Readings week of December 1st.

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Readings from last week's Daily Contemplative Pauses

*All previous readings & reflections can be found here*

Monday, December 1st 

Readings: “Advent is a journey towards Bethlehem. May we let ourselves be drawn by the light of God made man.” — Pope Francis

“For outlandish creatures like us, on our way to a heart, a brain, and courage, Bethlehem is not the end of our journey but only the beginning – not home but the place through which we must pass if ever we are to reach home at last.” ― Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Chant: Bind my head and my heart in you, holy one, holy one, holy one — The Oriental Orthodox Order in the West

Tuesday, December 2nd

Reading: “Advent is the perfect time to clear and prepare the Way. Advent is a winter training camp for those who desire peace. By reflection and prayer, by reading and meditation, we can make our hearts a place where a blessing of peace would desire to abide and where the birth of the Prince of Peace might take place.” — Edward Hays

Chant: Deep Peace

Wednesday, December 3rd

Chant: Da pacum cordium – Taize

Thursday, December 4th

Reading: “Advent comes, relentlessly and throughout life, with its words of hope and faith-shepherds and magi, crib and star, Emmanuel and glory-and stirs our hearts to pinnacles of possibility one more time… The real Christmas gift, for which Advent is the process, is learning to hum hope, learning to dance the divine.” — Joan Chittister 

Chant: Faith’s Hymn – Beautiful Chorus

Friday, December 5th with Tom

Reading: 'Waiting for God' by Henri Nouwen 

"Waiting ... (can be) an awful desert between where they are and where they want to go.  And people do not like such a place.  They want to get out of it by doing something. 

Waiting, as we see it in the people on the first pages of the Gospel, is waiting with a sense of promise.  People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait.  They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow.  This is very important.  We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us.  So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something.  It is always a movement from something to something more.  Zechariah, Mary, and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them, that fed them, and that made them able to stay where they were.  And in this way, the promise itself could grow in them and for them. 

Waiting is active.  Most of us think of waiting as something very passive, a hopeless state determined by events totally out of our hands.  But there is none of this passivity in scripture.  Those who are waiting are waiting very actively.  They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing...The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun.... A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.  A waiting person is a patient person...means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us.  Waiting...is not passive.  It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her."

Chant: When we are with you, what fear of loss could we possibly have, we swim in mercy, as in an endless sea – Susan Latimer

Saturday, December 6th

Reading: "It grows only deeper, this sense of how closely light and dark live together, and how grace imbues the places that are most laden with shadows and unfathomable mystery. The season of Advent impresses this upon us with such intention, with its exquisite weave of stories and images that tell us of how God makes a way toward us even—and especially—when we cannot find the way ourselves. As we move into this new season, this blessing is for you."

A BLESSING FOR TRAVELING IN THE DARK

Go slow

if you can.

Slower.

More slowly still.

Friendly dark

or fearsome,

this is no place

to break your neck

by rushing,

by running,

by crashing into

what you cannot see.

Then again,

it is true:

different darks

have different tasks,

and if you

have arrived here unawares,

if you have come

in peril

or in pain,

this might be no place

you should dawdle.

I do not know

what these shadows

ask of you,

what they might hold

that means you good

or ill.

It is not for me

to reckon

whether you should linger

or you should leave.

But this is what

I can ask for you:

That in the darkness

there be a blessing.

That in the shadows

there be a welcome.

That in the night

you be encompassed

by the Love that knows

your name.

—Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons

Chant: In our darkness, there is no darkness with O Lord, the deepest night is clear as the day – Taize

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