Things Hoped For

For those of us who do not jump into the Christmas season early and often, we began the season of Advent a week ago.  Yesterday was the second Sunday of Advent.  I believe that Advent is more important than ever.   The secular Christmas season is well under way in our society.  I haven’t been to a mall recently, but I imagine that Christmas carols are being played to encourage people to buy, buy and yes, buy more to honour the child that was born in a stable with a manger for a bed.  It is, all in all, the height of irony that Christmas bacchanalia has the world - at least the Western world - in its death grip.  Sorry – I am being rather over the top here.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t indulge in my annual Christmas/Advent rant, but I seem to have broken it – and it wasn’t even a New Years resolution.  There will be lots of opportunities to not live up to any New Year's resolutions that I might rashly make in about a month’s time.

Back to Advent which is supposed to be the topic of today’s rant, sorry, – reflection.  In the worship service I was part of yesterday, we celebrated the Second Sunday of Advent.   We had the ritual of the lighting of the first and second of four Advent candles on the Advent Wreath.  Each of the four candles represent a theme, or value, or virtue which we can reflect on during Advent in our preparation for the coming (the advent) of the Christ Child.  There can be some variation in the themes but generally they are, Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.  The order may vary but we lit the first candle representing Hope and yesterday, Peace.  Peace is what many people associate with Jesus as he is often named the Prince of Peace, so, let me reflect on Hope. 

Hope, generally, means a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.  We can hope for many different things.  If you reflect on what you may have hoped for in the past or what you hope for today, what things would they be?  I can think of times when I hoped for fame, fortune, happiness and generally the fulfillment of what I happened to desire.  This could vary greatly depending on my circumstances.  However, they were usually focused on what I thought would fulfill my life.  There was an element of being like the kind of person I admired at that time. 

If I examine what I hope for these days, what comes to mind is things like good health and happiness for me and for my loved ones.  , I also think of hope that our leaders will be wise and bring a sense of right purpose to the decision they make – although, with the re-election of Donald Trump as President of the United States at times that seems like a very faint hope.  However, if I turn my thoughts to more spiritual things which does seem appropriate when we consider Advent, there are many possibilities of what we can hope for.  One source noted that in the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised, and its strength is in His faithfulness. Turning to one of the sources I depend on, Richard Rohr writes, “Hope, it seems to me, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. The ego needs success to thrive; the soul needs only meaning.” (Daily Meditation December 3, 2014)

On reflection, much of what I have hoped for in my life have been ego driven.  The ego does not want to have to suffer, even when the suffering will bring us to a better place – which is not true of all suffering.  What doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger.  But we can (appropriately) hope that we will be able to see that God is with us even, or especially in our suffering.  We can hope for soul work in our lives that will open us more fully to God.  That is something to be devoutly hoped for.

Blessings on your Advent journey.

 

Yes Virginia, It's Still Christmas

                              

This is my reflection on Christmas which I delivered at the church service yesterday: 

Merry Christmas!  I am sure that none of you were surprized that I wished you a Merry Christmas.  We are in the middle of the season of  Christmas in the church year, celebrating the first Sunday after Christmas. However, many people who are unfamiliar with this season of Christmas in the church year would be surprized and perhaps puzzled that we were doing so.  They might look on such a greeting as something given by someone who has been out of touch for the past week – perhaps being a week late in giving such a greeting.

 

We are living in a time in which there are two types of Christmases – well, there are probably many, but I want to talk about the two approaches to celebrating Christmas in our culture.  We have the religious celebration which we are taking part in today.  The other celebration of Christmas is what I call the secular Christmas.  This Christmas has many ways of identifying it which I am sure you are familiar with.  The celebration of the secular Christmas begins in the fall.  It is marked by Christmas carols being played in malls and stores and even in social media.  We have adds featuring that saint of the secular Christmas, Santa Claus, encouraging us to buy, buy, buy the perfect gift for our loved ones.  It is, in effect, a celebration of materialism.  The secular Christmas is about spending money which we can’t really afford to give gifts, gifts, gifts in the spirit of that Christmas.    Santa Claus is, as I say, the saint of this Christmas – but it is a secular saint.  Now, this saint is based on a true saint – St. Nicholas. Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, unmarried people, and students in various cities and countries around Europe.

