would enjoy a fishing trip to the coast.  When we set a tentative time, we saw a different Curtis, one we didn’t know, as he planned and looked forward to that trip.  However, it was not to be.

After Curtis’ death in August and the events that surrounded that time, you can understand the emotional state of our family.  It was decided that the responsibility of taking Curtis to his final resting place would be mine.

As Dorothy and I prepared for my journey, we placed in the urn a favorite photograph of his, a photograph of the two he loved the most: his children, Alicia and Matthew.

Although I had accepted my charge, I knew it would be impossible to go alone.  I needed help and support.  I asked John, even though the purpose of the trip to the coast had changed, if he would help.  Not only did he agree, he said, “I want you to leave the details to me.  I will get us there, I’ll get you a ride into the Gulf, and I’ll get you back.”

After directing John to the wrong town and port, we studied the map, and a calm John drove us to our destination.  We sat on a bench by a bait house as he attempted to set me at ease.  As I waited there for him, pacing back and forth, a question asked in our church Shorelines came to me — “How have you been awakened to God’s presence this year?”

That question was quickly answered.  After visiting with one man with a boat, John returned, saying simply, “He is not right for us.”  Shortly, he rounded the corner of the boat house and said calmly, “Get Curtis; you have a ride.”

I noticed, walking to the boat, I was carrying the vessel in the crook of my arm, as I had carried Curtis many times when he was a child.  My heart felt as if it would break.

John, of course, had explained our request for assistance.  As I stepped into the boat, I was greeted with the words, “I am Gary Burger, and I will take you anywhere you want to go.”

We crossed the channel to a place where Curtis, Matthew, and I had once fished.  Gary stopped, and as I released the urn into the water, I was overcome with emotion.  The boat then very, very slowly, turned to start back to the pier.  He quietly said to me, “I am sorry about your son.  My ten-year-old son has just become a diabetic.”

As we arrived at the dock, I turned to him, and he looked into my tear-filled eyes and said, “Thank you.  I am honored to have helped.  Thank you.”

For a while, I don’t remember what happened; however, as we started our long journey home, I knew God had played a very important part in this happening.  Some would say this was simply circumstantial, but I do not think so.

Think of all that had to occur for three men, all arriving at the bait house miles from home, to be connected for a little while.  I also am grateful the many years John Wise has loved and demonstrated concern for me and my family.

And for whatever time, a gentleman named Gary Burger—who simply came to the coast to have an afternoon of fishing—loved my son whom he did not even know.

For those truths I am grateful.

                            —Bruce Neatherlin

“Go Tell It on the Mountain”

I had gone to sleep one night last December to the gentle sounds of Silvia and Antonio breaking the corn kernels off the dried cobs.  When my friend Hilda and I had arrived, the only food in the hut had been a small pile of dried corn lying on the dirt floor in the corner.  Well before dawn the next morning, Silvia awoke and took these precious kernels of corn down the dark mountain to grind them into cornmeal so that she could make tortillas for our breakfast.

When the first rooster crowed a couple of hours before dawn, I awoke to find that Silvia’s work day had already begun, while Hilda and I and Antonio and the baby, Tonito, were still barely stirring.  We all shared an 8x10 foot room.  Antonio and Tonito slept on the raised wooden platform that served as their family bed, and Hilda and I on one three-foot wide foam rubber pallet on the dirt floor. The chill night air had prompted Hilda and me to wear all the clothes we had brought, since there were no blankets or sheets.  While the very close quarters made it impossible to turn over or move during the night, it did provide some welcome warmth!

As I lay there listening to the rooster’s insistent call and the baby’s rhythmic breathing while watching the stars and the moon and the tops of banana trees through the cracks in the back plastic “roof,” I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn’t dreaming.  How hard to believe that I was on top of a mountain in northern Nicaragua, many miles from any electricity, phone, or running water, the guest of a family that had had no income for over two years.  This is poverty, I thought.

But then the baby awoke and Antonio began to sing softly.  He sang lullabies, Christmas songs, folk songs, children’s play songs.  For over an hour, he sang and the baby laughed and cooed, and I lay there in the dark listening, feeling incredibly privileged to be a silent witness to such love.  My mind was lifted from thoughts of poverty to an awareness of riches that won’t decay or be stolen away.

As the early morning light began to filter through the cracks in the walls and Silvia returned with her newly ground corn, it struck me that this scenario was really not so very strange at all.  This is the way much of the world wakes up every morning -  it is my way of life; waking up to the digital display on an alarm clock, in a soft bed in a climate-controlled house, that is not the global norm.

