First Week of Advent
Over the last several Advents, Betsey Beckman and I have collaborated in presenting the Advent retreat ONCE UPON A TIME IN A TOWN CALLED NAZARETH. While I cannot possibly re-create that experience for you here in newsletter format, here is a sampling sent to you as a labor of love. May it bless your preparation for the coming of Christ.
Once Upon a Time in a Town Called Nazareth
"Once Upon a Time. . ."
Don't the best of stories begin that way? If ever there was a "Best Of" story, this is it.
And it really happened. It happened at a particular time, in a particular place, and started with a particular person.
Let us begin at a time before awareness. In our creative imaginations, we are going to a specific time: 12 hours, BC, the night before the Angel Gabriel will appear.
The one the angel will come to is Mary, Miriam in Hebrew, a young Jewish teenager in first century Palestine, in a town of Galilee called Nazareth.
This was the world, the people, the home into which will come God's great hope for humanity.
Is it fair to say, "What were you thinking, God?" For these were desperate and dangerous times. Israel was an impoverished, occupied nation and the Jews were a rebellious people,
deeply divided along political, religious, and economic lines.
This was no time for a child to be born--let alone this child, the one upon so much depends. But then...is any time a good time...
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor and truth were trampled by scorn--
Yet here did the Savior make his home.
When is the time for a child to be born?
The inn is full on planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn--
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.
Hale-Bopp Comet
THE RISK OF BIRTH
Madeleine L'Engle
Christmas 1973
This is no time for a child to be born
With the earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet* slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late
That was no time for a child to be born
"Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam"
Blessed are you Lord our God, ruler of the universe.
Sometimes the days pile up in their seeming sameness but we become aware slowly that these are also times of ripeness and rightness. A time comes when we know we’ve outgrown what was like a dress two sizes too small. We, too, have known that change is knocking on our door and sometimes when we are open enough, still enough, desirous enough, we have known who it is that knocks. We have known that what comes is of God and it is holy.
