Words 12.17

 Words Twice a Week            12.17

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

2 Samuel 7.1-11, 16

+ it starts off talking about the king, which gives us caution.  Kings in general did not work out well for Israel.  

+ David starts to get nervous that he has built himself a nice house, but the Ark of the Lord is just in a tent out back.  That probably doesn’t look too good.  So he tells Nathan the prophet that he is going to build a fancy house for the Ark, for God.  God tells Nathan to tell David that God doesn’t want a big house, that God is fine with the tent.

+ note that the piety of vs1-3 is sincere but misguided.  One writer says “We are secure in our power and lifestyle, we are feeling thankful and pious about the good things that we presently experience, and in light of this we wish to so something for God.”

+ to me it means that we don’t have to take care of God; God can take care of God’s own self.

+ Does it mean that God is more comfortable, or just somehow “is more” in the forest or meadow or among the people than in any specific location or building? Where do you experience God – in elegant buildings? Among the common people? Out in nature?  Or maybe the better question is – what of God do you experience in each of these settings?

+ God goes on that instead of David making a house for God, God will make a “house” for David.  Of course the house God is speaking about is David’s descendants.  The issue here is that David, a tribal chieftain, now becomes the head of a dynasty.  Israel will have a permanent monarchy, instead of periodic “choosings” or “elections”.  How does this resonate for us today?  As we try to assimilate this – could we understand that it is the “Davidic idea” (ie, that God is involved for good in our history and life) which is permanent, not the literal descendants of one person. 

+ and God will appoint/provide a place for these folks to live where they will not be bothered and evildoers will not be able to get at them.  Of course there is a problem that we always seem to have evildoers in our midst already!

+ From Texts for Preaching – “God is a free, mobile, dynamic God who sojourns, bivouacs, and comes and goes, but never settles and becomes confined in one place”  Or in one faith?

Luke 1.26-38   The Annunciation  (a big word meaning that the angel Gabriel came and told Mary she was chosen to be the mother of Jesus.)

+ in the sixth month –  which “sixth month”?  It’s got to be March if Jesus is going to be born in December.  From vs 1.24 -  it’s the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy

+ Mary “was perplexed” by the angel and his words.  What do you think it would be like to have an angel drop into your kitchen, bedroom, back yard?  Note that the first thing angels usually say is “Don’t be afraid.”  

+ I love these two women – Elizabeth “too old” to have children, Mary “too young/unmarried”. And I especially love these stories where all of creation waits quietly for a young girl to step forward and say her lines.  Mary here, Moses’ sister by the Nile.

+ and this forms such a nice “compare and contrast” with the story about David.  Note that Mary is a complete blank in this story.  We know nothing about her at all.  There is no reason for God to have chosen her.  (More on this below in a couple of readings about what it means to be “virgin”.)  Being high and mighty does not guarantee God’s salvation, being a nobody does not preclude it. 

+ note Mary’s response – first “I am the handmaid/servant/slave of God” – acknowledging that this is God’s doing, and God is going to do what God will do regardless of what we say; and then “Let it be” – willing acceptance even though she cannot even begin to know or understand what that means.

+ “Young woman” from the Hebrew gets translated into “virgin” in English, with all of the baggage that previous cultures and our culture puts on it.  

+ a piece from Walter Burghardt (he was a Catholic writer and preacher)  You must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment – really live it, not just endure it – because this very moment, for all its imperfections and frustration, because of its imperfections and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.

Luke 1.46b-55     The Magnificat   (another big word to describe Mary’s song about how God had been and would be good to her, and about how God is.)  

+ and I know, this is offered as psalm for this Sunday, and so liturgically would come before the Annunciation, but that always seems confusing to me.  If we are going to follow the story, why not read it in chronological order.

+ again, a nice contrast with the David story – helps us understand what the “Davidic idea” might be.

Now here are thoughts from two writers that I got out of a book Watch for the Light – it’s a book of readings for Advent by a variety of people, published by The Plough Publishing House.  I found them really meaningful – I wish I could share them in their entirety.

+ the first is from Kathleen Norris and her book Amazing Grace -

1) I once heard a Benedictine friend who is an Assiniboine Indian preach on the Annunciation to an Indian congregation – “The first thing Gabriel does when he encounters Mary is to give her a new name: Most Favored One.  It’s a naming ceremony.”  Norris goes on to remember James Wright’s poem Trouble and the wonder of his pregnant mill town girl – The butt of jokes, the taunt of gossips, she is amazed to carry such power within herself.

