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This Advent as I read through Isaiah I notice the children most of all. Isaiah 7 There is a child. It is the son of Isaiah and his name is Remnant. He walks alongside his father as a sign to an anxious king on the cusp of battle. The ruler is under pressure, the neighbors to the north advancing and Jerusalem under threat. He is too preoccupied with the pending conflict to notice the child by Isaiah’s side, I suppose.…

I sat in the conference room at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. I came to learn about justice – knowing I’d need to confront injustice on the way. How do you prepare for a pummeled heart? I listened to Anthony Ray Hinton tell us what happened to him at the hands of our justice system. As a young man he was arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. He spent 30…

Isaiah 9 Isaiah watches as the world around him crumbles. “How long, O Lord?” he cries out. Until it all is laid waste, is the short answer. The poetry is more descriptive. Until the cities, houses, and land are uninhabited. Until exile and emptiness mark the landscape. Until a mere tenth remain the destruction will continue. It will leave only a burnt out stump of a city. But while the stump smolders the prophet stokes hope. He says that buried…

Sometimes Advent comes like an invitation. This year Advent arrives as a discipline that must be obeyed. I strike the match and light the first candle. “Hope!” it insists.   I turn to Isaiah, the prophet who most challenges and comforts me. I listen to what he says. He tells of a crumbling city. The weight of injustice, not glory, presses upon Jerusalem. He looks around and sees institutions breaking down, the economy gripped by rampant corruption and compassion for…

A Widening Light: Poems of the Incarnation, edited by Luci Shaw,  is one of my favorite collections of poetry, and the one I hold close during Advent. This is my favorite poem of the collection, penned by Madeleine L'Engle:   After annunciation This is the irrational season When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason There'd have been no room for the child.   I loved these words from the first reading, when I was young…

The shelves are heavy laden with volumes, large and small, on Christmas. There are a growing number on Advent, too. But each year I tend to return to a simple collection of tried and true words to accompany me through Advent, toward Christmas. [one_third][/one_third][two_third_last]The First Christmas: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus' Birth by Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan My own participation (and celebration) of Christmas was deepened when I better understood what the Gospels actually said about…

It was a Sunday afternoon and we were shopping for some sundries at a big box store. My son and I stood in line with our hummus, asparagus, milk and raspberries. The aisles already decked for Christmas, shopping carts overflowing with groceries and soon-to-be-gifts, my boy said he wished we could just skip to Christmas and open presents. I winced. Then I realized I had done him a disservice. “Our culture has misled you,” I said, as he leaned on…

I am a holy contrarian. I don’t deck the halls, play merry, shine bright or sparkle. I dim the lights and lean into the hush. It is Advent, after all. I crack open my spirit and let the dissonance cry out, I rend my soul and allow the discord to seep in slowly, engorging every chamber of my seed-sized heart. I drop all pretenses shielding me and look the weary world straight in her tear-stained eyes. The suffering doesn’t stare…

Our streets tremble these days. They quake with so much wrong and woe. How can we think of green garlands and twinkle lights, or send carolers out on the streets still stained with the blood of our sons? Ashen mothers offer their call and response from one street corner to the next, a slow dirge then an anguished cry. They clutch graduation portraits to their chest. Stand in front of cameras testifying to the humanity of their children, the inhumane…

I used to anticipate Christmas. I anticipated The Birth, the joy and the peace. The weeks of waiting, called Advent, intensified the arrival of the baby. The purple-clad days of Advent and its slow burning candles allowed Christmas to burst bright red on the scene, to sound like a crescendo across the landscape. Now I anticipate differently. I await the redemption of the broken down places and the fractured ways of the world. It’s a longing not quickly resolved by…