Advent 2024 - the Daily Reflections
​
This is where I'll compile all the daily reflections for Advent 2024!
----------------------
​
10 // A Night-Blooming Flower
'What can I give back to God
for the blessings he’s poured out on me?
I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God!' (Ps 116.12, Message)
* * *
Good morning!
It’s a full moon this weekend, which is always a magical moment to reconnect with the graceful motion of God’s Creation, and to find our flow within it all.
One of the Hebrew words for ‘moon’ is chodesh, which means ‘renewal’, and there’s a traditional blessing which says to the waxing moon: “You are a crown of glory for those who are born in the womb, for they, like you, are destined to be renewed.” What a soulful reminder of the promise of renewal for us all.
Another word - keseh - is used in the psalms to describe a time of festivity, and some scholars believe it also refers to the full moon, echoing the word kos, cup. (Several Jewish festivals begin on a full moon, in fact.) We might justifiably see it, then, as a rising, overflowing celebratory cupful of God’s abundance. And I’ll gladly raise my glass to God to that, as we head into the darker days.
* * *
For it is the darkest days we tend to fear the most, isn't it. The question is, can we 'tend' to them with love, instead?
The poet Rosemerry Trommer helps me out here with a word she coined, ’endarkenment’ (a counter to the over-confidence of ‘Enlightenment’ thinking in the West!). It speaks humbly of yielding to the mystery of life; as Paul says, we see through a glass darkly. It welcomes a wisdom from deeper below the neon-lit surface of the ego; reminds us, too, that new life starts in the dark, like a seed below ground, or an Advent baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb.
* * *
Carl Jung evocatively noted the difference between what he called ‘sunlight awareness’ and ‘moonlight awareness’, which is another nice reminder on a full moon weekend. Both have their place, but we forget the beauty of the latter.
When awareness flows from our conscious, thinking mind, it’s 'sun-like', he says - as if we're walking by day and can see all the small details, edges, and the distinctiveness of things. But awareness comes via our subconscious, too - as if by moon light! - when we sense the oneness of Creation, how we’re part of the whole and everything belongs. That's where contemplative prayer, for example, comes in, as we quieten the busy mind and settle into stillness and the gentle deepening goodness of being with God. 'Be still and know ...'
* * *
Rosemerry Trommer speaks of darkness from experience. Her family suffered painful loss, but over time she noticed how her daughter especially grew within it, finding a resilience which inspired her. So she wrote a poem, 'The One Who Thrives', in which she likens her daughter to a ‘night-blooming flower’.
I love the metaphor. And we don’t have to have suffered to take heart, do we - we can each pray that any time of darkness may bring its own 'endarkenment', in God's grace, through which we might grow fragrantly:
‘Sweet scent of honey.
Tenacious scent of jasmine.
The hard won scent of hope …’ she writes ...
‘Scent of the one
who finds grace on the inside ...
who meets the soils
made of sorrow,
who brings to the world
a gift as astonishing
as a night-blooming flower,
a gift as honest
as the moon.’
She has recorded a version of the full poem with a musical accompaniment and I’d encourage you to listen to it quietly, in a moment (link below).
* * *
'To know the dark, go dark,' wrote another poet, Wendell Berry. 'Find that the dark, too, blooms and sings.'
I’m reminded of Jesus, arriving in the night-time in Bethlehem, unafraid to be planted in our darkness. Scent of the one who meets the soils made of sorrow, who brings to the world a gift. Astonishing indeed. We lift our cup high. L'chaim!
* * *
May you be bathed in softer light, today.
Go well!
Brian
briandraper.org
PS See you tonight for 'Live at Five' - see below!
* * *
'The One Who Thrives'
You can listen to the full poem, read by Rosemerry Trommer, here.
TONIGHT! ’Live at Five’, 5pm (GMT) here on YouTube
Join us if you can for 30 minutes of togetherness and stillness as we gather up the week. Make yourself a hot chocolate and a crumpet and settle in! Click here to join the feed just before 5pm GMT, otherwise you can watch again later!
Something Else to Listen To
There's no Advent song quite like 'I Wonder, As I Wander' to evoke that moonlit sense of mystery and endarkenment. This is my favourite version, by Audrey Assad. Let it flood you soul with holy anticipation, and maybe even draw you outside for a night walk (below)!
This weekend! Watch the Moon Rise
The moon is full on Sunday, and rises around 3.30pm here in the UK. Why not head out to watch it rise from a hilltop - it happens around the same time as the sun sets, so it’s a moment of lovely symmetry (if the weather clears!). If you don't feel entirely safe on your own, ask a friend to join you, or gather a group - it's amazing to be out in darkness together.
​
​
-----------------------------------
​
​
9 // Ordinary Love
' for there was no room available for them ...' Luke 2.7
* * *
Good morning!
