There is a line in W. H. Auden’s (1907-1973) Christmas Oratorio that I want to leave you with on this Christmas Day, as this Season of Advent meditations come to an end.
In the meantime / There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair / Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem.
You and I live “in the meantime.” There are bills to pay and there is work to be done and there are always new things to learn. In the midst of all that, there is the work God has given us to do: “to redeem the Time Being.” This work is not separate from all of those other things, but discovered in the midst of them and permeating all of them. Nor are we given that work and then left alone. We are given one another, as companions along the way. And we are promised God-with-us, Emmanuel, until the end of the ages. Very good news of a great joy, indeed!
I want to thank all who wrote meditations this Advent Season, and especially those who wrote for the first time this year. We have heard from many different voices - young and old, male and female - all of whom make St. Francis a very special place.Today as we celebrate the Incarnation we are reminded that the practice of daily prayer, of reading and marking and learning and digesting Holy Scripture (even those difficult apocalyptic texts!) and then connecting these old texts to our own lives (as, for example, we tell stories to our children, or walk the halls of Wachusett High School looking for a friendly face, or try to make our way in the darkness) engages us in this process of "redeeming the Time Being." In the process we discover God's Story as it intersects with our stories, transforming them into sacred stories. And when that happens, Christ is born anew in us.
I want to thank all who wrote meditations this Advent Season, and especially those who wrote for the first time this year. We have heard from many different voices - young and old, male and female - all of whom make St. Francis a very special place.Today as we celebrate the Incarnation we are reminded that the practice of daily prayer, of reading and marking and learning and digesting Holy Scripture (even those difficult apocalyptic texts!) and then connecting these old texts to our own lives (as, for example, we tell stories to our children, or walk the halls of Wachusett High School looking for a friendly face, or try to make our way in the darkness) engages us in this process of "redeeming the Time Being." In the process we discover God's Story as it intersects with our stories, transforming them into sacred stories. And when that happens, Christ is born anew in us.
Merry Christmas!
(Rich Simpson)
p.s. This year Ash Wednesday falls on February 22 and Lent will begin! Is it crazy for me to believe that we can get forty different writers to do this in Lent? It would mean all who wrote this time around continuing and finding still another dozen new writers. I will need your help... So after the dust of the New Year settles, I'll begin taking names for Lent. If you've written this time around I hope you will consider doing so again; just let me know. And if you've been a faithful reader of this blog during this past Advent Season and want to take a crack at writing in Lent, then please let me know that as well! God's peace and blessings in the New Year and thanks again to all of our writers.
No comments:
Post a Comment