Advent-Day-Six: AWAKE

This is what I wake up to for almost every day of the past 5 years.  Equipped by the Good Lord with some kind of feline sense of time, she invariably jumps on the bed, marches across my body in repose, peering into my face about 10 minutes before my alarm goes off.  Almost every day.  Doesn't matter when my alarm is set.  She will best it by 10 minutes.

A sweet, purry and cuddly reminder that there is at least one being in the world who depends on me (the kibble bowl don't fill itself, lady.) Invariably, as she settles in and works up her rusty purr, I am reminded that there will be others like her today.  Their demands may not be so obvious, not quite so in-your-face, they may not be so innocent or, to my mind, necessary.  But there is a great deal of good to be done in the world.  First we must be AWAKE, then we can do our part.

Are you AWAKE?

As long as you're awake I thought I'd remind you of two things:

1) I'm adorable.

2) Feed me.

Advent Word-a-Day: FLOOD

I love the FLOOD of Christmas cards that fall through my mail shoot this time of year.  The trickle began today.  Anticipating the deluge as I try to hold off opening them all until Christmas Eve!

Advent Day 3: PEACE

There is a Dutch word -- (c)husselick (this is my best attempt a phonetic spelling.)  I'm told it can't be properly translated into English with one simple equivalent.  (C)husselick means: comfortable, cozy, homey, that all-is-right-with-the-world feeling, or, possibly, PEACE.

Advent Day 2: BOUND

Monday is typically my day off or, said more properly, my Sabbath.  My practice of Sabbath fluctuates -- sometimes through good, new ideas and sometimes through lazy attrition.  Ideally, what it means to practice Sabbath is to honor Ireneus' saying from the 4th century:

"The glory of God is the human person fully alive"

To ask, in what ways has this past week detracted from life in all it's fullness.  Where am I depleted and in need of God's rest, joy and peace?
The answer is sometimes (almost always) to sleep a little later, to pray a little more deeply, to honor my body through exercise and good food and to do something that engages my curiosity and creativity. Thankfully, in Washington DC, the latter is not hard to come by.

All of this is a very long preamble to the point. Today Sabbath meant going to see a movie:

12 Years a Slave is the story of freeman, Solomon Northup, who was kidnapped and forced to live as a slave on plantations in the American South.  The story is heart-wrenching and the acting does it justice.  

The Advent-Word-of-the-Day is BOUND, which made this movie quite obviously relevant.  There is a scene near to the end of the movie -- a close up of Solomon's face as he waits in hope that finally, finally someone who owes him nothing will take the side of justice and common humanity.  This one shot of his face is, without words, the very heartbeat of Advent.  

(spoiler alert) May we too find that our waiting in hope is fulfilled by one who owes us nothing, one who is divinely just and shares our humanity, one who is our friend. 

He comes the prisoners to release,

In Satan’s bondage held;

The gates of brass before Him burst,

The iron fetters yield.

Advent Day 1: GO

The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo, adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. “

(Samwise Gamgee)

GO!!