Families, eh? We know of a remarkable elderly lady who died peacefully this week; but a gentle sadness remains that she hadn’t quite been reconciled with her son.
There’s no neat resolution (yet) to the story. It is what it is. But the point is, it’s also the kind of context into which Jesus is born that first Christmas, and within which we can hope to find him still.
* * *
The ‘no room in the inn' sub-plot to the nativity, as you may well know, is probably a misconception. The Greek word kataluma refers more to a guest room than a hotel, and it's thought Mary and Joseph would have stayed with extended family in Bethlehem. But in a house already full with visitors for the census, there was only space downstairs where the animals would also shelter.
It’s not as dramatic as an innkeeper slamming the door in their faces at the school production, then - but the writer does want us to know there was 'no room’ for this heavily pregnant mum-to-be, where you’d really think she'd find some. As the author Scott Erickson says, ‘Something was going on.’
Mary had become pregnant while unmarried, of course, and it’s likely there were delicate social dynamics at play - as so often there are in so many ordinary families. Perhaps, then, Jesus is born not so much as an outsider, as more of an awkward presence on the inside of it all.
* * *
Most of our families are wonderful, and we wouldn’t swap them - but there are usually expectations to fulfil, traditions to live up to, cultural and spiritual values to uphold. ‘There is a pressure to conform to the group standard of what it looks like to represent this family name,’ writes Erickson.
Jesus didn’t arrive the orthodox way and not everyone would be happy. But I, for one, take heart that God did not conform to type, nor simply use the most acceptable means from which to build a base.
Jesus can surely empathise with any sense we may have of our not quite belonging, our not being able to toe the line. It seems to be a family trait of God's that we are all welcome to gather at his table, if we would like.
* * *
The challenge, I think, lies in making room for him ourselves - for he won’t fit in to all our expectations, norms and traditions, either. If we're not careful, we might be tempted to keep him downstairs, out of the way, just in case. Still inside, but only just.
If we’re willing, however, to make a space at the heart of it all, then his presence could yet help us be more present to those we find we're breaking bread with, at Christmas and beyond. As if we’re meeting him, in them.
Ordinary love is quite extraordinary, when you come to think of it. From the joys of shared experiences to the sometimes awkward dynamics of family; from the trial of bust-ups to the grief of losing someone dear - the landscape brings us ‘all the colours of the weather’, without doubt.
And it’s messy and holy and mundane and broken and blessed and unfinished and to be continued, which I confess gives me Advent hope for our friend and her son even now, and ... look, here comes Jesus! Where shall we put him? Next to the cousins?
* * *
May we make some room, today.
Go well!
Brian
briandraper.org
* * *
RSVP! Write a haiku
The second window is now open! As is our tradition, would you try a haiku for this window? It's a very observant form of poetry, in which you pay attention to what's before you, and describe it in three lines. But you could also pay attention to what's happening within you, if you like. Or write three lines about your journey, or an aspect of Advent that has resonated, inspired or challenged.
The idea is to make the first line comprise of five syllables, the second line seven, and the third line five. It's a helpful discipline which distills the essence. But don't worry if it doesn't quite add up, or you can't manage it. Send what you can - no one's judging you! (If you've been creating something pictorial, you're welcome to send that instead.)
The window is open for just today, and I'll begin uploading later this evening - so check back here tonight at this link to read the RSVPs!
Something to Listen To
This is a really lovely setting of the line 'Be still and know that I am God' by Simon de Voil. (Thanks to Susanne I for recommending.)
And this is a personal Advent favourite of mine - the hauntingly evocative 'Maranatha' by Lisa Gerrard and Patrick Cassidy. Turn it up loud, and settle in. Whisper the word 'Maranatha' (Come, Lord) as it's chanted.
One more? Oh, go on then! This is U2's 'Ordinary Love'.
We can't fall any further if, we can't feel ordinary love.
And we cannot reach any higher, if we can't deal with ordinary love.
Are we tough enough, for ordinary love?
​
​
-----------------------------------------
​
​
8 // The Stars Were Singing Too
''Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things ...' Psalm 119.18
* * *
Good morning!
It’s only Jesus, of course, who has fully revealed ‘the fullness of God in human form,’ as we read in Colossians. The pinnacle of Creation, let's say. That’s the wonder and the beauty and the miracle of Advent, right there!
Yet the wonder and the beauty and the miracle of humanity is that - while we are not God - we are all God-breathed, as Genesis tells us. Filled not just with air but God’s spirit sustaining and animating us in every moment. And that’s a very, very special place from which to start, today.
Why not pause to take a deeper breath.
Relax, smile, and bring your attention to your breathing.
And when you’re ready, imagine God is breathing through you.
For really, God is. You are God-breathed.
