I am writing this letter on January 6, the day of Epiphany, the epiphany being that the light came into the world and that the bread of life (Bethlehem meaning "house of bread') is for all people. The three wise-men, representative of the Gentile nations, receive the inclusive message of salvation. Led by the star, they bring gifts honoring the baby as king, prophet, and priest, including the burial preparation gift of myrrh, foreshadowing that he came in birth to die. What a time to revisit, by the Spirit, this dramatic encounter.
MEANING IN RETREAT AND DAILY
I am on a three-day retreat at St. Francis Springs Prayer Center, which I try to schedule at the beginning of each year. The protected and intentional separation allows me space to inventory the challenges, blessings, and insights from the past year as well as space to assess my journey in Christ. Also, the time is fruitful for listening, praying, and discerning the year ahead. Thus, the retreat time is also a bridge between two years, a transition.
Each year there also seems to be a special gift in the timing of the retreat. Last year the retreat fell on the final days of Father Louie's 15-year tenure as the Center’s director, visionary and spiritual energizer. His departure was news to me when I arrived. Louie and I became friends over the years, so it was a delight for me to be able to share meals and conversations as he closed his tenure. In fact, some years back, the Verbena intercessor team met here for a weekend, and the team, to a person, was struck by the realness, openness, and hospitality of Father Louie, one uniform expression being that, "He is more comfortable in his own skin than anyone I have ever met." Father Louie, a Franciscan priest, has that effect on everyone.
So, what a delight and surprise, tinged with sadness and uncertainty. I felt God's favor in being a witness to the closing celebration of Mass with all the volunteer partners gathered to honor Christ and Father Louie. It was a joyful celebration in song, worship, and liturgy. Louie delivered a precious homily which I recorded. The Eucharist elements were handed to each one by Father Louie as tears flooded his face. Later, so characteristic of him, he referred to allergies that had caused his eyes to water. There was just no coincidence that I was there. The recognition of that gift flooded back to me at the beginning of this current retreat.
My experience then is that meaning and timing line up in retreat in special ways that are gifts to me to recognize. I am finding that even in daily, outside retreat, there are gifts to receive if I am present and stand in the flow of the supernaturally arranged and intimate connection of the dots. Today, this retreat lines up with Epiphany. I want to be one with it, present to it "as the past returns to the present".
SACRAMENTAL VISION OF REALITY
"Expectant" seems to be the word. From the beginning of Advent through today I have been flooded with resources bringing meaning each day. Our Christmas tree: I love Christmas trees. This Christmas ours was particularly tall, wide, and beautifully shaped. It was decorated lovingly by Laurie, Mary Grace, and our grandchildren. Each morning I turned it on, sat in my nearby chair, and gazed up and down the tree: this ornament, that one, the star and the angel at the top with the spectacular green branches extending in all directions.
A dear friend gave me Michael Guite’s Advent devotional, Waiting on the Word. It just showed up and I could not have felt more seen, more understood in the creativity of this devotional format. Each commentary for the day is preceded by a poem. The commentary explicates the poem and the connection to the artist's story and to sacred reality. The discovery of Malcolm Guite, his scholarship, his literary mind, and his stewardship of sacred thought, was a gift I was unwrapping every day.
In addition, a week or so before Christmas, the Wall Street Journal published an essay entitled "Finding the Sacred in the Delights of Christmas" by James Matthew Wilson, again an author unknown to me till then. Like Guite, he brings forth the reality within the reality. It is an amazing article which I cannot do justice to here. I hope you will read it and also take in the most amazing color reproductions. Referring to the liturgical calendar marking Advent and Epiphany and ordering the year in meaning for believers, he notes:
By observing a fixed calendar, our private emotions become
an occasion for genuine communion with others, with the
whole cosmos and with the divine. What grounds that communion
is more than personal sentiment. For believers, Christmas makes
claim about how things are, asking us to think about reality in a
different way.
The main point, which I believe many begin to grasp through an intensive, even as I keep grasping it, is this:
For Christians, this is the mystery of the incarnation...
The particular no longer stands in opposition to the universal;
rather the particular bears the universal within itself. Christians
call this paradox the sacramental vision of reality, and it means
that everything, even the smallest thing, is shot through with a
significance that should awe us.
TETHERED
Let me attempt to illustrate this reality of sacramental vision through an experience in prayer with the Board of Verbena. In reporting her experience in prayer, Mary Katherine Peters said that she saw a giant, multi-colored hot air balloon, which was tethered to stakes in the ground, pulling free from the tethers and rising. A few days after returning home, she spotted an actual multi-colored hot air balloon rising over her home. She filmed it and sent it to us. Wow. Coincidence? Arrangement? What message and to whom? Mary Katherine, the Peters, Charlottesville, Verbena, the Church, the country? Maybe all of the above and more as we keep pondering it in our hearts, as Mary did with the mysteries unfolding to her.
From these communications, the word "tether" stuck with me, and I began to encounter the word in paradox. "Holding back", "holding down", "restraining", these were the images or synonyms I identified with. But then, from Wilson:
"Faith isn't about personal sentiments that come and go. Rather feelings are tethered to a reality that stands outside ourselves."
In addition, the word appears in the Reflection by Kathy Hendricks from "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread" this very day of Epiphany, January 6. The title in fact is "Tethered to Love". In examining the path out of fear, a restraining and debilitating "tether" if you will, she says this: "When we remain in God, we tether ourselves to love that will carry us through any storm." Tethered to and in Christ, we are untethered from fear, anxiety, deception, and the false self. We are pulled up, tethered to Reality, soaring in the brilliant colors of our true self in communion with the whole body of Christ and that great cloud of witnesses. Community.
EXPECTANT
Expectant in this day. Yes. Expectant in this year. Yes. Expectant that God keeps all his promises in an arrangement and timing of his own making. Yes. Just as the star stood over Bethlehem; just as the body and blood, the bread of life, is ours today. Expectant because on this day of my departure, January 7, the gospel account is from Luke 4 as Jesus announces his ministry in the fulfillment of Isaiah 61, both texts central to the teaching and transformation in an intensive. My takeaway from this convergence is a strong, direct, and personal affirmation to continue on, in the ministry of healing and discipleship through prayer, one person at a time.
Finally, I am expectant that He is returning, as promised and arranged, in the fullness of time.
Happy New Year,
Trip and Laurie