His reputation evolved among the pious, as was common for early Christian saints, and his legendary habit of secret gift-giving gave rise to the modern model of Santa Claus.  However, our modern image of Santa Claus – that jolly, fat man in a red fur lined suite, smoking a pipe is, appropriately, based more on a commercial – a commercial for the coca cola company.  After all, who wouldn’t want a nice cold coke after a hectic day of buying presents for loved ones and friends and even our bosses.  There is some magic connected with Santa Claus.  He is able to appear in many places at once – indeed in countless department stores and other such places where the focus is on buying things.  He appears in these venues after the many parades in his honour in countless cities and towns.  These are the official start of the secular Christmas season and they occur even before the beginning of Advent in the sacred calendar. 

 

Another symbol of the secular Christmas is the Christmas Tree.  Now this symbol is shared with the sacred Christmas.  But you can tell the difference because it often appears early in conjunction with the beginning of the secular Christmas and often you can see them put out for collection of Boxing Day.  Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, is usually credited with having introduced the Christmas tree into England in 1840. However, it was actually 'good Queen Charlotte', the German wife of George III, who set up the first known tree at Queen's Lodge, Windsor, in December 1800. 

 

So, what about the other Christmas – the sacred one?  What are the elements that make up this Christmas and make it different from the secular one?  If you are a purist and want to observe a traditional holy Christmas there are a number of things you should and shouldn’t do. 

 

This Christmas actually begins on Christmas Eve – the evening of December 24^th.  You don’t begin singing Christmas Carols until Christmas Eve to welcome the birth of the Christ Child.  Christmas trees shouldn’t actually be in place and decorated before that.  The Christ Child and not Santa Claus is the centre and focus of this Christmas.  Rather than a frenzy of gift buying, we have the season of Advent in which we prepare for the birth of the Christ Child on Christmas Day – it is the mass of Christ – the birth of Christ. 

 

The sacred Christmas lasts for – can you guess – twelve days.  From Christmas Day until Epiphany with the arrival of the Wise Men.  Epiphany has its own season in the church year.  Many people - even those who celebrate only the secular Christmas, are familiar with the twelve days of Christmas because of the playful carol by that name.   Today is the seventh day of Christmas – so you could be giving your true love – any guesses?  You can give them seven swans a swimming.  (sing the song back to the first day). 

 

Now, a gift of seven swans and many of the other gifts in that song are completely impractical.  I certainly don’t know what I would do with seven swans if my true love Lorna gave them to me.  I might appreciate five gold rings but what could I do with ten lords a leaping or eight maids a milking – I don’t own even one cow.  

 

 As with the song, trying to strictly follow a sacred Christmas is impractical and unrealistic and I am not suggesting that you try to do it.  As much as I appreciate the celebration of the sacred Christmas, I certainly embrace some things of the secular one.  I enjoy singing carols and enjoyed the service of Lessons and Carols we had here two weeks ago. 

I am glad to exchange gifts with Lorna on Christmas morning and many of the other things that we Christians share with the secular Christmas.  I believe that we should enjoy all of Christmas – both Christmases - but in doing so we should not lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas – the birth of the Christ Child – Jesus Christ was born – on Christmas Day - which historically was not December 25^th -but Christians have always been incorporating non-Christian times and symbols in our celebration.  Let us continue to do that but not forget the reason for the season – to use a cliché.  Love came down at Christmas and we Christians are called to share that love – the Love of Jesus Christ with the world.  Amen  

Happy New Year and to all a good year. 

Advent 4 Loving Yourself; Giving Yourself

The qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving, are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  I am exploring these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  I believe that we need to love ourselves before we can truly love others.   In Advent 1, I explored caring for yourself.  In Advent 2, I explored knowing yourself.  Advent 3, I explored respecting yourself. Today I will explore giving to yourself.

Gifts come in all sizes and types to Forward Movement–from stocks and bequests to stamps purchased from the prison commissary. One donor sends us wrinkled dollar bills, never amounting to more than $5, with a return address from a residential healthcare facility. These gifts usually come with a note of thanksgiving, reminding me that generosity often comes from a deep well of gratitude. We give the gifts first given us out of joy, appreciation, and an understanding that nothing we have in this life comes of our own merit.  God has blessed us with garlands and gladness to share with the world.  -Lindsay Barrett-Adler

When we think of gift giving at Christmas, we can think of the materialism that has become the hallmark of the cultural Christmas.  I often wonder what the wise men, I sometimes blame for the frenzy of materialism that seems to overtake the Western World, would think if they could see the world today.  The above quote gives an alternate approach to gift giving which is more closely related to the actions of the wise men.  They are more related to the widow giving her mite, whom Jesus held up as an example.  However, what does it mean to give to yourself, which is the topic for today's part of the Advent journey?