* * *
Admittedly, it’s easier to sense God’s spirit in some people more than others. I’m sure it was breezing in ego-less second innocence through Dick Van Dyke in that short film yesterday, which is what we respond to so joyfully, in our spirit; just as it billows through a toddler without inhibition in their first innocence.
But imagine, as an Advent act of awareness, if we looked for that presence in all those we meet, today, however well disguised it may be. We might, in the very act of looking, draw what is often over-looked closer to the surface.
After all, our attention, as Simone Weil puts it, is the rarest and purest form of generosity, and our undivided attention is tantamount to ‘prayer’. Imagine how it might have been to receive the attention of Jesus - as the fullness of God who walked this earth came eye to eye, and heart to heart, with you.
* * *
It’s not, of course, at all easy to be attentive in these strange days, when so much of our technology is designed specifically to steal and keep our attention captive elsewhere.
‘Brain rot’ is the (Oxford University Press) ‘Word of the Year’ for good reason - our attention spans are officially collapsing faster than ever into a free-fall of digital doom scrolling. But if we choose not to give our attention away cheaply to the usual, today - if we honour it instead as 'the rarest form of generosity', and offer it carefully and lovingly elsewhere - then who knows what may arise?
* * *
We might discern God's coursing through all sorts of unexpected places.
My daughter had an amazing eye as a toddler, and I was reminded this week how she once looked along a low wall to behold a layer of bright green moss with unbridled love and wonder. Something in her connected with something in it, I swear. I’d never have seen it myself, had she not shouted “Daddy, Moss!” I had to kneel to see it through her eyes, like prayer indeed. And 'it was good'.
I wonder what is really seeking our attention, beyond the pings of our devices, this Advent. What is drawing us, whispering, wooing? Sometimes the numinous is hard to miss, like angels singing to the shepherds from the skies. The Magi had to tune more carefully, patiently, watchfully, to know the stars were singing, too; to sense God's fullness, in their searching, pouring through.
* * *
May our eyes and ears be opened.
Go well!
Brian x
briandraper.org
* * *
Something to Practice
Keep watch for God's spirit in others, as you give the gift of your attention, today. Why not practice tuning in by listening with full attention to a favourite piece of music, too, or reading a psalm slowly without interruption, or standing outside amidst nature and being absolutely still. Try to spend some time without any devices today, and notice what you notice as you do. 'O come, O come!'
Be Still (Flowing River Version)
Last week I recorded a 'Be Still' meditation by the building site. Yesterday, I went to the river to record an alternative (and more peaceful) one which you can listen to here.
Something to Read
'Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendour, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.'
Thank you to Rae M for sharing this powerfully inspiring letter written Fra Giovanni Giocondo, a Franciscan Friar (and architect, engineer, antiquary, archaeologist and classical scholar!). He wrote it on Christmas Eve 1513, to Countess Allagia Aldobrandeschi, and it dovetails with today's reflection.
Something to Listen To
This one will get you in the Advent mood: A Light, by the Brilliance. Brilliant.
...
And here's a lovely piece of music from the Scottish composer Erland Cooper, who's originally from Stromness, Orkney. It's called Sule Skerry, and takes me into a gentle, natural place of hopefulness (and winter thaw!). It also reminds me personally to put aside ego, and let God's spirit breathe naturally in me.
This could be real love
What is our sacrifice
Hold back our egos
Put them to one side
It takes a lifetime
It takes a lifetime.
(After the song there's a snippet of conversation of an island 'tale', which you may wish to skip if you're in the zone, so press pause at six minutes.)
​
​
...............................................
​
7 // All the Colours of the Weather
'We love because He first loved us.' 1 John 4.19
* * *
Good morning!
Last week, someone was in touch to say that as a practice this Advent, each time they glimpse ‘the inside of love’, they’re writing it down. What a lovely idea! It’s when we pay attention and watch love fleshed out that we get to see inside a little more - and thus, I love to think, to see inside a little more of God.
So yesterday I was moved to note a couple of glimpses myself.
The first came from a friend, on her social media page, who tragically lost her daughter a year or so ago. This week she posted a dramatic panoramic photo she'd taken from the bend of a river, which contained the river, lit with a sunrise, a lone tree, and all sorts of weather - the sunshine, dark storm clouds, rain and a complete rainbow. 'It enveloped me,' she said. 'It felt visceral.' And she noted:
‘If the landscape is ok with all this going on at once, then maybe my heart can be ok with joy, loss, happiness, grief, tears and smiles all rolling in at once, too.’
* * *
​
Her beautiful (and faith-filled) words made me think that the inside of love is less like a sanitised indoor space and more like a wild panorama in which all is sacred within it. The joy, the loss, the happiness, the grief, the tears and the smiles - each of those is holy because it’s part of love, and thus it’s part of God.
I’ve still so much to learn about love, but I want to learn from this. I hope I’ll pause when tears come next, like rain, as if they’re truly sacramental. I will savour the sunrise on this most ordinary morning, for the miracle it is. I’ll sit with my own (much milder) loss, and let it come, and go, with blessing.
