God entrusted Mary

We went to church today, for the first time in a long time. It was the third advent Sunday: a time to think about the joy in waiting.

Our friend's niece and nephew did the advent reading and lit three of the four candles (to represent hope, and peace, and joy). They were confident and capable, and made the most dear and relatable mistake.

"Mary praised God," they read, "who entrusted her with a scared role. Great things God has done!"

I mean, absolutely yes! She would have been scared indeed. And there were so many things to keep on being scared about.

The angel's visit. Pregnancy. Telling Joseph. Telling everyone. The journey to Bethlehem. Birth. The threat from Herod. The journey into Egypt, and back again. The lost teenager. The threatened rabbi. The captured innocent. The crucified saviour. The buried son.

Scared.

And she did it anyway.

I've got my own scared role, and I imagine you have yours. Losses that you've already borne, risks you take and have to take again, the constant and heavy burden of knowing that other precious lives depend upon you taking your responsibility seriously and fulfilling it well.

And Mary handled the scared by embracing the sacred; waiting in joy to see God work.

When the shepherds came to see the Messiah, drenched in wonder from the angels' proclamation, she kept it all in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

When Elizabeth's baby leapt for joy when Mary came near, and Elizabeth knew that she was carrying the Saviour, Mary sang a song of joy. "He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,  as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever." (Luke 1:54-55)

As the calendar nears its end, I usually look back on the year that is almost over. What joy can I find? What tasks did I complete? What scared and sacred work has God entrusted to me?

God entrusted Mary with a scared role.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo.

Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?

The juxtaposition here just blows my mind.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, Luke 1:26.

The shift in expectations is dizzying. The angel Gabriel! Sent from God!

I feel like the next line should be something Fancy:

to the Great High Priest!

to the Temple!

to Caesar!

but it takes a sharp turn from glory to  backwater.

Nazareth's population in Jesus' time was less than 1000. Lots of shepherds. Farmers. Craftspeople. Poor people.

I can't help but feel a little kinship with Nazareth, here in Smiths Falls. 

We're not fancy. Our population isn't big. Lots of blue collar workers.  And just like Galilleeans used to say pfft, can anything good come out of Nazareth? the rest of Lanark County thinks the same thing about Smiths Falls.

I mean, they're not speaking without reason. There's a long history of poverty, addiction, crime, and challenges here. Many lives have been shaped by a lot of hard stories and difficult circumstances.

But it was where Jesus grew up. 

Where he cut his teeth and learned his alphabet. Where he dreamed and studied and made friends and gained critics. And ... it's why he came.

He didn't come to add dignity to the temple, the ruler, the wealthy citizens. He came to us.

He came to us.

To the metaphorical Nazareth in each of us which doesn't feel good enough to welcome him to. 

Contrary to our expectations, he didn't come to the most comfortable, beautiful, luxurious, accommodating of places.

He came to Nazareth.

Which makes me feel really relieved because I, too, am a Nazareth. A friend once learned that I am not the most disorganized in my family and she shook her head in disbelief. Nazareth. My carpets haven't been vacuumed since Sunday. Nazareth. I'm 43 years old and just starting back out in a career I trained for 16 years ago, when most teachers my age already have almost 20 years of classroom experience. Nazareth.

Well.

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.

He came to Nazareth.

That Nazareth and this one, my Nazareth and yours.

He comes to our mess and meets us here. He settles in and touches one thing at a time.

And in the end, the answer to the mocking question, Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? will only ever be able to be a resounding yes.

Yes, the Christ.

Yes, the Christ.

Yes, the Christ came out of Nazareth.

Merry Christmas friends.

Xo.

A Star, a Star, Dancing in the Night

One of my friends told me about a tough night she had at the local Emergency Room. After a late night of stress and tests, around 2am she was told she had to drive an hour to take her child to a larger hospital that was more equipped to meet their needs.

"You can't delay," said the nurse, "but while the doctor is writing the prescription and sending it over, we'll have about 10 minutes. I'm going to go get you some coffee."

And I knew immediately who this nurse was. She hadn't described her physical features, but the way she saw my friend's needs? The way she went out of her way to care for the mama, as well as the sick kid? The thoughtful tenderness?

That's the kind of deep inner beauty that shines through the dark.

You can't tell much about someone's heart by their cross jewelry, their churchgoing, or the people they choose to hate. 

But when that love shines through?  It lights up the night like the star of Bethlehem. 

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo.

A Different Perspective

It was a snow day today, so for an hour or so today I had a collection of students I don't usually teach in my room.