 Giving to yourself seems to be a strange thing to do for Christmas.  We give gifts to others.  To give a gift to yourself seems to be selfish, doesn’t it.  Definitely not in the spirit of Christmas.  But if we ask ourselves what it is that we truly need for ourselves what would we say in response?  I know I do not need more things.   I do not need a roof over my head or more food, despite the high cost.  There are many people in Canada, much less the world, who do need these things.  I feed my body quite adequately (and sometimes more) in a very comfortable home.  However, what I do need is to feed my soul.  Despite my good intentions, I don’t always spend time with the divine in my life.  The divine is the manifestation of God as I experience it.  I do spend time in prayer and meditation.  However, that seems to be the thing that I forgo when life gets in the way. 

Like the little Shepherd Boy, I ask what can I give him, poor as I am - perhaps rich in many ways but not poor enough in spirit?  I can give my heart.  That is giving what I need to give myself.

As Advent draws to a close may you have been blessed and may you continue to be blessed in giving yourself what you truly need. 

Preparing for Advent

 We are about to begin the season of the church year which seems to be overwhelmed by secularism i.e. the Secular Christmas.  That would be the season of Advent which is a time to prepare for the coming of the Christ Child.  Christmas seems to be in full swing now with Christmas carols playing in the stores and Santa Claus parades in every corner of the land. 

I am proposing something which is probably way out in left field (to use a secular metaphor).  I am proposing that we spend a bit of time preparing for Advent.  In case you are wondering, Advent begins this coming Sunday.  We will be lighting the first candle in the Advent Wreath.  I also hope we will be singing some Advent carols – yes there are actually Advent carols such as O Come O Come Emanuel; or, Lo How a Rose E’er Blooming.   

So, what does it mean to prepare for the season of preparation?  The first thing is to understand, as best we can, what Christmas is actually about.   For me this is best summed up by the carol, Love Came Down at Christmas by Christina Rossetti.  Here are the lyrics:

1. Love came down at Christmas,
   Love all lovely, Love divine;
   Love was born at Christmas,
   Star and angels gave the sign.
2. Worship we the Godhead,
   Love incarnate, Love divine;
   Worship we our Jesus:
   But wherewith for sacred sign?
3. Love shall be our token,
   Love be yours and love be mine,
   Love to God and all men,
   Love for plea and gift and sign.

Here is the link for a beautiful reedition of the carol, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UodfFV3A3M

You may be protesting that I am doing just what I object to – jumping over Advent directly to Christmas with this carol.  However, what I am trying to show is that the essence of Christmas is love.  To get ready to prepare for Christmas we must prepare to welcome love within us.  We cannot be ready to receive the love that is born in a stable in Bethlehem unless we begin to truly love ourselves.  That is easier said than done. 

How do we, then, begin to do that?  I received a missive from Kathleen Wiley, a wise person who spoke about the qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving. According to Wiley, Fromm states these are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  When I read this, I had not planned to connect this to Advent but that seems to be where the spirit has taken me this morning. 

What I would like to do is to explore each of these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  At this point, I am not sure what this idea will reveal as I have not tried to do this before.  So, I am very interested to see what this will reveal as I journey through Advent.  So, with this, I am preparing for the Advent season.  I hope you will join me.

Blessings  

 

 

 

Let Your Light Shine

The season of Advent is drawing to a close.  The great feast of Christmas draws nigh when we will again celebrate the birth of the Christ Child in a lowly stable in a small insignificant town more than two thousand years ago. 

One of the ways in which I join with other Christians to mark Advent is to light candles on the Advent wreath – four candles for the four Sundays of Advent which surround the white Christ Candle at the centre of the wreath which is lit on Christmas Day.  The light of these candles is most appropriate as it symbolizes the light that is coming into the world at Christmas – the darkness has been overcome as noted at the opening of the Gospel of John, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” 

There are many associations that we can draw upon when we think about candles beyond those on the Advent wreath.  Candles were used on the first Christmas trees when they were introduced to England by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  These were replaced by electric lights fortunately but I know of people who still use candles on Christmas trees which can be done safely if proper protocols are followed.  Of course, there are the candles on birthday cakes which increase in number every year and the birthday cakes if us Baby Boomers are becoming conflagrations. An opportunity to make a wish for the coming year. 