    Sixteen years and

    all that time, she thought she was nothing

    but skin and bones. 

Told all her life that she is nothing, the girl discovers in herself another, deeper reality.  A mystery, something holy, with a potential for salvation.  The poem has challenged me for years to wonder what such a radically new sense of oneself would entail.  Could it be a form of virgin birth?

2) and then later on in the reading she notes that when Gabriel announces to Zechariah that he and Elizabeth will have a child, he responds “How will I know this is so?” - asking for proof, for a sign, for information.  But Mary responds “How can this be?” acknowledging the mystery and wonder.  She notes that Zechariah is struck dumb until John is born, but Mary finds her voice – “Here am I’.  Norris goes on “There is no arrogance, but only holy fear and wonder.  Mary proceeds – as we must do in life  - making her commitment without knowing much about what it will entail or where it will lead...When the mystery of God’s love breaks through into my consciousness, do I run from it?  Do I ask from it what it cannot answer?  Or am I virgin enough to respond from my deepest, truest self, and say something new, a “yes” that will change me forever?

+ The second is from someone named Loretta Ross-Gotta and a book Letters from the Holy Ground.  She starts off talking about how being “virgin” means in some way to be on your own in new and uncharted, “virgin”, territory, open to all kinds of new possibilities.  She writes  -  Jesus observed, “Without me you can do nothing.”  Yet we act, for the most part, as though without us God can do nothing.  We think we have to make Christmas come, which is to say we think we have to bring about the redemption of the universe on our own.  When all God needs is a willing womb, a place of safety, nourishment, and love...God asks us to give away everything of ourselves.  The gift of greatest efficacy and power that we can offer God and Creation is not our skills, gifts, abilities, and possessions.  The wise men had their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Paul and Peter had their preaching.  Mary offered only space, love, belief.  What is it that delivers Christ into the world – preaching, art, writing, scholarship, social justice?  Those are all gifts well worth sharing.  But preachers lose their charisma, scholarship grows pedantic, social justice alone cannot save us.  In the end, when all other human gifts have met their inevitable limitations, it is the recollected one, the bold virgin with a heart in love with God who makes a sanctuary of her life, who delivers Christ who then delivers us.

and finally, if you are still with me you deserve a medal of some sort for your chest or an ornament to hang on your tree, here’s a piece I wrote for Christmas 1984 that I still enjoy it.  I hope you do as well -

The smooth-talking stranger spun out a line that was pure silk.  “Hail, O favored one” he began, and then went on to talk of happiness, fulfillment, and peace.  But she had heard it all before.  And she knew what it meant – it meant children.  And children meant changing diapers, walking the floor at midnight, three o’clock feedings.  And where would this joker be while all this was going on?  Gone – that’s where.

Still – still there was something different about it all.  Perhaps it was her feeling that she could reach out and put her hand right through him.  Perhaps it was her feeling that when he looked out he could see right through her.  Or perhaps it was the words themselves, and the way they seemed to come right from heaven and echo through her heart.  “Maybe this is for real,” she thought.  “What the heck, why not give it a try?”  She took a deep breath.  She said, “Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be for me just as you have said it.”

And Behold, it was.  All that and even more.

And so now it is Christmas.  And that means cards, and gifts, and trees, and shopping, and parties, and services.  And everywhere we turn some joker is singing “Peace on Earth” and “Joy to the World” and “God rest ye merry, guys and dolls”.  And we have heard it all before.  And we know what it means.  It means feeding the hungry, housing the poor, taking care of those who can’t or won’t take care of themselves.  And where will they (the singers) be when it comes time to start pounding those swords and spears and bombs and tanks into plowshares and pruninghooks and planters and strollers?  Gone, most likely, that’s where.

Still – still there is something about a holiday that can get all those people singing about loving each other, even if only some of them really mean it.  And there is something about a holiday that gets folks to give all those gifts away, even if some are hoping to get something more valuable back.  There is something about the words themselves, the way they seem to come almost from heaven and echo through our hearts.  “What the heck,” we say, “maybe this is for real.  Why not give it a chance?”  We take a deep breath.  “Behold,” we say, “we are servants of the Lord.  Let it be for us, all of us, even “them”, just as you have said it.”

And behold…..

That’s it.  Happy Christmas

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Words. 12.13

 Words Twice a Week            12.13

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

Answer to last week’s challenge – the quintessential Mack the Knife was sung by Bobby Darin.  But you knew that, didn’t you.