Moreover, I like to think that this is the way it was in that drafty stable on the morning that another baby was born:  the air inside as chilly as the air outside, warmth derived from the closeness of each other, the star overhead visible through the cracks in the roof, the crow of a rooster, the sound of a father’s song.    

                                               —Jo Pendleton

December 7

“ Love Song”

 Awake!  Awake!

This might be the day you see the neon edge of a cloud at sunrise.

It might be the day the moon looks like a smile in the sky.

 Awake! Awake!

You might sing out loud with Mavis Staples in your car today.

You might hear your husband’s heartbeat.

You might find that the perfect black pen costs less than $2.00.

Awake!  Awake!

This might be the day you see the red flash of a cardinal.

You might hug someone.

You might take a hot shower today.

You might sign your name with particular flair today.

Awake!  Awake!

You might laugh so hard your sides hurt today.

You might discover honey-crisp apples.

This might be the day a hairy dog jumps in your lap and licks your whole face.

You might touch a baby’s soft, perfect ear today.

 Awake!  Awake!

You might smell onions cooking today.

You might eat soup.

Family Circus might actually be funny today.

You might fall in love today with all the people at H.E.B.

… especially the little woman in the pink double-knit pants who is marching purposefully through the misty rain to her car wearing a plastic grocery bag over her hair-do, the handles hanging down around her ears like giant, dangling, hoop earrings.

 Awake! Awake!

You might live today!                                                                

                                 —Ashley Thornton

December 8

“The Word Still Comes"

In late August I lay on the gurney awaiting surgery at Hillcrest hospital. "Stay calm, Sharlande," I told myself. "Breathe.  Breathe.  Deep breaths."

“I need a word,” I thought. “I need a word that will help me focus. I need a word will get me through this.”

“Water” was the closest word to me that night. I'd been immersed in water all month at church. Water wells. Water hymns. Water pictures. Water colors. Water poems. Water prayers. By the time the anesthesiologist had finished asking me questions, I felt like I was buoyed by the waters of Creation.  Water . . . water . . . water . . . water . . .water . . .water . . .water . . .water . . .water . . .water . . .

                       .  .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   . 

 All my life I've seen lists of scriptures with titles like “Promises of God for Times of Trouble” or “Verses for Healing.” As a child I learned verses for strength and comfort like, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in God” and “God cares for you.”  “Hide them in your heart,” my Sunday School teachers told me. “One day you will need them.”

I thought of the missionaries I’d heard about in my GA missions group, people who were much more likely than I to find themselves in a precarious situation that involved language barriers or airport security guards or a severe case of homesickness. If they didn’t have a translator or a telephone, maybe one of the verses would come in handy. Every fall we diligently copied Bible verses on Thanksgiving tray cards and stuck a cornucopia sticker in the corner of each one. Evidently nursing home residents relied on these crayoned verses to get them through the holidays.

But why should I tuck them away in my heart? How could I, as a nine-year-old living in a safe and loving home, ever imagine needing these words in foreign land or in a nursing home . . .  much less before a mastectomy or on the edge between  life and death?

                       .  .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

 As I drifted in and out of sleep the few days after surgery, God came to me.  Once, God who created the song of the water came in the voice of a friend, who leaned over the bed and sang, “Deep and  wide, deep and wide, there’s a fountain flowing deep and wide.”  The deep reservoir of my memory released a phrase of comfort or promise as I needed it, without my running through a list of scripture to find the most helpful verse or singing my way through Sunday night services using the Broadman and Baptist hymnals. God came without my asking or pleading. God came in a way as amazing as grace. God's Spirit did come “when nothing else would help.”  God calmed me and let me know that, whatever happened, I was “safe and secure from all alarms.”

God came, not in a litany of scriptures or the full text of a hymn. God came with a word. God came in a word.

And the word was “salvation.”

In the hospital and again when I was at home, in that mysterious place when I was neither fully awake nor fully asleep -- or maybe deeply awake in spirit as my body slept -- God gave me the old and good word “salvation” in a new way— “salvation”: the grace of new life, the gift of healing -- whether physical or spiritual -- to a new way of living. I heard “salvation” over and over again — a single, powerful word  — sometimes in Scripture I had not heard since childhood. Sometimes I saw it, the word’s image appearing in my mind.  

              .  .  .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

 Now, three months later, listening to The Messiah while editing the Advent booklet, the Word comes again:  “And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”  I hear it echoing beneath the great mystery of John’s gospel:
          In the beginning was the Salvation,
          and the Salvation was with God,
          and the Salvation was God . . .

The Salvation still knows our pain and our fear and our hope and our joy. Oh, yes! : “Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in His wings.”  The Word comes to us -- even in our darkest hour, even in our deepest sleep.