Candle lights still are a powerful symbol of lighting the way and, as it says in John’s Gospel, overcoming the darkness of this world.  There are many songs and hymns which have a theme of lights and candles.  Two of my favourites are, This Little Light of Mine, and Jesus Bids Us Shine which are both from my childhood.  Here’s the chorus for This Little Light of Mine:

This little light of mine - I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine - I’m gonna let it shine
This little light of mine - I’m gonna let it shine
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine

Perhaps the power of the song is the repetition of some simple lyrics.  It certainly is easy to remember and has a message that is hard to miss.  Here’s a link to the song on YouTube to brighten your day, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCN893hzueQ.

The other favourite of mine as I noted is Jesus Bids Us Shine.  Here are the lyrics for the first verse.

Jesus bids us shine with a clear, pure light,
Like a little candle burning in the night;
In this world of darkness, so we must shine,
You in your small corner, and I in mine.

I always think of this one as the introvert’s theme song.  In my most introverted I like to think of myself being able to let my light shine in my small corner where I am safe and sound.  It was knowingly or not the theme of my life growing up where I could be myself in my small corner and still let my little light shine.  I sometimes still like to retreat to my small corner and recharge my batteries – true introvert that I am.

In any case I hope you will let your little light shine in the darkness of this world and remember it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.  May you be Blessed this joyous Christmas time.

  

It’s Not Christmas Yet

Are you tired of Christmas yet? The Santa Claus Parades are over.  I haven’t been in a mall for some time but I’m sure that Christmas music has been playing for quite some time now.  Outside Christmas decorations have sprouted up around her and I’m sure in your neighbourhood.  Christmas adds have been playing on TV and social media - I think the earliest one I saw this year weas right after Thanksgiving (which for the non-Canadian readers is the second Monday in October – not November).

 

I know it is pretty much a lost cause but it calls out for an establishment of a secular Advent just as there is now a firmly entrenched secular Christmas season.  Advent is a time of preparation for Christmas which, believe it or not, does not end on midnight on December 25^th.  The Christmas season in the church year goes from December 25^th to Epiphany when the Wise Men (they were not kings) arrive at the stable in Bethlehem to worship the new born King of the Jews.

 

It is a time of preparation for Christmas.  Here is a reflection on preparation form the Society of St. John the Evangelist:

 

Preparation

Gazing not at Christ’s first coming in our midst, but straining toward the horizon for his second coming, we enter into this season of preparation. But Advent preparation is not just about planning a party towards the end of December. The expectant waiting and preparation of Advent is time to do the soul’s work of conditioning for ultimate things, because eternity is on the horizon. Br. Todd Blackham, SSJE

 

To help you prepare one good way is to listen to an Advent Carol rather than a Christmas carol.  Here is one of my favourites with a link: O Come O Come Emmanuel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xtpJ4Q_Q-4.

 

May you have a blessed Advent on your journey to Christmas.

I acknowledge that we are on Turtle Island, the original homelands of the many Indigenous Nations who have lived since time immemorial in Canada or as many First and other Indigenous Nations
All of the lands in Canada are the subject of up to one hundred Treaties signed by the Crown in the right of Canada with these Nations.  I will only mention a few of the Nations: the Cree, Ojibway, Blackfoot, Blood, Dakota, Mig M'ag, Huron, Inuit and these lands are also home to the Metis people.

Advent 1: Hope Reconsidered

Last Sunday was the first Sunday in Advent.  Yes, this is the season of the church year which prepares for Christmas and does not actually jump right into the secular Christmas season after Thanksgiving- the American, or worse yet, the Canadian.  That mini-rant aside, we lit the first Advent Candle on the Advent wreath which is the candle for Hope. 

Hope seems to be something that we can always use more of – particularly in these times when we begin to see the light at the end of the COVID tunnel and another variant raises its ugly head and throws up more tunnel.  This time, it is the Omicron Variant which looms large in the COVID scene with possible threats of being more transmissible and perhaps being vaccine resistant.  But we live in hope that all will be well and all manner of things will be well in God’s time if not ours.

However, is there perhaps a less positive aspect to hope?  I am a strong believer that in most things there is a negative as well as a positive.  So, is there an aspect of hope that we should reconsider and not embrace fully - an aspect of hope that is not what God intends?  I was led to this cautionary thought when I tuned into an episode of On Being on National Public Radio in the United States.  The episode is entitled the Future of Hope https://onbeing.org/programs/pico-iyer-and-elizabeth-gilbert-the-future-of-hope-3/. 

