Journal of Sacred Work

And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake. – Mark 13:37

    Jesus has just left the temple when one of his disciples commented on the majesty and size of the buildings. Jesus dismissed the instability of mere buildings as compared with the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Later, Jesus spoke of the necessity for watchfulness. "Keep awake," he said, warning us to watch for the holy spirit. The Son of Man will appear and we must always be ready. At the beginning of the first millennium, it was the watchfulness of the Magi that led them to discover Jesus’ birth.
   Advent was always a happy time in my wife’s childhood home and she made sure that was a joyful time as well for our children when they were young. Our son and daughter relished the experience of rising each morning to open one of the cardboard windows on the Advent calendar with its images heralding this season of joy (click on photo to enlarge). Now, our son continues the tradition of exitement and hope by introducing the Advent calendar experience to his little son…

   On the first Sunday in Advent, Christians are called again to notice
the meaning of the word that describes the birth of the Church Year.
Advent means "coming" or "arrival." Lest we take this too literally, we
are asked to watch for the presence of the divine as it
appears around us in so many
different ways.
   As care givers, do we see the divine both around us and within us? I refer, now, not to the things we typically think of as beautiful – the gifts of nature, the pretty pictures of snow and evergreens and the sprouting of Christmas lights – but to the divine that lives in the souls that suffer today.
   Millions of elderly Americans will spend this day within the walls of one of America’s nursing homes. Will we see past wrinkled skin to the many lives each elderly person has lived? Beneath the thin voice of age, will we hear the rich voice of the divine spark of their life?
   For many that live in America’s hospices, this may be their last Christmas. Can we cross over our own sadness at this thought in order to be present to them?

   For those who are homeless, will be reach out to recognize them as children of God? And will we do the same for those who will spend this season behind bars? Are our hearts open to them as well?
   For many, purple is the color of Advent. It is the color of royalty and it is also the color of Jesus’ suffering. Are we awake to the color of pain around us and within us?
   My colleague, Gary Vacca, Executive Director of The Foundation for Spiritual Living (www.spiritualliving.net) writes that we need to "rise up in consciousness above ordinary thinking. Awake to a higher leverl of knowing." He describes this as a kind of spiritual consciousness. We will all live richer lives if we cultivate the consciousness Gary describes.
   I think of spiritual consciousness (with a small "s") as something we discern with our sacred eyes, not with our physical ones. In fact, sometimes, we can best discover this consciousness by closing our eyes. It is then that we can more easely step back from the noise of the world to contemplate our personal relationship with God’s Love.
   Our physical eyes bring information from the world without. Our sacred eyes bring us word of the world within.
   Across this day, find time to close your physical eyes so that you may open your sacred ones.
   This is a time of great expectation, celebration and joy. Contrary to many of the messages on your television screen, this joy is not to be found in any shopping mall or department store. It lives, instead, in the way our eyes and hands and hearts reach out to meet the needs of others. And it lives in the rich garden that grows within our soul.

-Erie Chapman

Today’s Poem: Rilke on Advent (the only translation from the German that I could find is by Mark Finnern)

Advent
(from Rainer Maria Rilke)

The wind blows in the winter forest
a herd of flakes like a herdsman

and some fir anticipate that soon
she will be godly and holy
lighted;
and listens into the far.
She stretches her twigs
towards
the white roads – ready
and fights the wind and grows towards
the one
night of holiness/glory.