​My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Not do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think that I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe
that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from your desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
therefore, will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.  
​~ Thomas Merton

​After graduating from Candler in `91, I worked for seven years with folks infected and affected with HIV. At Common Ground my recent seminary education got a jumpstart and a kick in the tush. Protease inhibitors were on their way, but not there yet. “We are this close …” But at Common Ground rarely a week went by that we didn’t have a death of one of our participants.
 
Common Ground was a day program supported by the Atlanta Interfaith AIDS Network. Everyday a different congregation (Jewish, Christian) would bring lunch and spend the day. Our participants were mostly gay men, but not everybody. Black and white, financially comfortable, and not so much, professional and day/night workers, housed and unhoused. Everyday was different, no two days alike. We’d begin the day with a meditation that led to a support group/sharing time, then lunch, then some activity. Folks from all around Atlanta volunteered and some incredible relationships were created in that place. 
 
One volunteer, Connie loved Thomas Merton. Well, truth be told, Connie loved everything about prayer. When she led meditations there was always a lit candle and some reading that felt just right for what was happening in the community, and what was being stirred up in me. I remember the day she read this Merton’s prayer to us. After some quiet she asked if a line from the prayer stayed with anybody. Bobby spoke up. Now, Bobby was one of our quiet regulars. Our “token heterosexual guy,” Bobby liked being the background, doing the dishes every day after lunch. He rarely talked or drew any kind of attention; he seemed to appreciate being a part of community as he was making his way with his illness.
 
“Did you say that just if we want to please God, we are pleasing him? Is that what he said?” And Connie read again the lines, “But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.” l remember Bobby started to cry – I’d known him for a while and this was the only time I saw him cry – and then he said, “thank you.”
 
There is so much I appreciate in Merton’s prayer. For a time, it was on my bathroom mirror, so that I could read it when I brushed my teeth. The line at the beginning of not knowing where I am going has been a steady companion in previous years. But the great gift I treasure was that moment when time stopped in that living room in that old house on Juniper Street with Connie and Bobby and all of us. In that moment everything dropped away – black and white, rich, and poor, healthy and living with AIDS – all of that faded into the background. Our desire to please God pleases God. It was as if there was a mighty presence in that room that brought comfort and joy in a way I’d never imaged. … And then it was time for lunch.
 
Advent feels like a deeper time of reflection. Memories feel closer and stronger. Close enough that I could reach out and touch them. What a life I’ve been blessed with, so many stories of people being people, people loving people. Looking back at those days at Common Ground I’m amazed at all we lived in and through and I’m so very, very grateful. Merton’s prayer needs to go back up where I can see it every day. It’s still speaking to me, and I can hear Bobby’s chuckle and see him nodding at me saying, `yep, reading that every time you brush your teeth just might be a good idea.’

​Thanks to Brent for this amazing picture 

Advent is about prayer, just as prayer is about Advent. They weave in and through one another. Advent is our Christian season of New Year - our beginning place. It’s a graceful way of being invited to begin again. Prayer is much the same. It is a practice of wishing/yearning/longing for something to shift toward wholeness. Prayer is the spiritual practice that lives inside of us. Prayer breathes our faith. Advent is our season, our shared time of (re)learning the practice of slowing down. Advent is the season of preparing; prayer is our practice of waiting. All in one.
 
Advent calls for us to be present in this December time of longer nights. This season asks us to consider looking in the dark, even if we can’t yet see. It causes us to trust and believe. Advent doesn’t tell us to quit or give up. It invites us instead to slow down, to pay attention, to wait. Prayer can nudge us time and again from what is to what has always been and on to what is to be next. Shifts us from rushing through this hour, from enduring this day to where is it best to focus? What is holding me? Who is holding me in this moment? Time and again just that slowing down loosens my heart and sometimes even my head so that I am renewed – just enough to re-enter.
 
In her book Refuge, Terry Tempest Williams writes, “I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day—the invocations and benedictions of Earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I fear.” 

I so love these words from Tempest Williams, “carrying my heart upward.” Advent’s arrival came this year at such a good time. My heart felt like it was spiraling down to places of overflowing grief, of aching and heartbreaking. These words remind me to see bigger, believe bigger, pray bigger. Her words encourage me to remember the daily gift of listening for our feathered friends. Each day our bird-guides are all around us with their morning and evening prayers. Fearful places can catch and entangle me – and - so can listening for and believing in each bird’s songprayer. Bird-by-bird (Oh wait, there’s a nudge from Anne LaMott, another writer/prophet – she’d be telling us to keep writing).
 