The program is a wonderful exploration of the possibilities of hope – both positive and negative.  The thing that resonated with me the most listening to the program, was that living in hope can lead us to not living in the present.  The example that was used in the program was the experience of the interviewee, Elizabeth Gilbert, who was not as fully present to her loved one who was dying.  Rather than being fully present she was living in hope for a miraculous healing.  This idea was summed up in a poem by T S Eliot which was quoted by Gilbert:

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So, the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”  ― T.S. Eliot

This does not mean that we give up on hope.  I believe that we do still need to live in hope.  The challenge for me is to hope for the right thing.  In Advent we live in the hope that the Prince of Peace will be born in us and to the world.  We can hope for peace by doing things small and large to bring peace rather than hate into our lives and the lives of those around us.  And we will live in the knowledge that in  the words of Julien of Norwich, “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

May you be blessed this Advent to have hope for the right things on your journey.

Peace on Earth and Shalom

 As Advent draws to a close, we anticipate the birth of the Prince of Peace.  I discovered recently that the wonderful Jewish word for peace – shalom, doesn’t actually mean peace or, rather, It means much more than just peace.  I received a great video from Rev. Sherry DeJonge which expounded on the meaning of shalom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLYORLZOaZE.  The video goes into great length concerning the meaning and application of shalom. 

In effect, shalom means wholeness or completeness and so it encompasses the concept of peace in a much broader way than the mere cessation of fighting.  I have embraced the idea of wholeness for many years as an ideal, particularly as something which we can aspire to rather than perfection.  I have been troubled by the scriptural passages that promotes the idea of perfection particularly the passage in which Jesus says “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)  I have thought that perfection is something that no one can achieve and is beyond human possibility.

Now, many of the commandments which Jesus gives us seem almost impossible such as love your enemies.  However, they may be a true challenge but are not beyond the realm of possibility as I believe that some exceptional people such as Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi have achieved that blessed state.  However, they were not perfect.  There is also the troubling trend in some circles recently that no one should be honoured unless they are judged to be perfect, or, rather, they are without sin in the judgement of those groups.  The example of Sir John A. MacDonald comes to mind and has fallen out of favour despite being the founding father of this nation because of his treatment of the first nations people.  Similarly, I read a report that Abraham Lincoln has fallen from grace for a similar sin despite his accomplishment of holding the United States together and bringing emancipation to those millions who were enslaved. 

That passage from Matthew was redeemed for me when I read a proposition that a better translation of the Matthew 5: 48 was be all-embracing rather than be perfect.  All-embracing can be seen as another way of understanding wholeness.  As we look to the celebration of the Prince of Peace, I would invite you to not worry about being perfect (even if you were considering that) and consider what it means for you to be all-embracing of life and of others.  That, indeed, is a challenge but it is something we can strive for and it is okay if we don’t manage it – we can keep on trying because we don’t have to be perfect or even try.

Blessing on your journey to worship the Christ Child who is born in the lowly stable in Bethlehem.

Hope Shall Come Again

 For those who celebrate the season of Advent, you will know that last Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.  We began the preparation for Christmas and the coming of the Christ child and all that entails, by lighting the first candle on the advent wreath.  Advent is also the celebration of the hope for the second coming of Jesus Christ the King.

The lighting of the Advent Candle is one of the ways which we can observe the season and not jump right into the celebration of Christmas which seems to be earlier every year.  There is also the tradition of the Advent Calendar which count down the days until the wonderful event when the baby Jesus arrives in the stable and is placed in a lowly manger in that small insignificant town in an insignificant country occupied by the most powerful country in the world. 

Lorna and I participated yesterday in another wonderful Advent tradition and a tuned into the service of Advent Lessons and Carols at St. Thomas’s Anglican Church in Toronto.  This lived up to our high expectations under difficult circumstances with only a quartet rather than a full choir and liturgist who acquitted themselves admirably. 

The advent wreath is comprised of four candles, one for each of the four Sundays in Advent. Each candle represents a symbol of what is represented by the coming of the Christ Child; Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.  Sunday, we lit the candle representing Hope.  We livein a world that has always need of hope; this year more so than ever. Reflecting on hope, I am reminded of the Greek myth of Pandora’s box.  Here is a summary from an on-line source as a reminder of the myth:

Pandora was the first mortal woman in Greek mythology, a sort of an Ancient Greek Eve. Following the instructions of Zeus – who wanted to punish Prometheus for stealing the fire from the gods and giving it to the humans – she was molded by Hephaestus and endowed with gifts by all the other Olympian gods. One of these gifts was a jar full of all the evils and diseases which exist in the world. One day – out of curiosity and not out of malice – Pandora lifted the lid of the jar, thus instantaneously releasing all evils and diseases into the world. Shocked by what had happened, she quickly tried to put the lid back, managing to merely trap Hope inside it. That is why Hope is the last thing that dies in man: even though deceitful from time to time, it is the only consolation humans have for all the troubles Pandora let loose on the world. The event of their release marks the end of the trouble-free Golden Age of Man, and the beginning of the Silver Age, the second of the five Ages of Man. https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Pandora/pandora.html

Hope, it seems, has been around for a very long time.  It was not invented by Christians but was recognized as one of those characteristics essential to human nature and encapsulates what is possible in for humanity as we look to a world in which God’s kingdom will be established here in this world in the second coming.  That hope is made manifest by the birth of the Christ Child – not in a castle as the prince of a world-ruling empire but of a very different kingdom based on love.

In your journey to what will be a very different Christmas for many of us, be assured that we have the Hope of a world which is different than what we have now – a world beyond COVID isolation.

Blessings on your Advent journey in preparation for the coming of the Prince of Peace.

P.S. Thanks to Lorna for the reminder that Advent is also about the second coming. 

 

Dreams, God’s Forgotten Language

                                                                         

Jacob’s Dream

Many of you will know that I hold dreams to be very important in my life and as a phenomenon which is universal in people’s experience.  To be clear, I am speaking of dreams which people experience in their sleep and not the hopes that people might have for their lives – although night dreams can express that aspect of people’s lives.

In this modern age, particularly in the scientific age, dreams have not been given much credence.  They were and often are dismissed as being a mechanical process which, at best, was a way for the brain to process and clear out the detritus of the previous days’ activity.  Historically, however, this was not the case.  Dreams were understood to be a way in which God, or gods, or demons communicated with people.  Indeed, dreams play a significant role for Christians and Jews in the way that God communicated with people of the Bible as the shown by the illustration of Jacob’s dream above. 

We Christians are about to enter the season of Advent which is the preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Christ child.  The Christmas story is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the role that dreams as messages from God to the Holy family - from the annunciation to the dubious Mary that she would bear the son the God and the announcement of that miracle to her shocked husband to be.  There were many other divine dreams such the warning to the wise men not to return to the tell the despicable king Herod of the birth.  That is just a taste of the riches of the Christmas story from the perspective of how dreams are used to communicate divine messages to people.

One of the challenges which we face today is to understand how God is speaking to us in dreams.  Modern people, for the most part, now longer understand what God is telling us in our dreams.  In effect, we no longer know the language of dreams.  I have been involved, for many years, in helping people understand how to do this through the insights and inspiration of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist.  Along with my wife Lorna and others we will be offering an introduction in how to work with our dreams to understand them as a way in which God speaks to us.  We will be holding a workshop at the end of this coming January.  It will be offered via Zoom which has the challenge of new (to us) technology but also the advantage that it can be accessed regardless of the participants’ location.  The information of the workshop is provided below.

Dreams:  God’s Forgotten Language

      Friday Jan 29, 2021 (7:30 pm – 9:00 pm)  

                  Saturday Jan 30, 2021 (9:30 am – 4:30 pm)

Cost $40

Join us on Zoom and explore the language of dreams.

This workshop will offer opportunities to an approach to understanding our dreams as one of the ways that God speaks to us.  Within a Christian context, participants will learn about dream interpretation using the concepts of Carl Jung and have opportunities to explore their own dreams as well as working with the dreams of others in a group context. 

This workshop will offer opportunities for those who are new to Jung’s approach to working with dreams as well as those who are familiar with the concepts and practice of Jungian dream work.

Tickets and information ― https://dreamworkcanada.squarespace.com/

Things Hoped For

For those of us who do not jump into the Christmas season early and often, we began the season of Advent yesterday.  Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent.  I believe that Advent is more important than ever.   The secular Christmas season is well under way in our society.  I haven’t been to a mall recently but I imagine that Christmas carols are being played to encourage people to buy, buy and yes, buy more to honour the child that was born in a stable with a manger for a bed.  It is, all in all, the height of irony that Christmas bacchanalia has the world - at least the Western world in its death grip.  Sorry – I am being rather over the top here.  I promised myself that I wouldn’t indulge in my annual Christmas/Advent rant but I seem to have broken it – and it wasn’t even a New Years resolution.  There will be lots of opportunity to not live up to any New Years resolutions that I might rashly make in about a month’s time.