A few days from the church calendar -

Dec 14  John of the Cross  John was ordained as a priest in 1567. He subsequently thought about joining the strict Carthusian Order, which appealed to him because of its practice of solitary and silent contemplation.  He met and worked with Teresa of Avila as she was

founding the Carmelite order.  He then decided to found a Carmelite order and house for friars  in Duruelo.  On the day it was established, Nov 28, 1586, he changed his name from “John of St. Matthias” (which he had taken when he first joined the Carmelites) to “John of the Cross.”  (In the movie A Thousand Clowns

the little boy “tries out” each potential name change by getting a new library card!)  He was a mystic and is one of the Doctors of the Church.  Sometime between 1574 and 1577, while praying in a loft overlooking the sanctuary in the Monastery of the Incarnation in Ávila, John had a vision of the crucified Christ, which led him to create his drawing of Christ on the cross "from
above".  Some people suggest this drawing inspired the artist Salvador Dalí's 1951 work Christ of Saint John of the Cross.

Dec 16  Ralph Adams Cram and Richard Upjohn  They were architects.  Wait a minute – architects?  Yup – they designed a bunch of churches, many if not most of them for Episcopal congregations, often in Gothic Revival style.  Cram designed The Church of St John the
Divine in New York.  He also designed a residence called The House of the Rising Sun.  (Not that one!).  

Dec 17  Dorothy Sayers   That’s right – she wrote mystery stories - Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane, Parker Pyme, Montague Egg, and others.  She is credited with the phrase “It pays to advertise.”  She also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy.   She also wrote some books “explaining” the Christian faith, similar to CSLewis’s Mere Christianity.  She was a colleague of Lewis and JRR Tolkien.  She also wrote a radio play of the life of Jesus called The Man Born to be King.

And a few from the world/earth calendar -

Dec 14

+Roald Amundson reached the South Pole in 1911.  On this day in 1958, the Soviets reached

something called “the South Pole of Inaccessibility”.  Basically, the hardest spot to get to in Antarctica. This is me reaching the exact center of the Northwest hemisphere, 45N-90W. It's outside of Wausau, WI.

+ George Washington died in 1799.  I have really struggled with this – back in May I stumbled across this quote from Washington to General John Sullivan ordering the destruction of Native Americans..  And it’s kind of like once you know it you can’t “un-know it”.  So – spoiler alert – this is a really troublesome quote.  Skip over it if you don’t want your image of Washington tarnished a bit.  He ordered, “The six nations of Indians are to be attacked, the immediate objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground and prevent their planting more...that the Indian country may not be merely overrun, but destroyed”

Dec 15

+ Jan Vermeer died in 1675.  WPJones comments that “As a master of light, his still lifes are solitary figures rendered sacred in such elemental daily acts as pouring milk.”

+ The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, the 21st amendment (ending prohibition) in 1933.

+ Basketball was invented in 1891.  Apparently the score of the first game was 1-0.

+ Native American leader Sitting Null was killed/assassinated in 1890

+ It’s the birthday of Friedensreich Hundertwasser

.  This guy was really something – he was a painter, an architect, and ecologist.  He designed stamps for the UN and a variety of
countries.  He said the straight line was the downfall of civilization!  Wait a minute – he was an architect.  We were in one of his apartment houses in Vienna – the walls were crooked, the floors had waves, some apartments had trees growing out the windows.  It was wonderful – I guess until you tripped and fell!  You can check out more about him on his website.  If you look around, you can buy tilting mugs and all kinds of things.

Dec 16

+ The Boston Tea Party happened in 1773 – a day for “a cuppa”?

+ Jane Austen was born in 1775, Margaret Mead was born in 1901

+ Col Sanders died in 1980 – a day for an 8-piece bucket?

Dec 17

+ first powered flight by the Wright Bros in 1903.  A day to fly somewhere?  (I don’t think so.)

+ It’s Beethoven’s birthday.  We must have some Christmas music by Beethoven around here somewhere.

Dec 18

+ The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery (1865)

+ The Nutcracker premiered in 1892.  Apparently it did not get good reviews and was not really popular until the middle of the 20th century.

Dec 19

+ In 1972 Apollo 17 returned to earth from the moon.  It was the last time humans were on the moon.  

Dec 20

+ The Louisiana Purchase completed in 1803; the US invaded Panama in 1989.