May it be so. Emmanuel. God is surely with us.  

​Thanks, Betsey for this sunrise picture from St. Mountain.

Most Tuesday mornings my guitar and I make our way up the hill to the memory neighborhood at an Assisted Living here in Pacific Beach.  Yesterday we all joined in on Christmas songs. Theologically I know the importance of waiting – in the spirit of Advent - for the 25th of December, but these are precious souls who know these songs by heart. I like to think these long-remembered songs are stored in our memory chests.
 
For months now a few of the folks had been able to sing along with most of the words to the classics. We join together on the standards like “This Little Light of Mine,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Bye Bye Blackbird”. But there we were yesterday morning, singing word-for-word all three of the verses to “Deck the Halls” … while I tell of Yuletide treasure; follow me in merry measure. 
 
There are some folks in the world who can point to the exact spot on our heads where memories like these are stored. Remarkable really, that we humans can identify that. But I’d be surprised if anybody could point to the place in my heart where my Christmas memories are stored. Somehow, my heart knows to save everything and to even reserve a bigger spot for next year.
 
Are we holding our memories or are they holding us?  These memories that make up so much of me. These stories that hold songs and rememberings, so many treasures that I have been loving throughout my life.  Memories of one moment or a collection of moments woven by stories and melodies.  Memories of family and friends no longer earthbound, who still (somehow) feel so close. I can still hear and see and smell and touch.  I can tell you what I was wearing, and the taste of how the marshmallow melted in the chocolate.  I can hear the crunch of the snow.  Even now I can feel that old lump growing in my throat.

Remember when we used to say things like, “When I grow up…”? Well, here I am – pretty much all grown up. Here I am tenderly, thankfully, care-fully looking back at this precious memory chest of mine. Holding on, for sure. Letting go, perhaps/maybe. I go most every week to the memory neighborhood to see if I can catch a glimpse of my dad. He died thirteen years ago after doing his big-hearted best to live with Alzheimer’s. I go remembering him and how much he loved music. And my dad loved laughter. So, I try to bring both with me on Tuesday mornings. I caught a glimpse of Dad today when I asked the group about "singing or maybe we ought to skip..." the first verse of Jingle Bells in San Diego. We shared a good laugh about that one. “What the heck?" one of the guys said, “let’s do it.” So, we all sang, "Dashing through the snow in a one horse opened sleigh. O'er the fields we go, laughing all the way..."

These are surely December’s emotionally growing darker days into literally growing longer nights. Our spirits are feeling it even without the calendar telling us. It’s always odd to me that the darkest, longest nights come to what is described as the season of comfort and cheer. This is supposed to be the time of writing cards and singing carols. This is understood to be the time of connecting and reconnecting with old friends and new ones. And somehow, this year I am (again a bit) unsettled by this season when each day grows shorter, and nights feel more and more dark. It is to this time when we hear those century-old words of encouragement: Take heart! and Be Not Afraid. These words come now again at this most needed time, echoing to us from the darkness. This is our season of paying attention differently and listening with our spirits.

In her book Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas, Jan Richardson writes, “We often find ourselves in the dark – good or evil or in between, of our own or another’s making. Our work is to name the darkness for what it is and to find what it asks of us: whether it is darkness that asks for justice to bring the dawn of hope to a night of terror, or for a candle to give warmth to the shadows, or for companions to hold us in our uncertainty and unknowing, for a blanket to enfold us as we wait for the darkness to teach us what we need to know.”

Poet, artist, pilgrim Jan is a precious friend whose words bravely come to companion us on journey through Advent's shadow places. She invites us to be intentional. She tells us what our work in these coming days may be, “to name the darkness and to find out what it asks of us.” Tenderly, mindfully, prayerfully we are invited into this soul work. The heartbreaking, daily, compounding tragedies halfway around the world have shaken us to our core. Our turning away from them, doesn’t change them. And our turning toward them just might change us. Shift us. Nudge us. Bring forward some new vision of light into darkness and hope into despair. 

We aren't given a map for our Advent journey. There isn't a traffic cop at every corner. Instead, we are finding light enough for the next steps we need to take, left foot, right foot. We are given words of encouragement from pilgrims who have traveled a similar road centuries before us, “take heart.” We are given courage to walk along the darkest parts of the path. And with mercy and grace we are given love enough to bring companions alongside us who will hold us and all our hopes and fears along the way.