I let them choose from an assortment of work packets, and went around the room and spent time sitting at one desk or another while they worked.

I sat with one kid who sometimes struggles in school. He had chosen a Hanukkah word search. Instead of the French vocabulary on the list, he was circling nonsense words - and making them make sense. 

He circled I L O V and crossed out the next four letters, writing in E YOU.

Then he spied D I N N in a line, with a curved connection to E and R.  He kept finding words that weren't intended to be there, words that were close to being there, words that were there, if you could just tilt your attention sideways at the right point. Thirty kids could look at that page and see the twenty words deliberately cached, but he could see something else.

Jesus was foretold in prophecy, but only Anna and Simeon were waiting for Him in the temple. The star shine over the whole world, but the wise men were the only ones we read of who followed it. 

Sometimes we can look at the same thing as everyone else and see something a little bit differently. I think that's what makes artists, writers, thinkers, worshipers: a different perspective. Looking at the same thing as other people and seeing something different is a gift.

Even if other people think we're crazy. Even if we end up doing something sideways, like worshiping a baby who was born 2 millenia ago. Like spending your time providing food for a hungry kid. Like stopping on your way to work and pushing someone's car out of a snow bank. Ten cars drive by without seeing, but when you see - 

When you see, you do something about it.

May God give us eyes to see, hearts to understand, and the courage to do something about it.

Merry Christmas, friends. 

Xo.

the moon, caught on a random metal piece of tower.

Seven swans a-swimming

An incomplete list of dead birds I have found:

A headless black and white bird in a pile of feathers on our front lawn

A hawk, half-flattened on the side of the highway

A robin, torn open, in our backyard in Thunder Bay 

A half-eaten something feathered, left by a cat in the cradle of our tree

An incomplete list of bird parenting I have witnessed:

A mama robin stuffing stringy worms into her babies' loud and demanding beaks 

Adult ospreys teaching their young to fish

Grown grackles teaching their babies to fly 

A mother swan removing something from a cygnet's feathers

Adult geese, hissing me away from their downy spring-green flock

These scrappy little piles of bone and feather

Persist and persist and persist and persist 

Even though their end may be terrible 

And their lives so short

Why do you bother? I whisper to the birds,

Who are busy

Hunting for food and teaching their babies 

Building their nests and migrating south

And singing 

And soaring 

And greeting the dawn.

They do not answer me.

They are busy 

Flying and feasting and swooping and sleeping and singing 

It is no waste, says the heron, standing still in swift water.

She is so sure.

Jealous? Weepin'?

If you haven't heard it yet, you might like to listen to Iron & Wine's Flightless Bird before reading further (click here).

This fall, I kept this song on repeat. I would listen to it while I walked Eevee, while I got ready for school, when I drove around town. 

There was one line in particular that caught at an old sadness and tugged, tugged -

Have I found you? 

Flightless bird -

Jealous, weepin'

And the immense tenderness and light in the artist's voice lifted and shattered a buried brick that had weighed on my heart since I was little.

For most of my childhood, the fiercest and most defining emotion that I can remember feeling was also the one of which I was most woefully ashamed. And I had somehow come to the conclusion that it was the one emotion that Jesus couldn't have empathized with, because how could he ever possibly have felt it?  

Jealousy. 

I was wracked with it. Jealous of my sisters. Jealous of kids with cool clothes. Jealous of girls with straight hair. Jealous of anyone who achieved anything better or earlier or with more panache than I. I remember one of my sisters whipping the awful accusation at me one day, voice dropping with shame that I would walk in such blatant Sin: "you're just ... jealous!" 

And I couldn't argue with her. She was right. I was that despicable thing.

And worst of all, I wasn't a blazing, honest sort of jealous. No; I was a squirming, crying, angry, pretend-it's-about-something-else sort of jealous.

I writhed.

I longed to be one of those people who could celebrate others, who could love the good things that came to them instead of envying them. But I could not. 

I was walking Eevee through a gloriously orange October sunrise. Flightless Bird came through my headphones like it occasionally did, and suddenly I heard it, the tender chorus that was like listening to a song sung by a very kind, a very wise, a very deeply happy Creator:

Have I found you?

Flightless Bird,

Jealous, weepin' -

And the absolute drenching beauty of sunrise washed over me as I listened to it on repeat. I could see it now: little Janelle, jealous and weeping and raging over the unfairness of existing as a flightless bird. Of course weeping. Of course jealous. Wings bound tight. Raging, and longing.

Jealous? Weepin'? What else could I possibly have felt?

Have I found you?

