Category: Uncategorized

By The Rev. Connie Yost 

The Birth of Jesus Foretold – Luke 1:26-35

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.” ²⁹ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 

Advent is traditionally a time of waiting, as Mary waited for her baby Jesus to be born.  For me, it is also a time of quiet reflection as my energy lessens as the darkness comes earlier in the day, and lasts longer.

This Advent season finds many of us tired, and fearful of the future.  For some of us, it feels as though we are waiting for the other shoe to drop, for more bad news that comes in a daily onslaught.  For those of us who care about our immigrant friends, it is heartbreaking to hear of their fear of being detained and deported, of families breaking apart, of jobs lost and poverty worsening, of children being abandoned and entire communities on high alert.

As President of Farm Worker Ministry Northwest, I serve on the Board of National Farm Worker Ministry.  We educate and organize the faith community and others of moral conscience to advocate and support farm workers as they seek to better their lives.  Sadly, farm workers face a multitude of intersecting evils including poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, racism, climate change exposure to heat and smoke, wage theft, exposure to pesticides, child labor, gender discrimination and sexual harassment, substandard housing—in addition to immigration problems.  For almost 90 years now, farm workers have been left out of the federal protections of the National Labor Relations Act which forbids employers from firing a worker for joining, organizing or supporting a labor union.  Very few farm workers belong to a labor union.  Some work on farms that have been certified through the Fair Food Program or the Equitable Food Initiative which gives farm workers safer and more equitable working conditions.  But the vast majority of farm workers work with no labor law protections.

Most farm workers today are immigrants from Mexico or other parts of Latin America, and at least half are undocumented.  Year after year federal legislation gets introduced to relieve some of the evils that farm workers face, but very little gets done.  And yet, these workers go to the fields and factories each day, doing jobs that no one else wants to do, working hard and toiling invisibly to give us our daily bread—truly essential workers.

We don’t know exactly what the future will bring, but we know that it will hard on our immigrant families.  We are waiting, fearful of the future, and like Mary we wonder “how can this be?”  But we also must remember the angel Gabriel telling Mary that “the Lord is with you.”  This is the time for us to come together in faith and hope and solidarity, letting all in our community know that they are not alone, and that we join them in their struggle.  This advent season is not the time for despair, but the time for preparation for the birth of something new-stronger communities which care about everyone, especially those who toil so hard for so little.

Let us make this Advent season a time of quiet reflection on our faith and our connection to God/Spirit/Love.  Let us pray for strength and guidance to do what we can for our neighbors.  And let us reach out in love and solidarity in ever-widening circles of care, right where we live.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.” -Melody Beattie from grateful.org

Peace Be With You. – Paul

From Joan Chittister: 

What star are you following now?  The function of Advent is to remind us what we’re waiting for as we go through life too busy with things that do not matter to remember the things that do. When year after year we hear the same scriptures and the same hymns of longing for the life to come, of which this one is only its shadow, it becomes impossible to forget the refrains of the soul.  Advent relieves us of our commitment to the frenetic in a fast-paced world. It slows us down. It makes us think. It makes us look beyond today to the “great tomorrow” of life. Without Advent, moved only by the race to nowhere that exhausts the world around us, we could be so frantic with trying to consume and control this life that we fail to develop within ourselves a taste for the spirit that does not die and will not slip through our fingers like melted snow.  It is while waiting for the coming of the reign of God, Advent after Advent, that we come to realize that its coming depends on us. What we do will either hasten or slow, sharpen or dim our own commitment to do our part to bring it.  Waiting—that cold period of life when nothing seems to be enough and something else beckons within us—is the grace that Advent comes to bring. It stands before us, within us, pointing to the star for which the wise ones from the East are only icons of ourselves.  We all want something more. Advent asks the question, what is it for which you are spending your life? What is the star you are following now? And where is that star in its present radiance in your life leading you? Is it a place that is really comprehensive enough to equal the breadth of the human soul?                —from The Liturgical Year by Joan Chittister (Thomas Nelson)

Peace Be With You. – Paul

From Howard Thurman:

“I will light candles this Christmas.

Candles of joy, despite all the sadness. 

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch. 

Candles of courage where fear is ever present.

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days. 

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens. 

Candles of love to inspire all of my living. 

Candles that will burn all the year long. “

Peace Be With You. – Paul

From Rev. Tweedy Sombrero Navarette:

May you never be subservient.

May you never fall prey to fitting in.

May you always swirl in all the directions the sacred winds want to take you.

May you never hush your laughter nor your tears.

May you breathe without restriction.

May you show up every single day to the calling that is you and may you always know the courage of your heart.  ~ Fig Ally

Image by Betty Albert

Peace Be With You. – Paul

From one of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott. 

@annelamott

All your better religions have a holy season as the days grow shorter, when we ask ourselves, Where is the hope of spring? Will it actually come again, break through the quagmire, the terror, the cluelessness? 

Probably not, is my first response this year, three weeks after the election, left to my own devices, but thank God I am not left to my own devices. I have faith in goodness, and that the light shines in the darkness, and nothing can overcome it, not even—well, I’m not going to name names.

Light and hope are the messages of both Advent and Hanukkah, distant but sure hope, light in very great darkness. I taught my bigger Sunday School kids about the Hanukkah miracle by having them imagine that in a scary situation, their cell phones had enough battery left for an hour, but it lasted eight days. All they had to do was keep the faith. I shared the great line from Rugrats, that a Macababy’s gotta do what a Macababy’s gotta do.

And what exactly is that?