Thank you, Melanie for this picture

There is such a joy for me to sing and such joy to sing in a choir. My son, Sam has a truly amazing voice. Basso profundo. Magnificent. Truly. I remember Sam’s junior year in high school when I asked him for a specific Christmas gift: please join me in singing in the NDPC’s adult church choir. It was 2018, and such a difficult time in our country’s story. It felt like lots of talking over talking and shouting over shouting. There wasn’t much listening. I wanted Sam to learn to listen for another voice, I wanted him to learn the gift of singing harmony. He joined the choir and has kept singing — each song extending my Christmas.
 
Now that I've moved to California I’ve joined three choirs – our church choir at PBUMC, the San Diego Women’s Chorus and Thresholds (a choir that sings for folks in hospice). These are three very different groups of singers, kind souls all around. When musicians perform, there is a moment that holds the most amazing space. Unique and precious, each time. There is this moment before, this moment when the director stands a little taller, holds up her/his hands to communicate that we are just about to begin, as we all take a collective breath…and what happens next in that instant for me is …
 
…is everything.

In that instant right before our first note is sung, in that instant there is… gift. Grace. Love. Yearning. Laughter. Tears. Darkness. Light. In that instant there is .. hope.
 
This December continues to feel so very tender. Friends and family doing all they can to get through these hard, hard days. On phone calls and facetimes I hear of care plans and tender visits with precious, loved ones. Doctors’ visits and news of not yet, or I’m so sorry. Prayers and more prayers. Tears and more tears. Holding on and letting go. Desperately trying to hold on and overwhelmed by what it means to let go.   
 
The Women’s Chorus will be singing our winter concert on the 17th. We’re doing some fun pieces. And we're performing one song that I probably won’t be able to sing. If I can find the breath to sing, my hunch is there will be tears streaming down my face. We’re singing the most precious arrangement of “Hope is the thing with feathers” by Susan LaBarr. She somehow has been able to join Emily Dickinson’s poem with her haunting, redeeming melody. I felt it the first time we sang it through, and I know when it comes time to perform on the 17th, this thing with feathers will be perching right there, in the middle of my heart.
 
Especially this year we know that the world is aching and I am feeling so much grief with and for my circle of family and friends. Especially this Advent, I am counting on Hope. This thing with feathers…this one who perches right there in my soul and yours. Hope sings the tune not needing the words. Hope knows the hard places of our struggles of being human. It knows (somehow) that we humans can’t always find the words we wish we could find. Hope knows (somehow) that we humans forget, and what we forget just might be what we are yearning for to lead us back home. And so hope waits and stays with us.
 
There is a great joy for me that (somehow) Emily Dickinson believed – and most all of the time I do as well -- hope never stops. Never stops at all. As long as we can hold on, as long as we have breath, I believe there is in us, a song, a tune that knows hope’s way of never stopping. At all.
 
And so, this Advent, I will be singing. And you can count on the fact that tears will be accompanying me throughout. This year I sing for family and friends who are tendering making their way in and through. I will be singing for my parents and grands who years ago introduced me to singing in the church choir. I will be singing for Sam and all those who will be singing long after my song is an echo. May there be for all of us, a moment or two or three even when you are aware that you are joining other souls, catching a collective breath, turning in the same direction, knowing that we will (somehow) -- like my friend, Jan would say -- be walking toward the dawn.

​Thank you, Shelly for this most amazing picture

December has always been a time of gathering arounds. This season of gathering around kitchen tables and dining room tables, around Christmas trees and pianos, gathering around stories and carols. When I was growing up, I can remember countless tables with generations sitting round and telling stories.  I remember those times usually began with a big meal, lingered over dessert and finished with gallons and gallons of coffee and Constant Comment tea. My favorite memories of tables had extra chairs pulled up and wiggled in…always room enough.
 
We are all needing table-time this year. I guess I need to just own that – I am needing table time this year. I feel the deep need for time gathered round, with folks who listen with their hearts first. Time with family – given and chosen -- who know my heart or (now that I’ve moved to another part of the country) are interested in stories of the heart. 2023 feels like a runaway train with despair’s engine careening down the tracks. Quaker and folksinger, Carrie Newcomer sings a line that fits well – “We’ve been traveling faster than our souls can go.”
 
