Category Archives: Religion

The Fourth Sunday of Advent 2011

I have been trying to post some Advent reflections the day after each Sunday in the liturgical season. Sometimes these thoughts come from memories of years past – as the first piece did – and sometimes from what I have  heard in readings and  homilies at church – like this one does.

 

The final Gospel reading of Advent – at least of a Sunday in the season – goes to Mary. While the reading is very similar to what is heard on December 8th – the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the homily yesterday took me in a different direction. I heard of a young girl answering a call. I heard of a young girl giving up her own destiny for that vision that God saw for her. I heard of a young girl setting an example for her peers and for us.

 

Think about what it takes as a teen to follow God and let people know you do. I have seen plenty of examples this past weekend as I went Christmas caroling with teens and families from my church on Saturday evening. Then, on Sunday, I witnessed a living nativity. The teens play-acted the story of Mary and Joseph and the birth of Jesus.  You can see or hear of both by following the various links below.

Church Web Site Recap of Caroling

WICZ Coverage of Caroling

WICZ Coverage of Living Nativity

WBNG Coverage of Living Nativity


Third Sunday in Advent

This is a third post in a series on Advent thoughts. It is getting posted much later than the first two but here you go.

The third Sunday in Advent is Gaudet – the root meaning is rejoice – Sunday. Many reasons are available for rejoicing on this third Sunday in Advent. John is baptizing people in the River Jordan. He is proclaiming that one greater than he will come and baptize in the Lord, not in water. One will come that John is not fit to untie the sandals He wears.

When I sit in church and hear the readings of Advent, I immediately go the musical “Godspell.” Many of the songs that come to my mind come from that show. “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” is probably the one that plays over and over in my mind.

While we are an Easter people – living in the belief of the Risen Christ, we are joyful to celebrate the first coming of Christ, as a baby to a young woman who conceived the child out of wedlock. We celebrate that a baby will lead us as we sit around our trees this December.

Let the joy that comes with knowing that Christ will come again and that He came that first time well out of you this Advent season!


Light

 

It is almost the shortest day of the year. Light is becoming less prevalent and you are probably thinking that I am a crazy person for wanting to write about light. Guess what? I may be a bit crazy but light is the one thing we all celebrate and want, particularly here in the Northern Hemisphere, during the winter months.

A few years back – my youngest is now a senior in high school and this was when he was in 3rd grade – I volunteered to go into his class for the winter holiday party. Elementary schools these days are very politically correct, even if the students do not understand what this is, so as to keep all the parents happy. I knew I could not go into this class and play a game that might be Christian or might be Jewish. I had to come up with something that was neutral. What did I decide to do? I decided, since they had spent time at the beginning of the month learning about holiday traditions in various countries, to play BINGO. Instead of the word BINGO across the top of the board, I looked for a five letter word that was holiday geared. LIGHT! That is what I came up with because think of all the country’s holiday traditions – and all the religions of the world whose traditions – involve light.
Christianity celebrates the birth of Jesus. This birth of the King was announced by a star in the sky – a light. Judaism celebrates Hanukkah – the time when there was not enough oil for the light in the temple yet the lights burned for eight days. Kwanzaa is a cultural celebration that celebrates family, community and culture. The Mishumaa Saba are the seven candles where each signifies a different principle. Candles equal light.

When we look to European traditions, I remember studying the Feast of Saint Lucia when I was young. In Sweden, Saint Lucia visits children with a crown of candles on her head. Again, there is light in this tradition.

So as we journey slowly towards the shortest day of the calendar year, remember that light is important. Light is what we all celebrate this time of year. Light is what we all seek this time of year. We want the days to get longer, the sun to shine bright and longer. We want light.

This is a second post in a series of four dealing with my thoughts on the Advent season. This particular post was updated from one posted last year on www.sarahstanleyinspired.com.


Minutes to Live

I am participating in #Trust30 which is an online initiative and 30-day writing challenge that encourages you to look within and trust yourself.  Today’s prompt, on top of being a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, is imagining you have 15 minutes to live.

15 minutes?  This type of timeline makes me think of Joplin right now.  Yes, there were warnings of the impending tornado touchdown.  Does that mean the warning is enough?  We are all dying a bit each day.  A sad statement but entirely true.  I think I would prefer to not know when death is coming, just that it is.  To know that it is happening is not something I can pull into the way I live.  I like to see the half-full glass, not the cannot fill up glass.

