Advent I -- Finding Christmas at Home

It's Advent time. Just yesterday we opened a small crack in the door and once again came to a familiar place. Outside winter comes our way. Up and down our streets blinking lights, trees, Santa Claus and a whole lot of other stuff can be found. I love this season because the colors and twinkling lights remind me this is a wonderful time to be alive. 

Advent means arrival. It is coming. It is coming. Whether we are prepared or not the baby will arrive and everything for the moment will be turned upside down. Bringing trees into the house. Trees! Finding in dusty boxes stored away our peculiar treasures. A tiny star made out of dough placed on our tree for how many years? One of our daughter’s first gifts. And now in her fifties she still remembers. We unearthed the poor Nativity Mary with a hole in her back—our son could not resist playing Superman with her and saying over and over: “Shazam!!” We found the crocheted little wreaths my mother made long ago. And ornaments from my wife’s mother—she  used year after year. We could go on.

We decorate the tree and string lights on the mantle. Like the birth of that other baby our house is turned upside down. Why? The kids are coming. The grand children are coming and we will break loose from the ravages of this virus and terrible conditions in our world and stand just inside this cracked door and once again feel a touch of wonder we thought was lost. 

Yes—the kids and grands will arrive but there is another arrival. “Watch!” the old book says because we never really know when a guest we did not expect and did expect will come in and bring good tidings of great joy to all people. All. Not just Democrats or Republicans or those strange nones or immigrants without a place to sleep. So we keep bumping into this word: All. We are all included. Prisoners. These slipping away into the mystery. Children  with starlight in their eyes. And those that come to the food pantry. Not to forget all those on drugs or alcohol or some other addiction. The grievers and the joyous.

We all come hopefully watching and waiting. Not missing those stories of angels’ wings and a sixteen year old girl scared and pregnant. And hopefully sitting down at a table covered in food lovingly prepared for your homecoming.

And that is what I am thinking about this beginning of Advent. And going way back and remembering those first Christmases and  some memories over eighty years old. Around that table there will be vacant spots and we will remember those not here anymore.

So we crack the door and peer in. And hopefully watch and wait which may be the hardest thing for we Americans.

Inside we find home: “the place that when you come there they have to let you in”. I hope you will walk with me through this four week journey. Searching almost one and all for that place called home.

And I remember those wonderful words of G.K. Chesterton:

“To an open  house in the evening

Home shall all (sic) come,

To an older place than Eden 

And a taller town than Rome. 

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

To the things that cannot be and that are,

To the place where God was homeless

And all…are at home.”

Won’t you join me as we stand on the porch and walk inside and find Peace and great joy which can come to us all. 

See you next week. As we crack the door just a little more.

photo by Neil Taylor / flikr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

 

Thanksgiving 2021

--photo collage by marcusrg / flikr

"Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that give glory to God, save this stranger."  --Luke 17. 17,18

This Thanksgiving comes at just the right time. Maybe it is true about every Thanksgiving. I turned off the TV after watching 10 minutes this morning. Dear God it was just too much. A Christmas parade destroyed with someone plowing a vehicle in to the happy marching band killing five--children. Children? All who have lost so many--over 600,000 in our country alone to this cursed Pandemic. January 6th. January 6th. January 6th. Gun ands more gun blotting out the lives of so very many.  Ugly threats to Doctors, nurses, aides who worked long, long hours trying to help the victims of our plague. Rage over vaccinations. Washington awash with hatred and division and finger-pointing. Getting even. Outbreaks there and wondering if this, too will spread. And Thanksgiving comes. 

We are not the first nor the last to live in the middle of a hurricane. We think of just today--us, ours, here. But the Bible alone mentions giving thanks 140 times. The backdrop. War and pestilence. Hungers and starvation. Tears and more tears. In every age there have been terrible convolutions. And set in the middle of these strange words for a dark time: Thanks. Praise. Gratitude. Amazing Grace. 

It is easy to give thanks when everything seems to be going well. Or easy to forget God.  But maybe Jesus was right, where in the midst of a world gone wrong, he asks the strangest question:"Where are the nine?" Anne Lamott reminds us: "If you've been around for a while, you know the much of the time, if you are patient and paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away."* Lord, I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in. Tail end of the line of course.