+ Sacagawea died in 1812, John Steinbeck in 1968

And a short piece from Henri Houwen to take us into the week.  I don’t know when he wrote this, but it certainly seems appropriate for these days -

The situation in our world is frightening, and many people experience deep anxieties. More than ever we will be tested in our faith. I hope and pray that the Lord will deepen our faith during these weeks of Advent and will fill us with peace and joy, which belong to his kingdom. Hope is not optimism and I pray that we all will be able to live hopefully in the midst of our apocalyptic time. We have a promise and God is faithful to his promise even when we are doubtful and fearful. As Paul says: “Our hope is not deceptive because the Holy Spirit has already been poured into us” (Romans 5:5).

I especially like the observation that “hope is not optimism”.

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Words 12.10

 Words Twice a Week           12.10 

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

And this is kind of cool, here’s a link to a short video set to James Taylor singing Some Children See Him (Alfred Burt Carol).  From there you can also get to Cher, Kenny Loggins, Andy Williams, and some other folks each singing it as well.  Fun for us at St Paul’s.  When the choir sang it last year, we were in some pretty good company.  Who knew?  Well, maybe you did.  It was news to me.

And Sunday is the Third of Advent – Gaudete, or ”The Rose Candle”.  It’s about joy!  

Ps 126    Bringing in the sheaves!

+ vs 1 – when God brought us back to Zion, or when God restored our fortunes, or apparently one possible translation is “When God set the fate of Zion”  We often associate this psalm as a memory of coming back from the Babylonian Exile, but there are other possible themes.  It’s one of the “Psalms of Ascent” – possibly the people sang this as they were going up to Jerusalem for an annual pilgrimage.  The CEV calls these psalms “Songs for worship” – it ends up with planting and harvesting images and perhaps was part of an agricultural festival.

+ the psalm remembers the good time when God brought us back.  So we are remembering that God brought us to a good time and also recognizing that we need to be brought back again.  What “good time” (golden age?) do we remember back to?  What would it mean for God to bring us to a time like that? Or bring a time like that to us?  (Is that different?)

+ vs 2 refers to what other nations said about us.  What are other nations saying about us today?  What are other faith traditions saying about us?  What are we saying about others?

+ vs 5 asks for God’s help (“we cried, now let us celebrate”) and vs 6 affirms faithfully (“we cried, but we will celebrate”)

+ in some cultures, especially those that live very close to the land, planting time is sometimes a time of hunger and weeping because the choice must be made whether to eat the seed or to plant it.  It takes a good amount of faith to plant, throw away, the only food you have in hopes of it growing and providing food for the next year.  The soil, the rains, the insect pests – it’s a tight balance.

Isaiah 61.1-4, 8-11

+ “the spirit of the Lord is upon me” – or, the CEV translates “The Spirit of the Lord God has taken control of me!”  That sounds more like letting the remote operator take control of your computer.  I have known a number of people who I felt were speaking God’s word, but I don’t know if I have ever known one whom I felt God had taken control of.  Certainly don’t feel like God has ever “taken control” of me?  Have you?

+ whenever the lectionary leaves out verses, I always go right to them.  Looking at vs 5-7, “they will hire foreigners to take care of their sheep and their vineyards and clean their homes – no I added that last bit; “the treasures of the nations will belong to them” – ripe for exploiting; “they were terribly insulted, horribly mistreated” – what does that resonate with for you?  So maybe the lectionary is suggesting those are things we should shy away from?

+ vs1-4 are the words of the speaker, the servant, the prophet and the message is to “tell the oppressed the good news.”  So this is bedrock “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  This is a message for those who are broken-hearted, who are suffering under a load of debt, who are captives or slaves or caught in the repercussions of years of racism, who are homeless and hungry, who are hopeless.  One of the little blurbs I read each day noted the difference between helpless and hopeless.  So anyway, careful now, which group do we (I, you) belong to?  Marna was suggesting last night that we think about which Christmas story character we resonate with this year.  I have to admit that to some extent I resonate with the animals in the stable – I’m pretty comfortable, I’m not sure I want to move aside to let a baby be born in my space, especially not a "Baby"!  So perhaps I need to be “troubled” with Christmas this year, more than “comforted”.  (I’m a little more comfortable with “troubled” than with “afflicted” when it applies to me!)

+ So this is not a message for Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or any of the other “centi-billionaires”.  There was a comment about how Bill Gates is trying to give his money away, but it just keeps coming in faster than he can.  Does this suggest something wrong with the system?  

+ and note, it is the oppressed and suffering who will be the “Trees of Justice” and rebuilders of the cities.  Groups who try to help those with needs often stress the importance of having clients, some of those they are trying to help, on their board or staff.

