Keeping Up With The News - Advent and Christmas

We are now in the third week of traditional Advent and the 5th of Celtic Advent, both of which in my mind, focus on peace, not the peace that is created through war and suppression of those that look, think or worship differently from us, but the peace that comes through nonviolence, love and justice for all, a peace we all long for in today’s world of upheaval and violence.

All week I have been meditating on this form of peace and what it meant for Mary and Elizabeth and now means for us. In her wonderful book The First Advent in Palestine, The First Advent in Palestine, Kelley Nikondeha, talks about Mary and Elizabeth “gestating God’s peace , which reversed the unjust order. Speaking of Mary singing the Magnificat, she says: Mary sings out a new social order that upends the status quo as advent begins to turn tables on those who benefit from the injustice of empires and their economies - long before her own son would himself overturn tables, enacting protest in the temple…. Together, Elizabeth and Mary, the mothers of advent, shaped the infrastructure of peace. Their bodies, metaphors within the songs they sang, spoke about newness God was birthing into the world.” (68,69).

God is birthing newness, not just in the birth of Christ but in the birth of all of us who long for and act for peace. In the Mennonite service we attend, before the passing of the peace we light a peace lamp and say “we long for a just peace, we pray for a just peace, we choose to live for a just peace.” It is a challenging saying and one that I struggle with daily as I contemplate what more I should be doing to work towards a just peace. It’s hard for me as I bake my Christmas shortbread, and other Christmas goodies to really take it in. How do you live out God’s just peace in your life and what new commitments might God be asking of you this Advent?

Those of you who visit godspacelight.com have probably realized that my transition to Substack is now complete and I am not longer posting my Meditation Monday on the Godspace blog. I have been blogging on the site for 25 years and it is time for a change. If you know people who read this on godspacelight.com encourage them to join me on Substack and subscribe to my feed. At this point I post 3 times a week and most of it is free to access. At this point the website is still active as many like to access the resource lists we provide. However we are still struggling to re-establish the links that were broken in our site crash six months ago. It is a never ending task as every blog post in which I have referenced other blog posts, which I often do especially in our resource lists, has broken links in it. As a general rule - when you come across a broken link like this https://godspacelight.com/2017/07/27/celtic-hospitality-and-welcome/ It needs to be changed to https://godspacelight.com/celtic-hospitality-and-welcome/. In other words, remove the date and you will find the link.

Lilly Lewin and other members of the godspacelight writing community will continue to post their Advent reflections until the end of the year. Several have already joined me on substack and I am encouraging others to do the same.

Having said all that, godspacelight has been quite active this week. Lilly Lewin is in England again and not posting, however my husband Tom Sine posted a short Christmas letter, and Carol Dixon in Rememberings posted a beautiful couple of poems looking back at All Saints Day.

I appreciate the feedback I am getting on Celtic Advent Following An Unfamiliar Path, and am overwhelmed by how enthusiastic people are about the book. Several people have told me that as they only just discovered it, so plan to use it during the season of Epiphany instead. I think it would make a great book for other seasons of the year. You just need to ignore the dates! And please leave a review on Amazon, it is that which will help people continue to find it.

Here are a few posts that you might find useful as we head toward the third week of Advent.

Litany for the Third Sunday of Advent;

An Advent Prayer by Walter Brueggemann;

An Advent Prayer by Jan Richardson

Waiting – Advent poems by Jeannie Kendall – Download

An Advent Poem by Mary Oliver;

Advent Oratorio by Paul Spicer and N.T. Wright

There are also several posts on Liturgical Rebels that are very appropriate for this season:

Poetry As A Spiritual Practice With Drew Jackson. Drew’s book God Speaks Through Wombs was my inspiration for Advent last year and interviewing him about it and other projects was inspiring.

Explore Art With Scott Erickson - Scott wrote a wonderful Advent book with art and reflections, a few years ago called Honest Advent. In this episode he talks about this book and others he has written.

Curating Worship With Mark Pierson - the most creative worship leader I know.

In closing let me share one of my favourite Advent prayers that I wrote several years ago

Make room,

Let Christ be born,

In the quiet and innermost spaces

Of your heart.

Make room.

Let Christ be born,

In the streets and in the rubble,

In the famines and the plagues,

And in the wars.

Make room.

Let Christ be born,

Not far away in distant ages,

But in every heart and place,

Where love and faith are found.

Make room.

Let Christ be born,

And find in us his Bethlehem.