I cried like a baby. Watching little Janelle through His eyes was so healing.

Yes, he found me.

I wept for the whole world.

Bound. Jealous. Weeping.

He found us.

He found us and he keeps on finding. He found us in Bethlehem, in Cana, in Galilee, in Gethsemane. He found us in the dark dawn (jealous? weeping?). 

He finds us.

Wherever we are, whatever our burdens.

And (sometimes out of the blue on a sunny morning) he sets us free.

Xo.

for moms who don't feel like enough

Tonight I was cozing Pascal at bedtime. He was wearing his softest, fuzziest pyjamas. "These make me want to cuddle you close like a stuffy," I said, patting his arm.

"Bet," he said, and crawled into my arms, pulling them around him.

We squeezed each other tight, and I held him while he fell asleep. 

I think about Mary a lot during Advent. The brave little mother, to whom God himself entrusted his son. When we're kids, we think our parents know everything. We don't realize that when we present them with problems or fears, it might be the first time they've encountered these. We don't know that their replies might just be parroting the words they heard as children, or repeating the turns of phrase their older friends used. We don't know that they don't know ... anything.

But Jesus knew! I mean - I think Jesus knew. I think he entrusted himself to this girl who loved God and who, like all of us, was a complicated, fearful mix of nature and nurture. He knew he would  be held in her arms, and thay she, with her wildly frightened heart and enormous love beating like wings in a cage, would be brand new at this, just like He was.

He didn't choose an old pro mom. He didn't choose a perfect mom. He didn't choose a rich mom, with all the world's resources at her disposal.

He chose her, with her willing heart and big dreams, and, in just the same way, I think he chooses us for our lives. He chooses us for the roles we fill and the burdens we have to carry. He chooses that perceptive kid to sit next to that lonely kid at school. He chooses that bright coworker for you, to pop you out of tiredness and make you laugh. He chooses you, with your eyes and your hands, to live on your street and love your neighbours. And he chooses you to be the mom, the dad, to your precious babes.

You're who they need. 

You're who he sent.

He knows you're not perfect.

He knew Mary wasn't perfect.

And still, he picked us.

For love's sake.

Merry Christmas friends, 

Wishing you a season of comfort and joy, peace and fulfillment.

May you always know that you are chosen, brave, capable, and created just for this - for being who you are, for loving those around you, and for showing up, over and over again.

Xo

Like a Candle in the Dark

I love Collective Soul's song Shine, but today I discovered that Dolly covers it ...

Click here to enjoy.

A snippet of the lyrics:

Love is in the water
Love is in the air
Show me where to look
Tell me, will love be there?
Will love be there?

Teach me how to speak
Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me, will love be there?
Will love be there?

I have yet to look and not find love. I spend each December opening up the windows in my day and looking inside. Whenever I look for it, I find it.

It weeps with those who weep. It rejoices with those who rejoice. It shines like a candle in the dark. It glows in the warmth of friendship and flows like communion. It pools like mercy.

There is darkness and there is hate, there is bitterness and there is sorrow. But when I look for love, it is not overcome. Love remains.

1 Corinthians 13:13 - So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

In which I realize my shame-o-meter is broken

I fell coming out of Costco tonight. My feet shot out from under me and I heard my grandmother's voice coming from my mouth in a terrified and cartoonish "whoooooooa!" before I hit the ground.

A passing woman gathered my dropped groceries, and another asked if she could help me up.

I shook my head no, got to my feet, thanked the kind woman and took my groceries, averting my face.

And then the whole way to the car I cried hot tears of shame and embarrassment.

My friends.

I am aware, logically, that I did nothing wrong. I didn't get in someone's way, I didn't swerve or race or trip over my own feet. I wasn't careless or impatient. I didn't have anyone to be sorry for or to, and I didn't even harm anyone or get in anyone's way as I fell. My shoes simply slid in the slush and snow and I went down.

But when I gathered myself together and walked away, the prevailing emotion I felt was ... shame.

Why?

It isn't hurtful or cruel to slip and fall. It isn't wrong or bad.

But something in me, in my life or my perceptions (or maybe my misperceptions?) equates making a mistake, even something as innocuous as a misstep, with being bad. And being scared to make even an innocent mistake can make you scared to do anything at all.

I almost decided not to write these posts this year. For all the kind comments, there are usually a few unkind ones (and those are the ones that seem to stick in my teeth). And it's scary to put my thoughts and feelings on a screen for anyone to see. 

But scared is a pointless way to live.

And shame can be a useful feeling but I know my shame-o-meter needs recalibrating. 