                             —Sharlande Sledge

“Awaiting Thy Coming”

As when the parched earth,

Scorched by the fire from the evil side of the sun’s eye,

Chokes your moisture in its bosom,

Denying life to the tender shrubs,

Long to be moistened by the tears of your love,

So that it could celebrate the greening of life . . .

As when a people whose villages and cities

have been laid waste by war, –

Villages and cities filled with

skeletal remains of the living dead, – 

Long for peace,

So that they could celebrate your salvation . . .

As when a people

whose bodies have been

devastated by disease,

Long for your healing touch,

So that their dry bones could live again . . .

As when the barren,

Deprived of the joy of participating

in the continuous creation of your image,

Long to celebrate the birthing of life . . .

As when children with flat bellies,

Whose mothers have gone to the farm

to dig up roots

To appease the quarreling stomachs,

Long for her return . . .

So do we await your coming,

An old coming that is forever new,

Reviving the soul,

Renewing shattered hopes,

Reclaiming lost mercy,

Snatching us from death,

Returning us to eternal life,

In the womb of the triune divine life.  

                 — David Tonghou Ngong

December 10

 “It’s Today!”

 When our son Sam was a toddler and still sleeping in his baby bed, he greeted each morning with the announcement, “It’s today! We’ve gotta get up!”

If Sam awoke before Harold and me, we heard these cheery words from his bedroom across the hall. Who could help but “Awake! Awake!” upon hearing such enthusiasm from a two-and-a-half-year-old boy greeting the new day?

When birders get a message about a rare bird in the area, this tends to be a wake-up call at whatever time of day.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon when I was sitting at the computer, racking my brain, trying to think of an Advent meditation to write, I received such a call.  John Muldrow was on the line. He was one of my first birding students in the 1980s. Through the years John has far exceeded his teacher.

     “Ms. Osborne!” John said excitedly. “I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but over the weekend someone spotted three Surf Scoters at the Sewerage Treatment plant.” Rare birds often show up there. He had checked at noon that day, and the odd-looking sea ducks were still there, totally out of their element.  They simply were not supposed to be anywhere inland.

On my way to the sewer ponds I drove through The Pecan Bottoms in Cameron Park. I couldn’t help but think of the fateful day in 1975 when I got hooked on birds in that very spot, an epiphany that changed my life forever, leading to a career in birding, teaching and writing about birds. Did I see the ducks? No, but I thought about Sam’s childish admonition: “It’s today! We’ve gotta get up!” I’ll try again tomorrow.

“Awake! awake, and greet the new morn!

For angels herald its dawning . . . ”

                                            —June Osborne

December 11

“Awake to Christmas”

 If you want to see what “being awake” to Christmas is like, look at the faces of small children on Christmas morning! Oh, I know the theme for our Christmas meditations aims at more than just “being awake on the morning of December 25th,” but maybe there’s a lesson in the response of children to what they understand about Christmas.

In that time of childhood innocence, say between ages three and five, a time between the dawning of awareness and the dulling advent of reality, children enjoy the blessings of believing all things and hoping all things.

The first Christmas I remember vividly was 1927 in a small Alabama town when I was four years old. For several days (not months) before Christmas, the “general store” where we purchased all our necessities displayed an array of toys. I thought Santa Claus put them there to give us children something to wish for!

A few days before Christmas, my father took my brother and me to see what was to us a fabulous collection of everything a boy could wish for. My eyes and mind and heart soon locked in on a simple windup train set with a steam engine (there was no other kind), a coal tender, three brightly colored passenger cars, and an oval track.  Sensing my enchantment, my father said to Mr. Ewing, the storekeeper, “Tell Santa this boy would like a train like that.”

The remaining time before Christmas dragged on forever. Hoping and believing, but not quite sure, I endured the agonizing days. When Christmas Eve finally arrived, I determined to stay awake all night and greet Santa in person when he delivered my train. Of course, sleep overtook me, but when I awoke, I mean really awoke, I saw my train on the hearth beneath our Christmas stockings hanging from the mantel. (We didn’t always have trees in those days.) The agony of waiting turned into the ecstasy of fulfillment. My childlike faith, sprinkled with enough doubt to prevent smugness, had paid off!

What’s in this simple story for us today? We can’t return to the blissful days of childhood, but I suspect that similar and more profound joys await us if we can but rise above our sophistication and cynicism and awake to life with all its mysteries and boundless possibilities.  Jesus said, “Except you become as a little child you cannot inherit the kingdom.”   