After I got over the initial shock of writing about death – my own as I know I have written about others who have died, I realized that my attitude that I live by would carry through to dealing with my own death.  I would not worry about what was going to happen in 15 minutes.  I would worry about what would happen after that time.

My thoughts went to my children.  Granted all of them are in their 20′s now but one, yet I still wanted to tell them all the things I would as they grow older and have the major changes that happen in life.

  • Move a lot when you are younger and do not have family or other ties to bind  you to an area.  See what is out there.
  • Enjoy people.  We are all humans and to sustain our life we need human INTERaction.  We NEED more people in our lives – real, live people.
  • Enjoy what you do.  If you are working doing something that you do not enjoy, this job is going to become an issue in your life.  Find what you love and do it!
  • Document your life as much as you can.  You all know I do it.  I have tons of words and photos that have been a part of my life and will continue to but you need to document your lives.
  • Take the faith that you were taught as you were growing up and make it yours.  I did as a 20-something.  You need to.  Faith will sustain you through the bumps in life.  I am not saying you need a faith that is like mine.  You need your own faith so take what you have learned as a foundation and find your faith.
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

What is Community?

Community! We all live in one but do we have other communities that we are a part of?  I know I belong to many different communities.  I frequently wonder what makes community and how hard it is to keep a community together.

I am a member of the “running” community.  A lot of the runners I “know” are not people that I have met before but people that I communicate with online. We support each other. Even when we are running a race together, and therefore technically against one another, runners will help each other and encourage each other.  The race, as we all know, is actually against ourselves and our own personal bests.

I am also a member of  religious community.  I have written about my beliefs and my sense of community within my church many times.  I became a Catholic because of the sense of community I felt in the Church.  I truly feel that church is not a building but a group of people, a sense of community.

I worry sometimes that the strands that hold communities together are fragile.  Can a community where the beliefs are different – like the running community where there are fast and slow runners and each has his or her own beliefs – stay together for long?  Can the love of the run hold the community together when other parts are so different?

Thoughts about what might tear a community apart or hold a community together, not the running community as that is just an example, got me to thinking what is community and how do we come to be a part of a particular community.  Dictionary.com has several definitions for the noun community but the one I am talking about is:

a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists

So exactly what would cause the common characteristics or interests to change enough to end a particular community?  Would individual interests be strong enough to alienate one from community?  If so, how is it that community forms to start?  All of these questions are rhetorical but have been circling in my mind for over a month now.  I do not have answers but I do frequently wonder if one part of a community’s particular interests being held to be more important can tear apart the threads of the community.


Christmas in Photos

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Advent

Yesterday, I awoke and made some cookies for a friend at church.  I looked around my home to find where I had stashed the Advent wreath from last year’s clean up after the holidays.  I, then, came to my blog to attach two pages back to the blog.  Both of these pages had been private during the year but now it is Advent so they are live again.

 

Advent is a season in the church  year.  Remember here I am Catholic but was not brought up Roman Catholic.  I have only been Catholic for 27 years.  I was, though, raised in the Anglican church which also celebrates Advent.  The Advent season is the four Sundays prior to Christmas and is the beginning of a new church year.  Isn’t it wonderful to start off the church year with a season of anticipation and waiting for the celebration of a wonderful event – the birth of Christ?

 

Similar to the weeks of Lent, Advent is a season of waiting and a season where sacrifice can be practice.  Do we have to practice sacrifice during this holiday season?  Isn’t the last month of a pregnancy normally a time of nesting and anticipation?  I like to think of the sacrifices that we make during Advent as different than the almost penance-like sacrifices of Lent.  In Advent, we may reach out to our neighbors more.  We may help the elderly or those who do not have enough by using some of our wealth to allow them to celebrate Christmas.

 

I spend, and have for 20 plus years now, the Advent season following a book called Awaiting the Child. Isabel Anders has provided daily devotions to help us slow down during the Advent season.  I was brought back to this concept in church today as the homily discussed taking time to enjoy the season and the anticipation of what is to come.


Faith is Not …

I am just now reading Ronna Detrick‘s e-newsletter and, as always, she has me thinking.  She has me thinking about faith and what it is and, definitely more importantly, what it is not.

 

Faith is not going to church or worship every week.  This act may be inspired by your faith in a higher being but more than likely, it is inspired by childhood guilt, parental guilt or some other force.  I have been the – pardon the intended pun – religious church goer, never missing a Sunday.  I have been the not-so-religious church goer, letting my life take me to commune with God while hiking or running or hunting.  I know that neither says I have faith unless there is a belief in the act in something that is not there physically with me at the time.