+ Tree of Justice – when we were in Lucerne last year we heard about the Linden Tree (I think it was) where people dealt with legal issues.  They believed that persons had to tell the truth if they were standing under the linden tree.  Here’s a brief piece and a neat picture about this idea.

+ vs5-9 are God speaking – and God loves justice and hates robbery and injustice.  I suppose God likes other stuff too – praise, kindness, humility, etc, but here the focus is on justice.

+ God will make a covenant with them.  Wait a minute, didn’t God already do that?  Is this something beyond the 10 Words for Life?

+ “God’s saving power and justice are the clothes I wear” – brings up uncomfortable thoughts of The Emperor’s New Clothes!  Do I need to look in a different mirror?

+ vs11 The Lord will bring about justice.  So what is our job?  How do we fit in?  Or more importantly, are we helping or hindering?

+ the year of the Lord’s favor – could this be looking forward to a sabbatical or jubilee year? Especially if one of the issues is those who are suffering under a load of debt?

Ok – this has gotten kind of heavy and it’s supposed to be the “Joy Sunday”.  Here’s a prayer -

God of Advent waiting,

We are troubled by robbery and unrighteousness, even our own.

Help us find you in our troubled times;

help us find the joy in flowers and wreaths, olive oil lotions, carols and songs of praise,

that we might be strengthened

to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you through your world.

Moving on -

John 1.6-8, 19-28

+ kind of like 20 questions – are you _____?  No.  Are you ______? No.  Or maybe that ice breaker game where you pin famous people’s names on guest’s backs.  “Am I _______?”  No.  “Am I ________?”  Nope!

+ John – the Baptist, Forerunner, Messenger, now Witness.  John was not the light, but he came to witness to the light.  One writer notes that John know who he wasn’t and who he was.  He wasn’t the Messiah, he was the witness.  As a church, are we clear about what we are?  

+ John baptizes with water always and only so that people will see Jesus.  There is no “baptism for repentance” here, and even “he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit” doesn’t come along for 5 more verses.  

+ “Here among you is one you do not know” – that’s kind of a haunting quote, isn’t it.  Who might we overlook on Sunday morning?  Who might we be missing among the asylum seekers turned back at our boarders?  Who might we be overlooking among the homeless and hungry?

+ but then Fred Craddock notes that some have made of life of looking for the messiah, preferring that to accepting the responsibility that finding a messiah brings.

+ through this gospel, people continually do not fully recognize Jesus – Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, the high priest, Pilate, even the disciples.  How do we think of Jesus?  Can we acknowledge that our knowledge is partial, imperfect?  That others might have a different understanding that might be as valid as ours, or even more so?

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Words 12.6

Words Twice a Week           12.6 

If you are more into listening than reading, Words Twice a Week is available, along with other good stuff, as a podcast from St Paul’s Episcopal Church.  Click here.

Day late and a dollar short department - Roy Orbison died on Dec 6 in 1988.  He sang Pretty Woman, Only the Lonely, and that all time classic - Ooby Dooby!  In my mind I also had him connected with Mack the Knife, but that is not correct.  So this week’s challenge, for 10 points extra credit, without googling it, who sang Mack the Knife?  And I know, Frank Sinatra and your uncle Stanley and a bunch of other people, but who sang the definitive Mack the Knife?

And last week’s challenge – write a poem that could be overprinted on one of Monet’s paintings -

   Haystacks in twilight

   Home to small birds, mice, needles -

   I rest in the shade.

Best I could do – once you start writing haiku, it’s hard to write longer poems!

A couple of days from the church calendar (and I use the calendar of the Episcopal Church – there are some other “church related days” in the earth/world section below) -

Dec 10  Karl Barth, Thomas Merton  Karl Barth was a theologian.  (Yawn – ok, theology is not my strong suit or passionate interest.)  Barth actually was a pretty significant figure, important in the Confessing Church opposition to Hitler and the Nazi’s, and the list of people he influenced is pretty substantial, from other theologians to novelists to ethicists. So, shows what I know.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk.  Here’s what W Paul Jones, another Trappist monk, has to say about him.  “Merton was an unknown Trappist monk until his autobiographical The Seven Story Mountain dominated the best seller lists, thrusting him into a public spotlight that no other monk has ever known.  (Certain amount of prejudice there, Mr Jones?)  From there, he wrote widely, a seemingly alternative voice to his times.  A number of his books, including New Seeds of Contemplation, have become classics.  Since his premature death, his popularity has encouraged the publication of almost everything he ever wrote.”  (Tiny little bit of jealousy there, Mr Jones?)