We notice the darkness. There is no help or hope in pretending it doesn’t exist. They is called denial, delusion. We notice, and feel it. Then we light a few candles, and scatter some seeds. We remember that we only have to dread things one day at a time. Insight doesn’t help here. Hope is not logical. It always comes as a surprise, just when you think all hope is lost. 

Hope is the cousin to grief, and both take time: You can’t short-circuit grief, or emptiness and you can’t patch it up with your bicycle tire tube kit. You have to take the next right action, which is love, and giving. 

We live in darkness. Everyone knows this by the time they turn 21, or they’re seriously disturbed. 

For the last three weeks, my mind has perched on top of my head like a spider monkey on acid, and thought of more things that could go wrong, and whose fault those things would be. Poor old mind. It is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out, but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby, like macramé, but it prefers just to think about stuff, and jot down the things that annoy it.

The other problem continues to be what I think the light looks like. Moses led his people in circles for 40 years so they could get ready for the Promised Land, because they had too many ideas and preconceptions about what a nice Promised Land should look like.

In these cold, dark days, we have to sit in our own anxiety and funkiness long enough to know what a Promised Land would be like. It would definitely be outside my comfort zone, larger than us and our anxieties and ferocious need to control. It would be good old love, caring, generosity, a heart for each other’s suffering, regardless of party affiliation, the responsibility we take for others, the kindness, marbled into our shared histories like a flavor streaked through the batter of our prejudices, catastrophic thinking, character defects, hidden and on the surface. 

Things get badly broken–they always do–and children always yap and stamp and cry and glower, and demand all your attention. I know that *I* do. The brokenness and mess are called real life, and it’s cracked and fragile, but the glue for me is the beating of my heart, and love.

What if there really is no hope this time? What if the insanity had grown more intense than wisdom? Outside my window, the recently glorious leaves are beginning to fall off, and they looked dead. But Hanukkah and Advent and John Lennon insist that things will be OK eventually, more or less, that we are connected, and everyone–everyone–eventually falls into the hands of God. 

In the gospel of John, when the woman is about to be stoned for adultery, the Pharisees, the officially good people, were acting well within the law.. A huge crowd of people willing to kill her had joined them. The Greatest Hits moment here is when Jesus says, challenging the crowd, “Let ye who is without sin cast the first stone.” But what I focused on with my Sunday School kids was that Jesus starts doodling in the sand, refusing to interact with them on their level of hatred and madness. i love this, And all the people who were going to kill the woman slipped away.

I can guess how the condemned woman must have felt–surprised. She was supposed to die. Hope always catches us by surprise.

So now is the perfect time to doodle, to look away from the hatred and madness, to give as we are able, to plant bulbs and scatter seeds, in the hope that some of them will grow. We will rise up when we are stronger and less crazed. For now, we show up when we are needed, with grit and kindness; we try to help, we prepare for an end to the despair. 

And we do this together.

Peace Be With You. – Paul

In Advent, we show up when we are needed; we try to help, we prepare for an end to the despair. And we do this together. – Anne Lamott

Peace Be With You. – Paul

From Rev. Maren Tirabassi:

Prayer for Advent

God, as we gather into Advent,

let me embrace the Nativity

so that I can embrace

those near to me and far away,

for my own strength is not enough.

On every day of Advent,

let me light all four candles

of the Wreath,

(at least in my mind) and sit

with hope, peace, joy, and love,

just for a moment 

so I can respond

to what someone may need,

and to what I may need.

Let me sing a carol or two 

every day … not waiting 

for the human-dated holiday

so a sweet song, a soft one, 

or one bright as a bell,

come quick to my tongue.

Let me read the old texts often,

as friends, not lessons in candles,

reflect on each aspect

to face realities coming this year,

with calm, courage, trust,

and to recognize,

on the very personal level,

someone who’s life

has been upended by an angel …

someone who’s lost sight of a star …

sings about holy justice …

works through the night …

or is at the juncture

between shutting a door

or offering a manger. 

Center me in this Advent season,

so I expect Christmas 

to surprise me every day. amen

Peace Be With You. – Paul

This prayer is from our worship service at Mayfair Heights United Methodist Church, 

First Sunday of Advent – December 1, 2024

Prayer In The Stillness

Leader: I invite you to get in a comfortable position of rest.

I invite you to get as quiet and still as you can.

I invite you to a deep breath and a deep listening posture–perhaps eyes closed or fixed

on a candle–as we prepare for a time of prayer.

[pause for a breath]

The gentle pull of God is often lost amidst the rush 

of all the obligations which lay a claim on us.

Yet just beyond the frantic pace our restless feet have trod

lie deep still pools of quietness–the dwelling place of God.

Meet me in the stillness, Lord

Be the air I breathe

Meet me in the stillness, Lord

Free me to receive

O take me to that secret place where lost in wonder and in awe,

the moment comes and I rejoice to be and be with God.

Meet me in the stillness, Lord

Be the air I breathe

Meet me in the stillness, Lord

Free me to receive

In the midst of the stillness, bring our hearts into your presence.  We lift up all who are in need this day.  May your love, your hope, your light, your care, be upon them.  

And upon us as well. Amen. 

Peace Be With You. – Paul

Good night friends and neighbors, as we prepare for the night let us pray together … 

Renew me this night in the image of Your love. Renew me in the likeness of Your mercy, O God. 

May any bitterness of the soul be softened by Your graces of the night.  Amen

~ Celtic Benediction, J. Philip Newell

Peace Be With You. – Paul