If our tables could speak to us, I believe they would be reminding us of our best, as well as hardest life’s moments. Echoes of wisdom passed down from folks whose chairs are now empty. Echoes of times of feasts and times of heartbreak. Stories about growing up and growing older. Holding on's and letting go's of the living of our days. Shared stories of what we’ve come through before and ways we’ve navigated difficulties. Stories upon stories of coming out on the other side. My friend, Carol would call it Table Grace and I believe that’s exactly it. As precious souls being mindful of the significance of gathering round, we can discover glimpses of becoming hopeful again. A good slice of pie and a tender-hearted story can do that for a soul. In my life, it has happened time and time again.    
 
I love this picture. I snapped it during one of those `table conversations’ this past Labor Day weekend. Even now just looking at those precious feet connected to those most precious souls, I can hear the storytelling happening above. Each of us telling stories of what happened during the past year and stories from what we’d shared together thirty years before that. I can hear laughter, so much laughter. Even on that September morning, I could hear echoes of `the hopes and fears of all the years’ meeting.
 
That happens around tables. Life sitting down to rest a minute and catch her breath. During this season you and I just may have the chance to do the same. It’s great when the food is perfect and delicious, but you know some of my favorite meals have been leftovers. It’s the people. It’s the time. It’s the stories told and re-told and told again. It’s the listening for your heart and mine.

​This is a picture I took in Napa with my friend, Kibbie. It was so foggy; we couldn't see more than ten feet or so in front of us. Her grandson, Kyle had died in a motorcycle accident, and we had gathered in this place he loved the best to spread his ashes. There was so much about Kyle's too-early death that felt like the chilly air of those foggy woods. With each step, it felt like we were moving in and through the heaviness and weighted-ness of time. As we were walking to the spot that had been chosen for the service, I told Kibbie the story of hearing mom's voice years before, hearing mom’s voice say, "time's different here." Time certainly felt set-apart. Moments held in and somehow outside of time. 

So much of Advent often feels like kairos time. In contrast to chronos time (measured on our watches and calendars), kairos time somehow happens mostly on the inside. It is the time when a memory can hold a lifetime. Kairos time is the time when a seed has been planted deep in the earth and waits until the time is right for stretching and sprouting and coming forth. 
 
Mom’s favorite month was December. She loved so many things about this season. In Central Illinois where we grew up, the afternoons were shorter. Walking home from school more often than not we could see the soft-pastel sunsets. Mom seemed to take extra time for all our December rituals. It was an event in our house every year when Mom decorated the Christmas tree. Picking up one ornament at a time, Mom would stand in front of tree until (I believe although there’s no way to actually prove it) the tree told her where that ornament needed to be. Then Mom would attach it and step back. She’d take a sip of her martini, take a draw from her cigarette and pick up the next ornament. I have warm memories of a fire in the fireplace and of Dad playing jazz mixed with Christmas’ greatest hits on the piano in the dining room. Kairos time for sure.  
 
It was December of 2005 when I last heard my mom’s voice. I heard it clear as a bell. “Time is different here,” she said to me. What makes this a kairos-time-story is that mom had died in October of that year. But weeks later a few days before Christmas, I heard her voice as clearly as if she were standing right next to me.  Her four words so simple, so powerful andso simply, powerfully reassuring. That December I was walking across the pedestrian bridge from Emory’s parking deck to the hospital. The walkway was decorated in bright Christmas lights, and I was alone on the bridge crossing above Clifton Avenue. “Time is different here,” she’d just said to me. And now, 18 years late, I haven’t heard anything since.
 
Advent is kairos time for me. This is our time of seeking something greater, wiser, kinder. On this journey we are seeking the Holy, we are seeking the comforting grace of God. It is here we seek to catch a glimpse of the lifelove that has held us with each breath and will hold us until our last. And I believe in my heart-of-hearts (as I heard that dark December night in 2005 from Mom) even beyond that.

There is a verse from the book of Esther that has served as a jumpstart, a rallying cry for me as I’ve experience traveling in and through life. Esther was in a place where she was being asked to do something (like face a power too big and too powerful) she didn’t believe possible. We are told that a wise old friend looked her in the eyes, looked her in the heart and said something like, “Perhaps you have come to the place where you are for just such a time as this.”
 
