Highs and Lows

I don't usually summarize my days. But I think need to tonight to be able to come to terms with it. Today was an amazing day. One of those kind that I can look back on and play the "highs and lows" game with sensing a great deal of weight in each the highs and lows. It started out with my morning class in my professors living room. Meeting every Tuesday morning, with a great book to discuss and an amazing group to discuss with has been constantly a highlight to my week. The course is called "Contemporary Themes in Religion and Culture" and is an in depth look into the important interplay between the church and the ideas of postmodernism. This class constantly moves me. We watched a short film clip called "The Butterfly Circus". I think more people should watch it. It's simple, well done, and as we discussed in class, presents two ways in which the Christian Church can function in our world.
This afternoon I lead a short time of worship for chapel, which really isn't that notable except for how much I actually enjoyed leading it. Later, I sat outside and read in the sun... in February! I had a sleeping bag and was sitting under a veranda with the sun beaming right on me, but it was the best place to be at that moment.
This evening a group of us students involved in drama went to a local nursing home to give a casual performance. Being there and singing was fun, but as we were leaving a few of us stopped to chat with some of the seniors, I think this was the best part aside from just being able to be there.
Aside from these things, being with friends throughout the day was an immense blessing and at times really difficult. Not because my friends were difficult, but just walking through difficult times with others and recognizing the strugglees in my own life. I'm not going to describe the lows. But they are there for me to remember. I think I need to give them more acknowledgement today, for whatever reason. Maybe so that I remember that real days come with highs and lows.

I was taking some much needed time for myself this morning and realized how meaningful a few readings have been to me over the past year. Maybe more often than I would like, I find myself in a state where I feel mentally and emotionally crippled. And often this state has come about because I have spread myself too thin across too many situations or too many people. I thought it would be good to put a few readings that have meant a lot to me as I reread them when I take the occasionaly quiet time I need.


Taken from Celtic Daily Prayer, Aiden Readings, December 22

His thoughts said:

My longing is to heal the broken and the weak, to defend the maimed, and to lead the blind to the sight of the glory of the Lord. My choice is to be a corn of wheat and fall into the ground and die. Then why these waverings?

His Father said:

Too much of your surface is exposed to the breath of every wind that blows. You must learn to dwell deep.

And the son who had wavered answered humbly,

Renew within me a settled spirit.
Establish me with Your directing Spirit.
My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.
I will sing and give praise.

~ Amy Carmichael

In quietness and rest this home is a vessel.
A vessel which carries life and being, but does not limit its function, malfunction or growth.
As I rest here on the couch I hear the gentle whirring of the dishwasher, lulling the quietness of the warm air in this house, as it makes clean the lesser vessels which held the well prepared dinner just enjoyed.
I can hear the gentle rumble of the stove, with its slow creaking as its metal expands; this vessel of fire which keeps the air warm, which can take a chill out of a cold room, a cold body, sometimes even out of a cold heart.
Above this, but gently, I hear the voices of two generations, though time and experience divide them; they are cooing to each other. I can hear grandmother gently holding, and grand-daughter reaching out to time and experience. For a moment the two seem as one, both intertwined with the other, grandmother drawn to be child-like and grand-daughter grasping for grandmother's experience. How we grow with and into each other in mysterious ways.
We are vessels of life, of hope and love, of growth and brokenness, of quietness and strength, vessels that carry light and warmth, in this furnace made of skin, of tender enduring material, which stretches and creaks with experience and time, that gives light and warmth for those nearby to enjoy, to stand close to and heal, to find nourishment in the feast of company and love, to cleanse and wash each other through water and tears and sometimes fire, to hold and to shelter and to bring together. How we grow with and into each other in mysterious ways.
Yet though we are the vessels of light and life, we are not the light itself. We are the vessels. Yet, we are more than vessels.

"There are many who love God and wander in the wilderness; I will follow the one who loves the persons made by God."

I've been writing papers and exams over the last couple weeks now and have come across so much interesting information! I wish I could subject everyone to it.

This quote I came across today. It comes from one who some call Islam's most outstanding thinker, Mahummad Iqbal.
(ref. Muhammad Iqbal, Bang-e-Dara (Urdu)(Lahore, 1962), 151)

An Advent Prayer: The Second Sunday of Advent

I usually end up forgetting about Advent until partway through the season. It's easy to get swept into the busy fray, especially with final papers and exams, and not take the time to soak in this season. But each year, as I am pulled into the Advent celebrations, I find more and more value in it, in meditating on the themes brought up, especially in my community here in St. Stephen. It' more than recognizing an event that has happened in the birth of Christ, marking a Christian holiday, spending time with family and focusing more on Christ. It is all of these things in more or less ways, but I think I am learning that it is also being deeply aware that Christ is still becoming present and working in and through people, our communities and in each of one of us. The time of Advent is a time of anticipating this presence. One of the members of our community, Rachel Barham, wrote a prayer for the second week of Advent and it emphasizes this anticipation of the presence of Christ in our lives and the life of the world.

We wait with Mary for Christ to be formed in us,

Daring to trust this hidden womb-weaving,

And treasuring the smallest signs of growth.

As Mary took heart to see

the wondrous swelling of Elizabeth’s belly,

So the burgeoning life of God we see in others

encourages us that this sacred life grows also in us.

More and more, we long to bring Christ into the world,

Though we know that pain and labour accompany the birth of new life

As surely as joy and wonder.

Groaning and waiting,

Pregnant with hope and desire,

We prepare today a place for your coming,

Son of Mary’s womb, and Christ of our own hearts.