So I will likely write something dumb, or silly, or cringe. But I might also write something hopeful, or comforting, or glad. I just might be another arrow pointing to the everlasting love, and I'll take those odds.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo.

a frostbitten milkweed, from my walk with Eevee today. 

Veiled in flesh

About Jesus, John wrote, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." 

John 1:14 - The word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Look at these lambs.

Love put on flesh and dwells with me.

Sorrow put on flesh and dwells with me.

Hope put on flesh and dwells with me.

Insecurity put on flesh and dwells with me.

Possibility put on flesh and dwells with me.

Compassion put on flesh and dwells with me.

Tenderness put on flesh and dwells with me.

Weakness put on flesh and dwells with me.

Strength put on flesh and dwells with me.

Intelligence put on flesh and dwells with me.

And I have seen the glory, the glory of creation from God's hands, full of complexity and dearness.

Three of my friends have new babies in their lives this week, and their pictures are so impossibly sweet. The personalities and humanity, coiled up in them as mysterious and inevitable as fingerprints, will be revealed day by day. 

Jesus came to us just this way.

He unfolded Himself to us, He unfolds Himself to us, and we see His glory in glimpses and fragments.

Just like we see each other.

Incomplete, veiled and revealed in flesh.

Merry Christmas, friends,

To you and the glimpses of glory you live with.

Xo

Maybe he shares mine

Is there anything in the world as lovely as

A hound, dainty of foot, and fleet;

Sniffing and dancing and sniffing again, nose stuck on repeat?

Do you think little Jesus had a dog?

Or maybe he shares mine

And maybe he calls her, with a sound just out of my ears' reach,

Every evening when she starts to whine.

Maybe he walks behind us, or a little ahead, 

Throwing invisible sticks 

And she leaps and cavorts at His side while I daydream 

And teaches her invisible tricks.

Maybe he laughs as she stalks through the grass 

And he hides all the bunnies from view

Maybe he brings scents and sounds on the winds

And tells her from where and from who.

Then off they run, for the love of the run,

And love of the night and the chase 

And running for relief to be out of the house 

And the love of the wind in the face.

 

To you and your kin

Pascal and his friend H were chatting about their day.

P: know what M told me today? {M is a big kid in grade 6}

H: what?

P (clearly over the moon): he said I have some skill in soccer.

H: you do! 

P: you do too! And your little brother and sister sure have some skill as goalies.

🥰

Because love, like light, overflows.

M's generous compliment filled Scally's bucket and overflowed to H and his siblings.

When the magi followed that star, and found Bethlehem's child, they saw him, and their hearts and hands overflowed with gifts.

When the sick woman reached out for help, just to touch the edge of Jesus' robe, his love and life overflowed and healed her.

Like a light set on a hill, we can't keep love in. It abounds. It bubbles up and spills over. It flows from one heart to the next.

May we feel it this season - and may we, too, pass it on. 

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo

Ordinary Gifts on Dec 2

I drove to work in the morning sunshine

Coffee steaming in my cupholder

Kids laughing about something 

Frost-flattened grass dusted with snow 

Roads clear.

I drove home in the December sunset

Western sky alight with gold

Kids laughing about something 

Heated steering wheel warm on my palms

Six swans flying through the blue overhead.

I walked Eevee in the clearest dark

Sky so drenched with moonlight and dotted with stars that I tried to capture it three times before giving up 

Eevee followed her nose, legs twinkling, light feet barely leaving prints.

I'm not just opening presents 

I'm walking among them,

Living in them,

Lit by them, surrounded and filled by them,

Gift upon gift upon gift.

Merry Christmas, friends.

Xo.

By the light of the Menorah

On this first advent post of the year, I bring you a little gift from Hanukkah.

My students were asking about its traditions and meaning, so we looked up the Hanukkah story and I learned something new.

The light in the middle of the menorah, the one that is used to light all the other lights, is called the Servant Light.

The night before he was crucified, Jesus ate with his disciples. Was the table lit with a menorah? And is that why, when they started arguing about which of them was the greatest, he pointed them gently in the other direction?

Kings try to rule over more and more people, he said, be the opposite: lay down your authority. Let those who are leaders become the servants instead. (Luke 22:25-26, my paraphrase)

The Light in the centre of our faith calls us to light one another's candles, meet one another's needs, fill up where another is lacking.

In warming others, we will be warmed; in filling others, we are filled.

Our light is not lost by sharing with others, instead, it lessens the dark and widens the welcome.

Just like he did, and does, our servant light.

Happy holidays, dear friends.

Xo.