And I’ll wonder at the rainbow, when sunshine and storm arrive together. How important to remember - or indeed to realise - that one does not negate the other, and that the two can make a richer beauty yet, somehow; a sign of God’s ever-present love within and between and beyond them. All the colours.
* * *
And yesterday, curiously enough, I heard for the first time a new song by the band Coldplay called ‘All My Love’, containing these lines:
We've been through low
Been through sunshine, been through snow -
All the colours of the weather.
It’s funny how something can call for your attention.
Here was another glimpse inside of love for me - for Coldplay’s singer, Chris Martin, has recorded a gorgeous video with Dick Van Dyke as a tribute to the entertainer who's 99 this week. He still has that twinkle in his eye and a presence that tells you life’s worth living. Let's call it a second innocence.
As he sits surrounded by his family in the short film (which you can watch below), you can’t help remembering those for whom you’re grateful, too - and the times you’ve shared with those you’ve loved, and sometimes lost.
In explaining the song more broadly as a tribute to love, Chris Martin said, “It’s like, after everything we’ve been through, you have all my love.”
And with those words, I glimpsed afresh that Jesus comes in love precisely to go through everything with us - all the colours of the weather, in the wild, sacred panoramic landscape of the divine heart. He weeps, he laughs, he grieves, he comforts. And like my friend’s, his heart is good with that. Love gives it all.
* * *
With all my love.
Go well!
Brian x
briandraper.org
* * *
All My Love
If you have seven minutes, you can watch the lovely video 'All My Love' with Chris Martin and Dick Van Dyke here.
You might also enjoy this live version of Coldplay's song 'Pray', recorded at Glastonbury with the Palestinian-Chilean musician Elyanna.
Reflect on your heart as a landscape
Why not spend a few quiet minutes today drawing or doodling the landscape of your heart, all the colours of the weather, and some of the people you've given your love to over the years, as well as those who have given their all to you. Invite God to show you where and how He has accompanied you within it all.
Try to get out in the weathers, too. Let them envelope you.
​
​
-------------
​
6 // A Second Innocence
'The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb ... and a little child shall lead them.' Isaiah 11.6
* * *
Good morning!
This weekend, I felt drawn back to a story, told by Rob Bell, of the day he watched Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama greet each other.
He was there in the room when those two great ‘elders’ walked toward each other, embraced, and then - to Rob’s astonishment - fell about laughing like kids as they tickled each other.
Two spiritual and political heavyweights, who’d each been through so much heaviness personally and politically on behalf of their people, carrying a true lightness of being.
* * *
Rob surmised that they expressed very movingly the third of three stages in life we can go through - of ‘light, heavy, light’.
The original lightness belongs to childhood, of course, when we still believe in Father Christmas, say; or when you have no idea what it means to go out ‘without your face on’. We walk lightly. Better still, we skip. You may remember.
And then life happens. It can get heavy. We can get weighed down. At the same time, on our spiritual journey, the faith we might have brought with us can be rocked by life’s challenges, and the so-called doubts can come rolling in.
But that’s also where a beautiful invitation arrives quietly, if we're open to it - to step toward a second lightness, or what the author Dave Tomlinson calls so helpfully a ‘second innocence’.
* * *
That doesn’t mean going back to believing in Santa again; nor to all that we first held, in faith, dogmatically to be ‘true’. Experience is a necessary, albeit often painful part of our journey of life and faith, and we must let certain things go. Sometimes we must be disenchanted before we can be re-enchanted.
But surely Jesus says that we enter the kingdom as a child for good reason. How truly comforting that wonder and innocence can return to the mix - not to discount or divert us from life's grittier experience but to pick up and lead us further into the promise, and reality, of God's earth-bound, heavenly kingdom.
And Advent is surely the very best time to invite that child back into play. For if not now, then when?
* * *
I do so love Isaiah’s Advent prophecy that the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and ‘a little child shall lead them’. Lead us, and all of Creation, into second innocence. That's the trajectory we're on.
And even if he doesn't (quite) believe in Father Christmas any more, the child in me yearns to one day see a wolf and a lamb playing together in God’s arriving kingdom, literally, as well as metaphorically. That’s part of Advent's promise, for me. O come, O come!
But for now, what might a second innocence look like, embodied as a glimpse of future hope among us? I see it closest up in those who've suffered, yet whose child-like, Christ-like radiance lightens my spirit, when it feels it should be the other way round. Inspiring me toward simplicity, trust, openness, love.
Perhaps ‘light, heavy and light’ can meet within each of us, today, like the elders who met in that room; and amid all the pain and beauty of our shared experience, help us to live and laugh together again in hope, like the children of God we all really are.
* * *
May we be lightened, today.