                             —Rufus Spain

“. . . and a little child shall lead them.”  Isaiah 11:6

Several years ago I wrote an Advent meditation on the theme of waiting that focused on the long wait for the birth of our first child, Mary Katherine, whom we call Kathy.  We waited five years after our marriage before her birth, and then she was two long weeks past her due date in making her appearance.  Coincidentally, I had another long wait to become a grandmother.  My own mother was a grandmother at the age of forty-eight; I was in my sixty-second year when first Lelia Jane Darmer, whom we call Lia, was born in January and then Malcolm Thomas Gaynor was born in August of 2001.

And so, there were lots of years between my late forties and early sixties in which I longed for a grandchild.  My own children had their own agendas, however, which included neither daughter marrying until she was past thirty, and our son Rob remains a content bachelor even now.

I thought I could imagine what grandparenthood would be like, but I never realized until Lia and then Malcolm were born what a profoundly moving experience it is to have children of your own children.  Seeing and hearing my daughters as mothers—how often tears have sprung to my eyes as I witness them as they parent.

Too, I never realized what a profoundly spiritual experience it would be to have grandchildren.  Two anecdotes stand out in my mind as I think of my now three grandchildren, Lia, Malcolm, and Matthew Locke, the youngest, born in July of this year.

First, Malcolm:  We had gone to Michigan for his first birthday.  Malcolm walked early, and from the time he took his first step (really from the time he started crawling), never have I seen a busier little boy.  He played so hard and so exuberantly that it was difficult for him to wind down and settle enough to take his afternoon nap.  Susan finally devised a plan whereby she would put him into his old infant car seat, sit or lie beside him on the floor while he took his after-lunch bottle, and watch with him a soothing video such as “Baby Bach” or “Baby Beethoven.”  One afternoon I lay beside him in her place.  I drank in Malcolm as he drank his milk.  The whorls and swirls of a perfect ear, the curve of a cheek, the long, dark eyelashes, the huge dark eyes enraptured by the play of colors and shapes on the television screen—all of these moved me to the brink of tears.  What perfection, what beauty, what a gift, this child of my child!  To paraphrase that beautiful passage from Isaiah, a little child led me to a deeper sense of God’s grace and God’s gifts to me.

Second, Lia:  This past September I spent a week in California with  Kathy’s family.  One afternoon Kathy put Lia down for a nap and went to nap herself with newborn Locke.  From my room down the hall, I heard Lia cry out after some thirty minutes, and I rushed to her side, hoping to keep her from waking her mother.  Lia was sobbing, plainly upset.  I asked her if she’d had a bad dream, but at less than three years, she really doesn’t yet understood dreaming.  I picked her up and began to rock her in the little rocking chair that my mother gave her mother when she was a child.  As I rocked, I sang one lullaby after another.  It was unseasonably hot that afternoon in Newport Beach; no sea breeze stirred the air, and they have no air conditioning.  Lia’s little body felt warm against mine, but as I sang, I could feel her relax and become heavier and heavier. Finally, I lifted her back into bed and tiptoed out.  A couple of hours later, she awoke again, happy and cheerful, and her mother went to get her up.  I heard Lia say to Kathy, “Mommy, I cried and Grandmommy came in.  She rocked me and sang five songs to me.”  I had sung five songs.  Not only had she remembered the rocking and singing, but she had counted and then recalled the number of lullabies.  What a miracle and treasure is this child of my child!  How Lia, Malcolm, and now little Locke have awakened in me a renewed gratitude for the gift of life.  And these little children have led me to this.  Thanks be to God.  

                                     — Alice Baird

December 13

"My Happiness and Sadness”

 One day my mom and I were working in our garden when my dad drove up into the driveway.  I saw a big, purple Gap sack in his hands.  I knew what it was.  It was my dead dog, Waldo.  I started to break out into big, salty tears.  I felt really sad, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs and well — just cried.

We didn’t get a new dog for about ten whole months.  When we got a new dog, she was running around like crazy while I was jumping up and down.  We name her Socks.

About seven months later my parents got a divorce.  It seemed like Andrew (my brother), Socks, and I would never be happy.  But when we moved to Waco, things changed.  I did well in Reflections last year; Mountainview is great, and I did well with A.R. points last year.  In December, it was basketball time.  I was a little upset because I thought I would make a fool of myself.  I didn’t, luckily.  That made me happy.  I scored about twelve points the whole season.

A lot of bad things have happened in my life, but in the end everything made me happy.