So we are to pay attention. To the wonders of this world and the wonders of the people we know.  And those we do not know. Like the man I see often walking, just walking. All over town.

No car. Face looks like he's hard time. Sometimes carrying a little filled grocery sack he got up the street. Limping but walking. Or the man I saw at Wendy's the other day. Just sitting there as people walked in to give their orders. He just watched. You could tell he had no money. No hand held out. No placard saying: I am hungry. Just there. Me? I ordered a bowl of chilli. I think Thanksgiving says if we praise long enough we will begin to respond to all those out there. The least of these. And many of the well-heeled too. Sometimes I think I missed that chapter.

Or as dear Mother Teresa said one time, "Young man I do what I can, where I am, with what I have." That's praise. I do believe that's Doxology. We really are to pay attention. Down in the mouth, troubled by many things--I wandered out on my porch and looked up. And there it was--a beautiful maple tree in my yard. Don Robertson wrote a book one time, Praise the Human Season. And maybe just maybe this Thanksgiving if we just pay attention to those around our table, and the food we are about to eat, looking out the window at it all--we too might praise this very human season and it may just save our souls after all.

*You might want to read Anne Lamott's book, Help Thanks Now - Riverhead Books

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

           

Happy Birthday Granddaughter

 Hey Granddaughter...

...We love you

...We are proud of your job and trying to be  grown-up person...

...We got to the hospital in Louisville a little late for your birth...

...But we were there just after your birth...

...And there never was a happier circle around your Mama's bed and you blinking out wondering who all these strange smiling people were...

...Well after all these years we are still smiling...well, most of the time...

...We hope that your day is great...birthdays only come around just once a year...but today is your day...

...Wherever you go never, ever forget that there are weird people out there that still smile when they say your name...

...Natalie and Mama and baby sister Libby. 

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com

It's All Saints Day--Who's in your Window?

                                                 Endurance Window - Princeton University Chapel

"For all the saints who from their labors rest, Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest. Alleluia! Alleluia!"

On this All Saints Day I remember a stained glass window. I saw it in the Princeton University Chapel. That magnificent gothic structure is surrounded by wonderful stained glass that tell the Biblical story.

I spent many summers at Princeton Theological Seminary. With time off  I would wander into the University Chapel. But one particular day I came in and sat close to the Altar. No one was no one there but me. I looked to my left and saw what was called the Great North Window. Jesus dominated much of the center part of that window. But underneath that rendering of Jesus was another large figure: St. Michael with a sword in his hand. Ever ready to slay the dragons.

Around those two figures there were many who has stood strong despite impossible circumstances. They were called saints. The lower part of the window showed other historical names and faces with the word inscribed: Perseverance. Underneath it all were the words: “He that endureth to the end shall be saved.” Almost every summer after that I would go into that chapel and sit in that same pew and ponder the glittering colored glass that surrounded Jesus. 

But I found myself not only seeing the figures of the saints. But I began to think of those along the way that helped keep me going. Many would laugh themselves silly if anybody called them a saint. But they were and they are. For living or dead they are still in my window. They always brought some word, some hug, some letter or some call from across the miles. None of them were particularly pious but they always brought with them a breath of fresh air.

As I look at those in my endurance window they all made me feel good just to be around them. Sometimes they stretched me in ways that surprised. They were all bonafide human beings with clay feet and hangups of their own. Many of them had carried heavy loads. But this did not stop them from making their worlds good and bad a better place because they were there.

Someone asked a little boy at Sunday school what he thought a saint was. He said, A saint is someone who lets the light shine through. And I think he was right. 

Look up at your own window. Who do you find? They were some who really did let the light shine on you. Maybe there was a time when you thought you couldn’t make it but they came again and again. Just enough light! Just enough light!

I will remember this day and some who were saints to me. Helping, loving, caring and never giving up on me and a whole lot of others. Isn’t that what a saint is supposed to be. And guess what? There was not a halo in the whole bunch.

 

photo courtesy of Jean Christophe Bleuquart /flikr

"And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song, 

And  hearts are brave again, and arms are strong. Alleluia! Alleluia!"

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com