Go well!
* * *
A Blessing for Today
This is the blessing I read at the end of Friday's 'Live at Five' gathering, by Kate Bowler.
When God thought you up,
it was a good day.
You were made by love, for love, to love.
May these words wrap around you like a warm embrace and remind you that you are, and always have been, a wonder.
If you'd like a soulful musical pause:
Have a listen to this sublime piece of Advent music by Harold Chaplin called Peace, Silence and Wonder. As it says in the video, 'find a quiet place, light a candle and press play'!
(You might remember the musician Rachel Chaplin's inspiring interview during my last Lent series. Harold is Rachel's late father-in-law.)
Advent Compass Point Prayer
You can read and/or listen to the Advent 2024 compass point prayer here.
Advent ‘Live at Five’
It was just wonderful to meet together on Friday for the first Advent 'Live at Five' of the series. If you haven't already watched it, you can do so here.
RSVPs
If you haven't yet caught up with last week's RSVPs, you can read them here!
​
​
​
-----------------------------
​
5 // The Inside of Love
'... he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant.' Phil 2.7
* * *
Good morning!
There’s a song I liked, back in the day, called ‘The Inside of Love’. It's by a band called Nada Surf, and when I heard it again recently, its aching refrain caught me unawares:
‘I wanna know what it’s like
On the inside of love.
Standing at the gates
I see the beauty above.’
Gulp. For me, it just resonates. Most of us are blessed to love and be loved, but since ‘God has set eternity in our hearts’, as Ecclesiastes puts it, I think we also sense, deep down, there’s more to this whole adventure yet. Our eyes glimpse the beauty above; our soul senses what might lay beyond the gates.
* * *
But how to go ‘further up, and further in’, as CS Lewis puts it in The Last Battle?
Well, here’s one inside-out thought. Gandhi said that ‘we live in a circle bounded by fear’, and I’m sure he’s right. It’s often healthy fear - I mean, it’s good not to get too close to the cliff edge, or to put our hand in the fire. But other fears can really limit us: the fear of being found out, for example; or of choosing the wrong path in life; or of not being worthy of God’s grace.
If the Bible is right and the opposite of fear is love (for ‘perfect love casts out all fear’), then it seems the way to step beyond our limiting circle (or comfort zone, as we might even call it) is simply to be led by love at every step, instead of pushed by fear.
Perhaps, for example, we could stop fearing so much how we’ll be judged in the presentation we're giving at work or church, and focus more on the love of helping those we’ve come to serve. And breathe!
* * *
I can’t imagine what it must have been like, that first Advent, for God to ‘humble himself’, cross the line, and step out of the heavenly comfort zone, to show us the Way. But this is one thing I draw from Him and His example: that if we step out in love, we step into love, more fully, in the process.
Isn’t it exquisite, by the way, how Jesus finds himself on the inside of love from the very start of this embryonic adventure, there in Mary’s womb: cocooned by the amniotic nurture of a peaceful mother and the brooding Holy Spirit. And knit together in the ‘secret place’ to which Psalm 139 alludes, where heaven and earth embrace within.
It’s the start of the most divine ‘in dwelling’ with humanity, which we’ll come on to next week. No one can force it, not even God. But the invitation’s there, if we do wanna know what it's like: step out in love - no fear! - and into love with Him.
* * *
May you step out, to step in, today.
Go well!
Brian
briandraper.org
* * *
1. Today! Advent ‘Live at Five’! 5pm GMT, YouTube
Join me today for our first Live at Five of the season! Click the link here just before 5pm GMT for the live feed! Or watch again later at the same link. 30 minutes of togetherness, contemplative practice and reflection on the week!
2. Small acts of love - comfort and joy!
Thanks to Martyn for this wisdom from Sister Chan Khong, whose advice in the face of an often overwhelming 'big picture' globally is so practical. You might like to set this as an achievable goal for practicing love today:
‘I try to give joy to one person in the morning, and remove the suffering of one person in the afternoon. That's enough. If you and your friends do not despise the small work, a million people will remove a lot of suffering.'
3. If you'd like a soulful choral pause:
Have a listen to O Radiant Dawn by James MacMillan. (Thanks to Hilary R!) It's usually meant for Dec 21st, the shortest day, but with Storm Darragh closing in, why not embrace the Advent hope right now.
4. RSVPs - now closed, but take a look!
Thank you so much for all your wonderful responses. I'm still uploading the ones I've received, so please don’t send any more - but DO keep checking back as more are going up this morning! You can read them here!
Plus
This is 'The Inside of Love' by Nada Surf. It's a pop song, so don't read too much into every line, but it's well worth listening for the feel of the chorus.
​
​
------------------------------------
​
3 // A Richness of Swallows
'Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.' John 1.3
* * *
Good morning!