Dec 13 – Saint Lucy/Lucia  Ok, this is a bit of a story.  She was a martyr sometime around 304.  The story goes that she took her conversion to Christianity so seriously that she gave her dowry away to the poor, at which point her suitor rejected her.  Not only that, he denounced her, and she was sentenced to be defiled in a brothel.  But when the soldiers came, they could not move her, even with a team of oxen.  So they piled wood around her but when it wouldn’t burn, someone finally stabbed her in the throat with a sword and she died. Someplace along the line either her eyes were gouged out, or she gouged them out herself, and so she is sometimes depicted looking at you (with her eyes still in her head), but holding a plate with two eyes on it that are also looking at you.  It’s a little weird.  (But hey, the best story United Methodists have is John Wesley preaching while standing on his father’s grave.)  “Lucia” means “light” and before we switched calendars, her day came on or close to the winter solstice, so particularly in Scandinavia we have this tradition of the daughter dressed in white with a wreathe of candles on her head bringing cookies and sweets to the family.  The two images don’t really juxtapose all that smoothly.  In some portions of Italy her day is celebrated with a feast of home-made pasta.  This would please my son.

And a few days from the world/earth calendar -

Dec 7

+well, Pearl Harbor Day.  

Dec 8

+ 1965, the end of Vatican II.  Like the Gothic cathedrals, it was started by one generation/pope (John XXIII) and finished by another (Paul VI).  It made a significant difference in the Roman Catholic Church – some say too much, some say too little – and also spilled over into Protestant church life, particularly worship practices.

+ John Lennon was murdered in 1980.  And all we are still saying is, Give Peace a Chance.

Dec 10

+ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted – a milestone in the expression of human conscience.  The rights identified include the right to life, liberty, and security; the right to education; the right to employment, paid holidays, unemployment security; right to participate in culture; freedom from torture; freedom of thought, conscience, religion; freedom of expression.  

+ The Fellowship of the Ring movie was released in 2001

+ the birthday of Emily Dickinson in 1830.  Interestingly enough, perhaps what many of us remember about Emily Dickinson is that she was a recluse, almost never leaving her room, more than any of the poems she wrote.  She wrote almost 1,800, including a series beginning

  “It’s all I have to bring today…..” which included -

  “It’s all I have to bring today,

  This, and my brand new leopard-skin pill-box hat beside…”  

(No, that’s an inside joke back from the “An Email A Day” time.) Only 10 of her poems were published in her lifetime.  “Her poems were unique to her era. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation.” (wikipedia)

+ Otis Redding died in 1967.  How many of us have whiled away an hour or two Sitting on the Dock of the Bay?

Dec 11

+ UNICEF was established in 1946.  I went “Trick or Treating for UNICEF”.  Did you?  Don’t know if that still happens – you can buy UNICEF Christmas/Holiday cards.  

Dec 12

+ Our Lady of Guadelupe – the Catholics really do have all the good stories.  This was the day in 1531 when Juan Diego showed the roses and mantle with image of Mary to the bishop.  You can read the whole story here.

+ Jane Frances de Chantal – left a widow when her husband was killed in a hunting accident, she approached Francis de Sales to be her spiritual advisor.  She had a difficult journey, often dipping into despair and depression.  Nevertheless, she helped de Sales found the Congregation of the Visitation for women unable to endure the rigors of other orders.  Together they founded 86 houses before she died.  I just think that’s a really comforting story.

+ the birthday of Frank Sinatra in 1915.  He did it his way and loved New York.  At least he said/sang that he did.

+ Edvard Munch was born (screaming?) in 1863.

+ Robert Browning died in 1889.

And here’s a piece from Henri Nouwen as we wait for whatever we are waiting for -

God is a God of the Present

The real enemies of our life are the “oughts” and the “ifs.” They pull us backward into the unalterable past and forward into the unpredictable future. But real life takes place in the here and the now. God is a God of the present. God is always in the moment, be that moment hard or easy, joyful or painful. When Jesus spoke about God, he always spoke about God as being where and when you are. “When you see me, you see God. When you hear me, you hear God.” God is not someone who was or will be, but the One who is, and who is for me in the present moment. That’s why Jesus came to wipe away the burden of the past and the worries of the future. He wants us to discover God right where we are, here and now.

Guess that’s it -

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