Back to Advent which is supposed to be the topic of today’s – rant, sorry – reflection.  In both worship services I was part of yesterday, we celebrated the First Sunday of Advent.   We had the ritual of the lighting of the first Advent candle on the Advent Wreath.  Each of the four candles represent a theme, or value, or virtue which we can reflect on during Advent in our preparation for the coming (advent) of the Christ Child.  There can be some variation in the themes but generally they are, Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love.  The order may vary but we lit the first candle representing Hope.  So, let’s turn our attention to Hope.

Hope generally means a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.  We can hope for many different things.  If you reflect on what you may have hoped for in the past or what you hope for today, what things would they be?  I can think of times when I hoped for fame, fortune, happiness and generally the fulfillment of what I happened to desire.  This could vary greatly depending on my circumstances.  However, they were usually focussed on what I thought would fulfill my life.  There was an element of being like the kind of person I admired at that time. 

If I examine what I hope for these days, what comes to mind is things like good health and happiness for me and for my loved ones.  I also think of hope that our leaders will be wise and bring a sensed of right purpose to the decision they make – although at times that seems like a very faint hope.  However, if I turn my thoughts to more spiritual things which does seem appropriate when we consider Advent, there are many possibilities of what we can hope for.  One source noted that in the Bible, hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness. Turning to one of the sources I depend on, Richard Rohr writes:

Hope, it seems to me, is the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. The ego needs success to thrive; the soul needs only meaning. (Daily Meditation December 3, 2014)

On reflection, much of what I have hoped for in my life have been ego driven.  The ego does not want to have to suffer, even when the suffering will bring us to a better place – which is not true of all suffering.  What doesn’t kill us does not necessarily make us stronger.  But we can (appropriately) hope that we will be able to see that God is with us even, or especially in our suffering.  We can hope for soul work in our lives that will open us more fully to God.  That is something to be devoutly hoped for.

Blessings on your Advent journey.

The Divine Child Born in Us

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel

Merry eighth day of Christmas―I trust the maids are milking and the cattle are lowing.  As you can see my thoughts are still on Christmas being a traditionalist when it comes to that season of the church year.  It is a time to enjoy the Christmas decorations and sing the Christmas carols.

Advent was a time of kenosis, of emptying as I wrote two weeks ago, in preparation for the coming of the Christ Child.  Now the Holy Child of Bethlehem has been born in us once again.  How are we to respond to that gift and live in this world on sin?  How are we to cast out our sin and allow Jesus to enter dwell in us today?

What does it mean that the Christ Child was born in a lowly stable amongst the animals and was laid in a manger? What does it mean that there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the Inn?    I believe that many of us do not recognize that if the Christ Child is truly born in us today, it will be in the places where we don’t expect it and where we don’t recognize it or even want to acknowledge within us.

Don’t expect much from the Christ Child what you will receive―at least at this point.  After all every new baby must be given a great deal.  It is truly in our care and need to be nurtured and loved.  Even though we do not receive much directly we find that love is reborn in us when a child is born to us.  This is as true of the Christ Child as it is with any ordinary baby.  Of course there is no such ting as an ordinary baby; in the eyes of its parents and others each one is a reflection of the God being born in us.

To love and nurture this divine child which is born in us we must nurture those places in which it is born.  We must nurture those places which are not proper for an infant to reside; the stables amongst the animals with the less than nice smells.  These are the places which do not please our egos and those places in us that we find less than acceptable.  There is often no room in the places which are near and dear to us such as the comforts and gratification which we seek and desire so desperately.

However, it is into these lowly places, these stable places, that the divine child is born and offers us an opportunity to love and nurture what we would otherwise neglect, or ignore, or even despise.  These are the places in which the Christ Child comes to us and abides in us and invites us to nurture and embrace.

God bless us everyone; O yes and a Happy New Year,

The Dark Side of Christmas

We are in Advent and the proper celebration of Advent as preparation for Christmas is one of my hot buttons.  However, I want to talk about Christmas this week and acknowledging there is a dark side to the wonderful light that came into the world in that stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.  Perhaps I can resolve this apparent dissonance by proposing that we need to recognize the darkness is an appropriate way of preparing for the light of Christ.

Two events recently prompted me to consider the darkness that is part of the Christmas message.  First, I was invited to be the guest musician (guitarist) for my former congregation, St. James Anglican Church in Parkhill for the community Christmas concert which was held December 1^st.  One of the pieces I chose for our congregational choir was The Coventry Carol.  I chose it in part because it is a beautiful carol that I have long loved to sing.  Also, it was one that I could manage to play on the guitar―an important consideration I have discovered in my not entirely brilliant career playing church music on guitar.