You may well have had to let go of some things in 2024. I have. It's rarely easy, is it, and it usually makes any Advent end-of-year round-up bittersweet.
Yet as I've thought a little more about Monday's reflection on 'demand and gift', I realise I'm slowly coming to find, in God’s economy, that letting go can be a gift in itself, if we can release what is ‘ours’ as a gift, and a blessing.
I wrote a poem at the end of the summer (which I shared in my autumn series) as I'd felt so sad to wave off the iconic swallows, knowing I'd be waving off my kids to university any day, too. I wanted to hold on to them all - but tried instead to send them away with a blessing. It helped shift my mind-set, and heart-set.
A Blessing for a Swallow
Your days with us are almost done;
It’s time for you to find the sun.
Before you go, a quiet word
To bless you, most delightful bird.
Please travel well - be safe, be strong.
Be drawn up in Creation’s song
to go with grace and bless the ones
Who’ll cherish you as we have done.
We wish you didn’t have to go
But deep inside we surely know -
It’s only when you fly away
That Love can bring you back some day.
* * *
Weeks later, an email arrived like Manna from heaven, via Kay in South Africa (who’s part of this online community). She was joyfully reporting the safe arrival of the swallows and sending back a mirrored poem of her own, of welcome:
Arrival
Your season here has just begun,
You headed south and found the sun.
Before you left a prayer was heard
To bless you, fragile little bird.
You've travelled well, you're safe and strong;
Expression of Creation's song.
Returning leitmotif - how dear -
From those who blessed your journey here.
We'll treasure all your grand displays,
The flashing blues, and whites, and greys.
Exchange of love from far off isles
Connecting us across the miles.
* * *
Oh, the sense of connectedness in Creation! That we are all part of the whole, and the whole contains it all: departure and arrival, welcome and goodbye. Such a joy to receive this, from South to North, from warm to cold, from light to dark, and to pass it on again now.
And isn’t it in this flow, somehow, that the blessing lives? Perhaps in these moments, we glimpse how God’s economy is not even about a ‘gift for a gift’ - but the unconditional flow of love which we come to experience most vividly when it flows through us. As we release it, so we are released. You might say it's the gift that keeps on giving.
* * *
​
It's still not easy to live in such flow, of course. As the poet Malcolm Guite suggests in his sonnet 'As If', Jesus appeals to our imagination to help us to release heaven here on earth with him, "as if...":
'To live as if I had no fear of losing
To spend as if I had no need to earn,
To turn my cheek as if it felt no bruising,
To lend as if I needed no return,
As if my debts and sins were all forgiven,
As if I too could body forth his Heaven.'
How releasing.
* * *
The swallows don’t have to think too hard about this kind of stuff, of course. They live in the present, part of the blessing. Perhaps it's no surprise their collective noun is a 'richness'!
But we do have to think about it, and one thing that helps me, this Advent, is to remember that one day, I'll have to let go of all that I think of as 'mine'. It never was, of course. Instead, I was His, and so were you. Thanks to the 'Word made flesh ... without whom nothing was made that is made', we can live, now, as if life were a gift from the start. And give it all back to God, with our love.
* * *
May you find your flow in Him, today.
Go well!
Brian
briandraper.org
* * *
Advent Pause
You can read Malcolm Guite's full sonnet 'As If' at his website here.
Have a listen to Eric Whitacre's Christmas piece 'Lux Aurumque' ('Light/warm and heavy as pure gold/and the angels sing softly to the newborn baby'). Relax your shoulders, take a breath, and give yourself to the moment and the music. Invite the 'Word made flesh' to help you live your life as gift, this Advent.
Perhaps you'd also like to reflect, today, on what you're letting go of this year, and what you've received. I know there are many ways to do this prayerfully. I like to go to a river, and stand on a bridge, and facing downstream, imagine the stream is taking away those things I need to let go of. And facing upstream, I seek to receive in openness that which is coming toward me.
Advent '24 Compass-Point Prayer
You can read and/or listen to the Advent 2024 compass point prayer here.
We'll take the first round of RSVP responses tomorrow, and I'll explain how in tomorrow's reflection. But let me encourage you, if you have time, to consider how you might respond creatively to anything you have read or reflected on so far this week!
Huge thanks and love to Kay Robinson!
​
​
------------------------------------
​
​
2 // A*D*V*E*N*T
'They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ...' Is 40.31
* * *
Good morning!
Yesterday I challenged myself to distil some of the essence of what, for me, Advent is about, into an acronym. As a writing discipline it took me into a helpful space, so I thought I'd share my six mini reflections which make up a whole. It means today's reflection is a bit longer, but I hope it inspires!
For me, then, ‘A*D*V*E*N*T’ (in part at least!) means:
Awaiting Down-to-Earth, Visceral Encounter with Numinous Truth!
