2020 Preparing for Advent

Ideally, a human life should be a constant pilgrimage of discovery. The most exciting discoveries happen at the frontiers. When you come to know something new, you come closer to yourself and to the world. Discovery enlarges and refines your sensibility. When you discover something, you transfigure some of the forsakenness of the world.

John O’Donohue from Eternal Echoes

It has been quite a year! Thank you for your continued support of my blog. This post is to let you know that I will not be posting daily Advent meditations this year. With two cross-country moves, struggling to find employment, and trying to hold this complicated year – I have not been able to post regularly. However, there will be one or two posts a week throughout December in celebration of this wonderful time of year.

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My Favorite Books for 2020

Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere – A #BlackLivesMatter Anti-Racism Book List …

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
— Martin Luther King, Jr from A Testament of Hope – The American Dream

As a product of my culture, my racial illiteracy has rested on a simplistic definition of a racist: an individual who consciously does not like people based on race and is intentionally hurtful to them. Based on this definition, racists are purposely mean. It follows that nice people with good intentions who are friendly to people of a different race cannot be racist. Not only does this definition hide the structural nature of racism, it also enables self-delusion: If I am a nice person with good intentions I am free of all racial bias and cannot participate in racism.
— Robin DiAngelo from White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism

The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.
— Jimmy Carter from Nobel Lecture after receiving the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize in the Oslo City

Book Recommendation: Places of Light

This book was written by two people I met while on a pilgrimage to Paris-Chartres in 2015.

Places of Light: The Gift of Cathedrals to the World

Embark on a pilgrimage through the great cathedrals of the world.

Gernot Candolini and Jennifer Brandon invite readers to experience some of the exemplary cathedrals of Europe and North America, with beautiful images and poetic, descriptive texts that inspire and inform. They offer glimpses into the spiritual, visionary, and artistic beauty and mastery of these spaces, inspired by God and built by human hands.

Read the powerful stories connected to these sacred spaces: like the reconciliation crusade of Vezelay, the destruction of Cluny, and the origins of Sagrada Familia. Explore the architectural and artistic elements that make these churches what they are: the power of light, the “smiling stones,” the crypt, the music, and more.

More Recommendations:

• Guide to Advent
• Daily Meditation
• Book Recommendations

Advent Day 01: A Sacred Season …

Christmas is a swiftly moving season with few clear boundaries. The day after we’ve packed up our Halloween costumes, Hallmark Channel begins nearly two months of twenty-four-seven presentations of Christmas movies. Shortly thereafter, we are inundated with ads inviting us to shop early to get the best bargains. The holiday rush is in full swing by Thanksgiving with Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales abounding, and People jostling one another to be 1st to purchase the latest must have Christmas presents. Radio stations begin playing Christmas songs on Thanksgiving Day.

In the fifty-five days from All Saints’ day to Christmas Day, we prepare for Christ coming through online shopping, bargain hunting, photos with Santa coma songs and carols, baking, drinking, and revelling. Despite wars and rumors of war, poverty, addiction, and homelessness, Christmas magic is in the air! That often in the magic we miss the sacredness of the season, the holy time and space of pregnancy, birth, and revelation.

Courage Is Fear Walking …

We want life to be as dazzling and painless as possible. Life, on the other hand, has a way of humbling us, and heartbreak is built into its agreement with the world. We’re young, until we’re not. We’re healthy, until we’re not. We’re with those we love, until we’re not. Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility. One of the greatest human triumphs is to choose to make room in our hearts for both the joy and the pain, and to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. This means seeing feelings not as being “good” or “bad” but as just “being.” Yes, there is this relentless assumption in our culture that we need to do something when we have inner turmoil. We must struggle with it, fix it, control it, exert brute-force willpower over it, remain positive. What we really need to do, though, is also what is most simple and obvious: nothing. That is, to just welcome these inner experiences, breathe into them, and learn their contours without racing for the exits.

In Memoriam: Mary Oliver …

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her poetry often explored nature and the spiritual world. She died on Thursday, January 17, 2019 at her home in Florida.

We celebrate her life with deep gratitude for the remarkable human being she was and how she used words to witness, awaken and heal the world. A bight light is gone from our sky but her poetry and wisdom remain as a gift to humanity for generations to come. Rest in beauty and peace …

ILLUMINATED 2018 …

In gratitude for all the blessing prayers that I frequently post on In Silence Waits, I am sharing information about an advent retreat that Jan Richardson is offering from December 1, 2018 to December 28, 2018.

Retreat Details

ILLUMINATED 2018 is an elegantly simple online journey toward Christmas that you can enter into from anywhere you are, in the way that works best for you.

This online retreat is not about adding one more thing to your holiday schedule. It is about helping you find spaces for reflection that draw you deep into this season that shimmers with mystery and possibility.