Watching still

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. Is 30:15

"Though Advent’s expectant hush has passed, St. Augustine reminds us not to give over that sense of quiet and stillness just yet: “See what God became for your sake; learn the lesson of such great lowliness, learn it even from a teacher not yet able to speak. …for your sake your Creator lay speechless, unable even to call his mother by her name.” As I look toward Ordinary Time and the start of the next semester, I am tempted to move on to Christ preaching and teaching and healing, to my life packed with the practical and engrossing. Isaiah and Augustine remind me not to rush on, to remain engaged with the lessons of the infant. To experience again being unformed, speechless, of necessity trusting that what I need will be given. To grow slowly, to watch the child to see the signs of what He will become." — from my Christmas reflection of 2009

Today starts nine months of sabbatical leave, of time for writing and reflection, a time for rest and growth. I'm tempted to dive into the projects that hang (some of them literally) enticingly on the walls of my office and mind, but am reminded by this passage to start slowly, to learn the lessons of the child in the crib. As yet wordless...

When ages beyond number had run their course

Never mind Facebook, this is the ultimate in timelines. The Christmas Proclamation sets the birth of Christ into time. To chant it feels like a cascade, one marker to the next, until hanging on the reciting tone for more than seven times seven syllables we wait and wait until the Word bursts into time at "was born of the Virgin Mary.."

You can hear it chanted here. By the time you read this I will have stood at the ambo, taken a deep breath and proclaimed again "The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh."

Merry Christmas!

The Twenty-fifth Day of December

When ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,

when God in the beginning created heaven and earth,

and formed man in his own likeness;

when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace;

in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of the Ur of the Chaldees;

in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt;

around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;

in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;

in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome;

in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace,

Jesus Christ, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence,

was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and when nine months had passed since his conception....

was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man:

The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

The empty manger

In 1996, when The Boy was a mere 5 months old and Crash firmly and wonderfully two, we spent Advent in Vienna. Math Man had an appointment at the Schrödinger Institute (blackboards everywhere, including the women's room!) and I was on maternity leave, so the whole family decamped to a small apartment off Leopoldsgasse.

It was an Advent of darkness and light. We had not a single day of sun during our time there, but buildings everywhere were swathed in white lights. The boys and I took daily excursions to see the sights, zipped into their double stroller. One afternoon we went to the Christkindlmarkt by the Rathaus. My mother-in-law had told me stories of this Christmas market (which had been there for about 200 years) and I was not disappointed. The trees were gorgeously lit, the street food wonderful (Crash managed to get covered in chocolate despite his snowsuit) and the little stands packed with treasures.

My father made the stable that went under my family tree, with a traditional ceramic set of figurues. I loved to contemplate the camels and the three Kings and wonder at the distance they had traveled, the strange lands they had come from. (Who knew that someday I would ride a camel in the Middle East?). I had a stable found on sale at an outlet when I was a graduate student, with a set of figures much like the ones I grew up with. As I wandered the market I happened upon a stall filled with creche figures, intricately carved and colored. They were gorgeous, and expensive. The budget stretched (barely) to Mary, Joseph, the babe and one other figure. Though I coveted the kings and their camels, it was not to be. I bought a shepherd and a ewe nursing her lamb (as a reminder of all those cold Vienna nights when I got up to get The Boy from his crib to nurse).

This year I found the shop's online shadow and ordered the kings and their camels. Who might be here by Epiphany....

Conditor Alme Siderum

I love the clarity of the winter sky. Walking home from church on Sunday evening, the cloudless sky was a feast of colors, Venus was glittering above the tree line and the sharp, cold air swept out the last of the semester's cobwebs.

We chanted this piece (in English) on Saturday evening at the vigil Mass. Our Advent music has featured a lot of chant: I chanted the penitential rite, the presider chanted the preface, we chanted the Our Father. Like the cold air, chant seems to bring a clarity to our prayer. The thread held by the reciting tone keeps us focused, and the fluidity keeps us firmly moving forward, refusing to let us be ensnared in the language we've not all mastered.

Sticky writing fail

I sat down to work on a piece for Phaith this weekend, opened my favorite drafting software to find a blank document titled "Phaith February" containing only this text:

Centering prayer…somewhere on a sticky you have an outline for this!

Really? Because I have no idea on earth where it might be stuck….

At least one advantage of typewriters (besides their inability to entangle you in the Interwebs when you are struggling to write) is that you can't archive snark in them.

Come, Holy Spirit, Divine Creator, true source of light and fountain of wisdom! Pour forth your brilliance on my dense intellect...