 

Faith is not being a _________ (you fill in the blank) – Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Christian.  Faith goes beyond the labels of a particular religion or religious point of view.  Faith goes to knowing that there is something, someone there when all else fails – a safety net of sorts.  Faith does not go to a certain denomination church or non-denominational church.  See, this makes me happy because I am not a label person.  I hate having to label almost anything, including my faith.

 

Faith is belief – belief in yourself, belief in others, belief in goodness, belief in God or a higher being, belief in just about any and everything in our world.  Faith is hard to put in words because faith is personal.  My faith is different from your faith.  Your faith is different from your child’s faith.

 

What is faith to you?  Or, almost as importantly, what is faith not to you?


Eat, Pray, Love – India

Yes, yes.  I am behind.  While BlogHER caused the first delay (no, I didn’t attend but Maria did), my mother being in town for a two week vacation caused my personal delay in my sticking with the Eat, Pray, Love postings.  Here’s the background. Maria of BOREDMommy fame is reading and writing about Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love.

The section of Eat, Pray, Love that deals with India also deals with Gilbert’s internal search for spiritual recognition.  Gilbert heads to an Ashram in India that practices yoga and meditation.  Even my first read of this book left me thinking that this was not me.  Of course, with the exception few moments in my life, I have been a big follower of organized religion.  I question parts of organized religion, still, to this day.  But I am not sure I am fit for an Ashram or for meditation on a regular basis.

Near the beginning of this section of the book, there is a bit about yoga and that the word means UNION.  This is an idea I can get behind.  I have spent a lot of time trying to create a union between my beliefs and my way of living.  I have spent a lot of time creating a union between my mind and my body.  I believe I do live as I believe but know I sometimes slip up.  I also have moments of that mind-body union.  These mind-body moments frequently occur as I am on a long run.  I can see myself running, feel my feet hitting the pavement but not truly feel it.  I love the idea that both my mind and my body will come together.

I also had a huge feeling of being just like Gilbert as she described introducing a new chicken to a flock and how her arrival at the Ashram was the same – under cover of night and so no one knew she had arrived.  I can picture times in my life when I have wanted to be silent and arrive without notice.  This is not like me but I do see the benefits.  I, on the other hand, like to be noticed, at least at some points in time.

I am awed by Gilbert’s progress in her life as she is at the Ashram.  She goes from not being able to still her mind at all – a feeling I can relate to in many ways – to being able to be still while anticipating her departure.  I do not know that the discipline acquire while during her stay in India is one I could grow into.  My mind does not like being still, does not like being quite.

Have you read Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love?  If so, what did you think of her time in India?


Giving and Receiving

I was sitting in church yesterday, listening to Deacon George’s homily.  Okay, I admit I don’t know if people other than priests give homilies but Deacon George was talking about the readings of the day and really hitting home with me.  And while I couldn’t tell you exactly what the verses were I will explain more as I go here.

First, the second reading of the day was from Colossians.  I really paid attention because  my youngest goes to a youth group at another church.  I am happy he wants to associate with other kids who are Christians and our church does not have a youth group like this anymore.  This month they are discussing some readings from Collosians.

Deacon George spoke about how different people like to give and to receive.  He talked of how receiving is so much more difficult.  To give to someone else puts the giver in control.  The giver is the one that has what is being given.  The giver has the timing in his or her hands.  The receiver is having to accept.  It seems hard for humans to accept almost anything from others.  We all want to be strong.  We all want to be able to do “it” – whatever it is – on our own, independently.  These words were taking me back to last fall and a discussion of needing someone.

The Gospel reading was one that I have heard many times but never looked at this way.  It is a reading about Mary and Martha – sisters – who are receiving Jesus and some friends for a meal.  I admit I cannot remember which sister was always doing the preparing, the cooking – Martha, I believe – while the other sister – Mary – sat and listened to Jesus as he preached, taught, talked.  Martha, if my memory is correct, eventually questioned why Mary was always not helping.

The discussion in the hmily went along the lines of being able to listen.  Do you know how?  I know listening is difficult.  When I am trying to just listen to a friend – especially if that friend is hurting, I want to jump in solutions, questions.  I have come, though, with age and many experiences, to discover that I need to just listen and not comment, question or try to fix.  Sometimes, as it was with Mary, listening is enough.  Listening is the most we can do.

Are you more a giver or a receiver?  Do you find one to be more difficult to handle?

What about listening?  Can you just listen?  Do you want to fix or question or comment as you listen?


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