Spiritual Practice of the Week: Advent

I light this candle for joy today.

In Advent we focus on hope, we wage peace, we bring joy alive, and we contemplate where love is born.

 I like this quote:

"Joy is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow."

Perhaps our task as people of faith is to find places where joy can add flavour and help us from becoming too dry, stagnant, less alive. 

May we find those moments where Joy can creep in even in the midst of children dying, even in the midst of financial hardship, even in the midst of tears and fear.
This poem was written by Judith Hill on September 11.2001.  It has words of us today in these short days after such horrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut    
The question is:  How can we focus on hope, wage peace, bring joy alive and contemplate where love is born in these waiting days of Advent?  How can I be ready of Love to arrive; for Christ to be born?   

Wage Peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and fresh mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for thank you in 3 languages.

Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the word seemed so fresh and precious:

Have a cup of tea and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judith Hill