                                       —Matthew Reynolds

“The Eye of the Storm”

I’m not sure when the first time was that I ever really observed Advent.  I know it was a part of my church’s tradition during many of my growing-up years, but I think mostly I thought of it only as a period of “waiting.”  We waited to celebrate Jesus’ birth until it was time.  We waited to put the baby Jesus in the manger.  We waited to sing Christmas carols.  We waited to open presents.  And somewhere in my childhood understanding, waiting merged with “pretending,” pretending that Jesus wasn’t born yet, pretending that things were like the first Christmas.

It was sometime in seminary when I first realized that Advent wasn’t about pretending at all.  My preaching professor assigned us each the task of listening to and reading several sermons over the semester and in the process I stumbled across a sermon called “The Eye of the Storm.”  The preacher, Edmund Steimle, began the sermon with his own experience as Hurricane Hazel hit his hometown of Philadelphia head-on in the 1950s:

Unlike most hurricanes, which lose much of their force when they turn inland, this one hit with all the fury of a hurricane at sea: drenching rains, screaming winds, trees uprooted, branches flying through the air, broken power lines crackling on the pavements.  It was frightening.  Then suddenly there was a let-up, a lull.  Shortly after, all was still.  Not a leaf quivered. The sun even broke through briefly.  It was the eye of the storm.  “All was calm, all was bright.”  And then all hell broke loose again: branches and trees crashing down, the screaming winds, the torrential rain, the power lines throwing out sparks on the pavement.  But that was a breathless moment—when we experienced the eye of the storm.

Steimle went on to say Christmas Eve is something like that, like the experience of the eye of the storm, really from the first Christmas night on.  He talked openly about the storms that swirled around before and after the birth of Christ.  He talked about the storms we all experience in life and how Christmas isn’t about forgetting those storms, because that would be missing the whole point.  If it’s simply forgetting, when we can’t forget really, then we reduce this whole process to nostalgia and sentimentalism or to the deep depression that grips so many this time of year.  What it is is understanding that what we celebrate is not peace apart from pain, conflict, suffering and confusion, but peace in the midst of it all, a peace that does pass all understanding.

Though it’s a Christmas Eve sermon, Steimle’s words completely transformed my understanding of Advent.  As I let this new understanding for me seep in, I began to realize that the last thing Advent is about is pretending.  Quite the opposite.  It’s the time to be honest, about the things that aren’t right with the world, about the suffering we have individually.  It’s not so much to indulge ourselves in all that is wrong, but to honestly name the pain that is our companion on this journey.  There’s something oddly comforting in that.  In the midst of a world that this time of year perfectly dresses everything up around us, Advent speaks with a different voice.  And church becomes the place we can let down, the place we don’t have to pretend, the place to say all is not well with me, the place to find and grasp onto the deep hope and anticipation that peace, not apart from but in the middle of the storm, breaks through in the midst of it all.

                               —Dorisanne Cooper

December 15

“Ox·y·mo·ron:  Late Greek oxymoron, from neuter of oxymoros pointedly foolish, from Greek oxys sharp, keen + moros foolish:  a combination of contradictory or incongruous words (as cruel kindness)”

Every time started to write this advent meditation I began with an event that occurred this year and carried it to its logical conclusion.

Sometimes it started happily and ended sadly.  Other times it started sadly and worked around to a point of happiness.  In either case, there was still that sadness part that was inescapable.  The major themes were something like this:

1. Raymond died this year.  Raymond stopped suffering.

2. My sister moved to town. My sister had to take care of me because of No. 1.

3. My friend Sharlande had breast cancer.  My friend Sharlande survived breast cancer and continues to share her new story.

4. I received flowers, food, cards, warm words, and wonderful expressions of love from the people of Lake Shore.  See No. 1.

5. The annual trip to New York was lots of fun.  Every step of the way I missed Sharlande.

6. I love Christmas.  Every time I think of Christmas I think of No. 1.

7. I got to examine and buy a beautiful piece of granite.  It was for a tombstone.

8. My house is clean and rearranged beautifully.  See No. 1.

9. I learned to take care of my yard and plants.  See No.1.

10. My friend Becky Henderson died.  (There was never a happy twist to this story).

I used to not understand the bittersweet attitudes that I saw at holiday time in folks who had lived a while.  They wanted the music, the laughter of children, or the eggnog to somehow chase away the ghosts of Christmas past.  Most of us do not choose conflicting feelings or change.  It is that oxymoron thing; words together that don’t belong together; memories that are great but cannot be recreated; and reminders of loss bounding into every new season of the year.

Life is a one-word oxymoron to be experienced through the pain and the joy.   There are choices.  We can choose the swamp of despair, living in the muck and the mire.  Or we can choose to rise as the Phoenix, periodically recreating ourselves.  We awaken every day to begin anew the process of experiencing what God has to offer in this place and in this time.         

                                 —Karen Matkin