* * *
Awaiting:
In Advent, we watch and wait along with the prophets, and with Mary on her pregnant path to Bethlehem … We wait, too, for the day Jesus will come again.
And it’s vital to rehearse the story and to sit patiently within it. But Advent 'waiting' comes most alive, I'm sure, within our own, lived experience.
We’re each awaiting some kind of resolution in life. You know what yours is - and from health diagnoses to interest rates falling, to climate justice and peace (please God) on Earth, there’s so much, right now, to wait for.
And we may feel impotent; but waiting gains potency, doesn't it, when we choose to wait with God, upon God, within it all.
For it’s in this very waiting ‘with, and upon’ that we draw close, and closer, to God. We may yet find that life is less about neat resolutions, anyway - and more, how our messy, unloved days can be graced with God’s love when webring God's love to them through our waiting. Informing and transforming our actions, as well as our hearts, as we go.
Down-to-Earth:
We follow the ‘Word made flesh’ who came, and comes, not to help us escape this world but to embrace it in deepest love. And whyever not?
In Samantha Harvey’s (2024 Booker-Prize winning) novel Orbital, an astronaut on the International Space Station reflects so movingly on her view of the Earth:
‘No need to speak; you only have to look out through the window at a radiance doubling and redoubling. The earth, from here, is like heaven. It flows with colour. A burst of hopeful colour.
‘When we’re on that planet we look up and think heaven is elsewhere, but here is what the astronauts and cosmonauts think: maybe all of us born to it have already died and are in an after-life.’
How heavenly! Of course, if you zoom in, you see beauty but also such brokenness. "Your kingdom come on Earth …" Jesus taught us to pray, as he learned to walk this very earth so humbly, to bring us home to where we are.
Visceral:
When Advent arrives, something in me leaps for joy. I can't say what, exactly, but that, in a sense, is the point.
I’m reminded of John the Baptist leaping for joy in the womb of Elizabeth, when Mary comes to visit. It’s not a rational reaction. It’s a deeply felt response to the promise and presence of God. It's the ‘thrill of hope’ we can’t quite put our finger on, but which lifts and inspires and points us inward and onward.
There are often tears, too. Whenever you encounter unexpected tears, says Frederick Buechner, ‘It is well to pay closest attention to them.’
Both our body and spirit whisper to us in ways that are felt, and help us to sense what we can't put into words. After all, God is 'so much more than we can ask for or imagine'. We don’t have to compute it all to ‘know’ - sometimes we can stop computing altogether, and trust we know more than we realise.
Encounter:
And this is what it all comes down to. Encounter with God.
I think of those in the story: Zechariah and Elizabeth; Mary and Joseph; the shepherds abiding; the Magi; Simeon and Anna. What must it have been like for them to meet him? The Messiah is both expected and unexpected in the form he takes, in the way he enters in. What is it like for us?
I love Barbara Brown Taylor’s riff on the Jesus who comes like a thief in the night. Why would a compassionate Lord do that, she asks? ‘Because you are so well protected the rest of the time. It’s the only time your guard is down.
'If we could ever let him in to do his work, then we might find him emptying his pockets instead of filling them, giving us so much more than the poor little piles we have spent our lives protecting.’ O come, O come.
Numinous:
“Fear not!” the angels keep on saying, and not just for the fun of it.
‘Numinous’ opens a place of mystery in which humans tremble. It's a holiness, an otherness, a presence which lifts us from our small stories into a greater one. In such moments the ego dissolves, which is part of what’s scary - as we realise the story does not revolve around us, but Him. So it really is good news, of great joy, as the angels sing from the skies - but it’s big news, all the same.
‘With the numinous,’ writes CS Lewis, ‘you feel wonder and a certain shrinking.’
One night when I was young, I looked up at the stars and felt overwhelmed with a shivering sense of the majesty of the universe. You've probably felt likewise. The same sort of enchantment can hit me on Christmas Eve, out of the Advent blue. There’s something in the air that we can only gesture toward.
When Jesus is transfigured (Luke 9), in a sense he reveals the more of what was here all along. ‘Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God,’ writes the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. "Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!" (Gen 28.10-17), says Jacob.
Advent reminds us that things are never quite what they seem, and this time of year, like no other, can draw us back into a realm of wakeful wonder.
Truth:
‘Truth’ might feel impersonal to end with, until we remember how Jesus says he is ‘the truth’ (John 14.6). And how John also writes (1.14) that we have seen the glory of the Father in the Son, ‘full of grace and truth’. So it’s entirelypersonal.
At a time when so much ‘truth’ is up for grabs on social media and in politics and in the life of at least one person I know who’s being subjected to untruths spoken about him in public, truth does matter, doesn’t it?
But I'm relieved to think that truth is less a concept to be co-opted, and more a relationship to be nurtured. Who am I true to? And how am I true? I love how the Message paraphrases Psalm 51.8, addressing God: ‘What you're after is truth from the inside out. Enter me, then; conceive a new, true life.’
