The Message is Joy (Reflections on the Second Sunday in Advent)

This is the irrational season

where love blooms bright and wild

had Mary been filled with reason, 

there'd have been no room for the Child. - Madaleine L'Engle

Advent is the excavation of our hearts. We begin to clean, dust off the cobwebs of the year, the words we collected, the stories we've been harboring, the sorrows and wild joys. In Advent we are making ourselves ready for the coming of Emmanuel. God with us. This Advent season, I want to offer a few reflections every week, to excavate my own heart and to prepare for Him with you. 


---

Second Sunday of Advent

Merciful God, who sent thy messengers the prophets to 
preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: 
Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, 
that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our 
Redeemer; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy
Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.


Cassandra was a beautiful woman in Troy. She caught the eye of Apollo, the Greek god of music and light, and her beauty was so much that he granted her the gift of prophecy. Surely, he thought to himself, she will love me back. But when Cassandra spurned his advances, Apollo cursed her, so that no one who heard her prophecies would believe her, although the prophecies would always come true. The people would hear beautiful Cassandra but would never believe her words. They would not change because of her. They would not trust her.

You could very well ask why in the world I am writing about Cassandra and Apollo in a reflection on the second Sunday of Advent. Sometime I treat God's revelation as a prophecy from Cassandra. I tell myself it's not true, that I am in control, that I don't need to change or alter or repent. I tell myself that, well, Jesus is coming, but what does that really mean, anyway. It's not like his coming will change anything. I stand in that crowd of people in Troy and scoff at beautiful Cassandra; I stand among the Israelites and listen to Isaiah:


"Comfort, comfort my people, 
   says your God. 
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, 
   and proclaim to her 
that her hard service has been completed, 
   that her sin has been paid for, 
that she has received from the LORD’s hand 
   double for all her sins. A voice of one calling:
“In the wilderness prepare
   the way for the LORD;
make straight in the desert
   a highway for our God." (Isaiah 40.1-3)


... and I think, well, what difference does it make? 

But oh, Hilary! I want to whisper to myself as I read the collect this Sunday. It changes everything. The messengers do not bring devastating news of destruction. The prophets preach that we are about to receive Joy.

If you are at all like me, the prophets are a bit frightening. They speak with bright hope. They speak with such certainty, with such promise. I am scared of that. In my timid, doubting way, I fear just how much they are preparing me for - they are preparing the way for our salvation. They are preparing the way for the Joy of Jesus Christ.

The message is Joy. And in my small wondering heart, so full of doubts about myself and love and if-I-will-ever-measure-up-and-if-I-can-even-be-what-I-hope-to-be-and-if-He's-listening... the message changes everything. 


I urge you, dear friends, in this season of Advent, to hear the prophets preaching joy and to fill your heart with it. Drink in their words, even the hard words of how we must change and what we must confess. Go back to the well of their promises. Go back to the bright living hope that burns inside them.  And do not fear: for the message of Joy changes everything for good.

Prepare me the way, O Lord, and let my heart radiate the message of Joy.

Love,
Hilary

if you have a weary heart (a five minute post)

Lisa-Jo over at the Gypsy Mama writes words of beauty and truth that spin across continents and computer screens. She helps us laugh and delight in the world, and the words. On Fridays we write for just five minutes - let our words fly free and clear. Won't you join us? 

This week it is about "tired."

Some days I want to take my heart out of its ribcage and look at it in the palm of my hands. I want to feel it beating, feels its shape and its scars and all the history it carries.

Some days I am tired of it breaking. I am weary with the running around and the waiting and the trusting blindly as I wander forward and the disappointment and the candles lit at noon that seem to give no light. I am weary with waiting to be full that I run outside, heart in my hands to God and say, please, won’t you come running to me? Won’t you come find me, and send your rainclouds to this desert?

And still I hold this heart in my hands and I offer its words to the world and I wait to know who will hold it, who will know its secrets and wonder about its stories and who will carry me for a while when I can’t carry myself.

And still my heart keeps beating. The weary heart beats when it is empty. The weary heart beats even when it cannot have what it longs for. The weary heart beats.

The weary heart beats out hope. The weary heart bears the burden of belief when it’s too heavy for the rest of us. The weary heart pushes out towards the sunrise.

Love,

Hilary 

You are not leaving, you are arriving

Some days I think I'm watching myself go through open heart surgery. I watch as each morning run stitches me back together, how the smell of the water and wind over Coy Pond fills my lungs. I watch as a few short days in a city I love gives me 1,000 gifts:

Chop't salads at Union Station
the walk to Eastern Market
Port City Java
laughing until my sides ache on the Metro
running past 1615 L St and remembering
cupcakes and 30 Rock
good wine at happy hour and telling the secret I had been holding
running to the Capitol Building in the bright cold sun
leaves crunching on East Capitol St.
beginning to count gifts again in the journal from Italy
the zoo lights at the National Zoo
the warm cider and the long walk back down memory lane

and they go on and on. And each one is a stitch back together. Each one knits the broken jagged edges to each other.  My eyes are tired and my feet don't want to carry me any more. The idea of resting or waiting or listening to the silence feels impossible... but this is the season where my heart is healed.

Hearts really do heal. I don't know if you can hear me. But if you wonder about whether your heart will be healed, I'm leaning in close to tell you:

You will be full to overflowing.

I promise you. I promise you that time and winter and Advent heal. I promise that lighting candles and drinking tea and walking through your disappointments or your sorrows will move you to the other side. I promise that even as you pick your feet up to go up one more flight of stairs and you set your hands to the keyboard again, doing the small brave beautiful thing will heal you. I promise you with all of my heart because I wonder too, because I don't always trust it, but because if I tell you then I'll try to hope in it, too. Our hearts will become beautiful.

Last year a good friend of mine and I wrote "Poetic Friday" emails every week. We shared stories and always ended with a poem. She gave this one to me when I'd been having a tough week, and now I'm giving it to you, dear reader.

He is giving us back whole hearts.

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving
you are arriving. 

~ David Whyte ~