One of the things that I did not consider when choosing it is the nature of the carol.  For those of you who are not familiar with it here are the lyrics:

Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child.   By by, lully, lullay,

O sisters too, how may we do
For to preserve this day
This poor youngling
For whom we sing
By by, lully lullay?

Herod, the king
In his raging
Charged he hath this day
His men of might
In his own sight,
All young children to slay

That woe is me
Poor child for thee!
And ever morn and day,
For thy parting
Neither say nor sing
By by, lully lullay!

The carol tells the account of the ‘slaughter of the innocents’ ordered by King Herod after he was informed by the Three Wise Men that they were seeking the birth place of the new king of the Jews.  Herod, of course, saw this as a threat to his throne and acted in a completely understandable way for a despot and tried his best to eliminate any possibility of a usurper to his power. 

Of course, we know that he didn’t succeed as Joseph, the Christ child’s step father was warned in a dream of Herod’s intent and the Holy Family fled to Egypt following the biblical precedent of the first Joseph going to that land.  However, that did not prevent the carrying out of King Herod’s proclamation; “he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger.”

This is a very dark act and a very dark time of the families who did not receive the warning from God or, if they did, decided not to pay attention to the warning. 

The other impetus to this exploration of darkness that I received was watching the wonderful version of the Christmas Carol staring Alistair Sim as Scrooge.  It was presented on Turner Classic Movies a few nights ago.  It is, to my mind the quintessential movie version of the Dickens classic.  No one has portrayed Scrooge better before and I doubt ever will.  In the introduction, the host noted that the release was held up because of the dark nature of the film.  As noted in Wikipedia, “the film was originally slated to be shown at New York City's Radio City Music Hall as part of their Christmas attraction it was determined that the film was too grim and somber and did not possess enough family entertainment value to warrant an engagement at the Music Hall.”

There is no doubt that the film version and the original story is rather grim and paints a dark side of human kind, at least in Victorian England which Dickens was a genius at portraying.  The ghost of Christmas future is not warm and friendly by any means. 

It is, I believe, important that we do not sentimentalize Christmas as it is so easy to do.  This is particularly true of what I call the cultural Christmas which is all around us with Christmas songs (I won’t call them carols) being played in the malls and the gifts of the Wise Men being transformed into a frenzy of materialism (I guess I am channeling a bit of Scrooge’s bah humbug here).

However, let me close with a quote from the wonderful Good News of the Gospel of John which is the Gospel of the light that came into the world at Christmas:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

I hope that the light of the Christ will shine for you in the darkness of this world.  Let us remember this Christmas that it is a time to be Merry but also that the forces of darkness are still very much in and of this world.

A blessed and merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Being Truly Humble

I have been pondering what it means to be truly humble as part of my preparation for Christmas this Advent.  I like to think of myself as a fairly humble person but being humble is something I have not been all that successful at it I am being honest with myself.  One of my favourite quotes about humbleness is from Helen Luke, “to be humble is to see things clearly.”   When we see ourselves clearly we will be humbled by what we see—our warts and imperfections; our shadow; our desire to be perfect despite our imperfections.  As we approach Christmas and the incarnation of God among us we are given a wonderful example of humility. 

The birth of Jesus—in lowly estate, in a stable, among animals—does not happen by chance; nothing in the birth narrative does. In the terms of Carl Jung, Jesus, as the archetype of the divine child, is the incarnation of the Self—the God image. Edward Edinger explores the significance of this happening among animals in their abode:

Birth among animals signifies that the coming of the Self is an instinctual process, a part of living nature rooted in the biology of our being. As Jung told a patient, an experience of the transpersonal Self, if it is not to cause inflation, “needs a great humility to counterbalance it. You need to go down to a level of the mice.”

As Edinger proposes, Jesus’s birth is a balance between the humble and the grand. The stable has two sets of visitors who come to worship the new king of the Jews at the call of the divine. There are the humble shepherds—who were the lowliest of the low in those times—and the wise men, or magi, from the east, who are also transformed into kings by the later mythologizing. 

It is very easy for us to not see ourselves clearly.  In fact it seems natural for that to occur and it take a great deal of effort to begin to see ourselves as we truly are which is how God sees us.  God chose to humble himself and become one of us—not as prince born is a palace but he chose to be born in the lowliest of estates.  I hope that each of us will be able to see the Christ child and see ourselves more clearly this Christmas.