* * *
A new true life, indeed, this numinous, down-to-earth Advent.
May it be so!
Go well!
Brian
briandraper.org
* * *
Advent Pause
1. The one-breath breath prayer
Let's keep it simple and repeat yesterday's prayers, to help them embed.
Breathing in: "O Come, O come ...
Breathing out: "Emmanuel."
Set your alarm, if you like, to pray this at mid-day as well.
2. Advent '24 Compass-Point Prayer
You can read and/or listen to the Advent 2024 compass point prayer here.
3. Earth From Space
This a rather lovely series of time-lapse videos filmed by Nasa from the International Space Station. They've added 'Walking in the Air' from the Snowman to it, which gives it a rather atmospheric, Christmas feel. But you could also turn the sound down and play this gorgeous piece by Hannah Peel instead: Sunrise Through the Dusty Nebula. It's so evocative.
Why not step outside and watch the International Space Station come overhead tonight. To find out when it's passing over your head, click here! Think of the astronauts looking down upon the Earth, remember how heavenly it seems from there, and sense that heavenliness around you. Say the Lord's Prayer, to close.
* * *
Credits
Samantha Harvey, Orbital (Vintage, 2024)
Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way (SPCK, 2011)
​
---------------------------
​
1 // Opened by the Gift
Good morning!
It's so good to be starting this journey with you through Advent. Please take a moment to relax, and to breathe, and to bring yourself with quiet reverence to God's Presence within you and around you.
Be still.
And may ripples of peace flow outward from this still point today - into all that you do, and into all those you meet. Amen.
* * *
‘And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.’ (Luke 2.1)
The Christmas story we inhabit for a few magical weeks each December begins with a demand from an imperial overlord ... but ends with a gift from the Lord of all: ‘For unto us a child is born.'
A gift of life and love, soon to be reciprocated in gifts from the Magi (have you noticed how a blessing always seems to overflow, as if it really can’t help it?).
The story shifts from the economy of empire to one of gift. The tables are being turned from the very start; the presence of a very different power, stirring.
O Come, O come.
* * *
And the first, and perhaps only, step for us this Advent, amid so many pressing and sometimes even crushing ‘demands', is to be open to this different kind of power and to its flow of gift which no money can co-opt or buy.
Why not open yourself to it now, prayerfully, just by using your breath (which itself is an inestimable gift!):
Breathing in: "O Come, O come ...
Breathing out: "Emmanuel."
(And repeat.)
* * *
'Gift' was always the currency in God's kingdom, in God's Creation. Take trees (and why not?!). In her latest book The Serviceberry, the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the ecology of a fruit tree to show how soil, sun, water, air, minerals, fungi, birds, insects and so many other creatures share in the free flow of giving and receiving around it and within it. 'All flourishing is mutual.'
And like the trees, she says, we too can be at the heart of such an ecology: 'When the mother nurses her child, the boundary of the individual self becomes permeable and the common good is the only one that matters. Mothers do not sell their milk to their babies, it is pure gift, so that life can continue.’
* * *
I’m reminded of Mary's self-giving love for Jesus. How extraordinary, come to think of it, that it was God who was being prepared, in utero that first Advent, to receive so openly the ‘pure gift’ from us - to draw out from humanity that which had been placed within us from the beginning.
Might we, then, also prepare ourselves to receive from Him, this Advent, in such vulnerable, loving reciprocation? The words of the psalmist resonate: 'I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me' (Ps 131).
Imagine, in our turbulent world, if we could share this kind of peace around. All flourishing is mutual, and I'm sure it can start, today, with us - as we step into this Advent story together, ready and willing, we pray, to be opened by the Gift.
* * *
May you be open and opened, today.
Go well!
Brian
Advent Pause
1. The one-breath breath prayer
Repeat the breath prayer, for as long as you'd like in the quietness:
Breathing in: "O Come, O come ...
Breathing out: "Emmanuel."
Pause to pray this, too, in a busier or 'demanding' place today, and try to receive 'the Gift' of God through others, even as you let it flow through you.
2. Advent '24 Compass-Point Prayer
I've drafted a new compass point prayer for Advent 2024. I'm going to pray it every day at sunrise - perhaps you'd like to join me in praying it, too. You can read and/or listen to the Advent 2024 compass point prayer here. (You can also download it to take with you on your device to use wherever you go!)
3. How will you go?
The way we make a journey can help determine where we get to. So why not pause now to choose one word or phrase that best describes how you'd like to make your own way through this season. Write it on a post-it, or in an Advent journal ... and let's see how we go!
* * *
Credits
Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance(Penguin, 2024)
I'm grateful to Jeanette Winterson for her reminder that the story starts with a demand and ends with a gift, in her book Christmas Days (Penguin, 2016)
​