And I wonder…
 
These December days of 2023 feel like they may be asking just a bit too much. Asking too much of me and you, asking so much of us. And most certainly of the us greater than ourselves. Wars. Rumors of Wars. Ukraine. Kyiv. Odesa. Bakhmut. Gaza and Israel. Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Rafah and Haifa. Jabalia and Bethlehem. Heartaches. Despair. Anguish. The earth is groaning, and we are groaning right along-side.
 
Many of us have walked this Advent journey before. Many of us know the story’s end. Some of us may already be singing the carols of “Il est ne, le divin Enfant.” But/and not yet. Not yet. Still we are in these early days of Advent and it’s important not to miss the stories that are unfolding each hour around us. Somehow, we journey through this time holding on to the devastation and despair alongside the gifts and graces of this season, of this time. A time such as this.
 
When Mom was trying to emphasize something to us that she believed to be important and something she wanted her daughters not to miss, she would begin with these not-often-used words of, “You know, Les (or Claud or Bets), in my heart of hearts, I believe that…” My sisters and I knew to pay special attention, to be listening with our hearts as well. Now years later after her death, my sisters and I tenderly call back to some of those conversations. Together we remember shared times when she knew us and we knew her – those times when she was passing along something precious, something that mattered the most to her.
 
Before we get caught up in the hustling and bustling, the parties and carolings, the hurrying and scurrying, before we lose ourselves in the busyness, can we just stop? Can we listen for, can we listen to our heart and those of another? For this particular, precious, hearts-breaking-open December 2023. Can we stop as we are walking through these especially dark nights of Advent? Can we take a breath? And another? Can we listen for the rhythm of our breathing, for sound of our heart-of-hearts.
 
And then may we one by one and two by two look up into the sky seeking out a star that is shining just a little bit brighter and say a word or two. For justice. For peace. For hope. For healing. A prayer that light will come again this year to Bethlehem, for just such a time as this.

It took moving to California for me to better appreciate Southern culture – and most especially Southern sisters and brothers using words just right. Words don’t come together or say-what-they-mean-to-mean-what-they-say anywhere else like they do in the South. All places have their particularities and accents, but when you’re in the South talking with true Southerners wit and wisdom more often than not find their way home to you.
 
Not long along I was introduced to a phrase I’d never ever heard, but one that has somehow long known me: “ComeApart.”
 
(Of course) I was at a Waffle House having breakfast with my dear friend, Susie when she gifted me with – ComeApart. [Editor’s note: She didn’t spell it, and I know that in traditional English these are actually two separate words, but I also know there are times in life when two words can sometimes come together to form one.] My friend can tell a story, and she was recanting one of our shared ones - and we are blessed with many -  from our one of our times past, “You was in the middle of your `comeapart’ when you…”
 
Southern phrases have forever been passed friend to friend, mothers to sons and fathers to daughters. They (perhaps) come from the living of life in the sun, in the woods and along the sea. I’ve learned some great ones: “Well, Les, I’ve been knowing you since…” “You want to carry me to the store?” “Love you to death…” and now being “in the middle of your comeapart.”
 
I believe we are living in a significant comapart time now. Every day it feels like there’s an upsetting in my gut and an unsettling in my heart. I see comeaparts happening in parking lots and store aisles. I overhear them when walking past folks yelling into their phones or overhearing kids arguing on the playgrounds.  I’m wondering if there is some-great emotional residual something floating in the air. I’m wondering if any of us have begun to process all that we experienced during COVID. 
 
It is amazing to me to that (because someone had to do it, it was the CDC) we have officially ended the Pandemic. This global crisis is now officially in our rearview mirror. And we’ve moved on. We’ve turned the page. But…have we? Have we had a time to sit with and feel what it was like to live through those days when the world was turning on her head? Those weeks when the world literally came to a stop. Some of us lost family, friends, colleagues. Some experienced illness and have lingering effects. Many of us are still grieving. Have we had the energy or time or courage to feel how this feels for us now?
 
In this time of seeking after wall building, of us vs. them-ing, of comeaparting can we invite ourselves to pivot? Can we shift from patterns that have been pulling us apart toward practices that might knit us back together? Here in Advent’s first week may be as good a  time as any to pay attention to possible comeparts within and around us.
 
In these weeks leading to Christmas, many of us are seeking a long-told story of hope. May this be a time of re-connecting. Of re-membering. Of re-storing spaces and places for blessing your heart and your neighbors’, y’all.
 
[Thanks, Karla, for this picture]