Transportation is a Privilege

When I moved to the community where my new church is located, I was lucky enough to find a home close enough for me to walk to and from my place of worship & work. This is both a good motivator for me to walk when the weather is nice, and a source of privilege that I can drive that half mile when the weather is less than nice.

Several weeks ago, I checked the weather as I usually do in the morning and decided it would be a good day to wear sandals into work, and only a lightweight sweater over my shirt.  It was going to be mostly sunny all day and I would spend most of my time inside besides.

The weather report was wrong, and later as I was working remotely from church in a local coffee shop, it started to rain heavily.  I tried to wait it out to no avail. By the time I made it home that evening, I had damp shoulders and soaking toes.

It was uncomfortable for me, but by the time I got home, only an inconvenience.  I could take my shoes off, dry my feet, and have warm socks on within minutes. I am reminded, however, that this is a privilege, just as it was a privilege a few hours later to retrace my steps back to church for worship in my car rather than walk in the continual rain.

While living in Manchester 2015/2016, someone giving me a ride on a rainy day was an absolute blessing; most of the time, I would arrive slightly damp wherever it was I was headed. It was an expense and a treat if I decided to take the bus (and I would make sure to use my pass as much as possible to get my 4 pounds worth of a ticket).  I have fond memories of peddling through a far deeper than expected puddle near a park, and the funny look I got from a priest when caught drying my socks on the radiator in our office.

I give thanks for my ability to walk, ride, or drive wherever I need to go whenever I need to go. And I appreciate every opportunity I am afforded to pay forward giving a kind ride to someone else.
 

Raging against Advent

The simplicity of Advent is sometimes hard to capture.  It is not a sad, quiet time quite like Lent as we prepare ourselves for the Great Three Days of liturgy leading up to Easter.

It is similar like what winter does in nature, which may be why I struggle every year skipping straight over winter/Advent in my mind, and look forward to the joyous springtime that is Jesus' birth.  I really don't like how grey winter can be in Virginia.  The trees have lost their leaves, the sky takes on a bleak grey-like quality, and very rarely is there a sunny day that is not also too blinding without the shade of a good tree to contrast the brightness.  I waited at least a week after Thanksgiving here in America before I decorated for Christmas in my new home.  Festive music is still strictly forbidden from my car radio, and occasionally I will abide a holiday tune played in a store to make its jolly way into my heart.

I still rage against Advent in the way that I rage against winter in the northern hemisphere.

The Lord is with us (he is with us indeed) already!  Why should we have patience to sit through four weeks of Advent waiting for this Messiah when we've already been saved by grace?  Why does it matter that we have Advent specific music to sing during worship on a Sunday and we ignore the good Christmas tunes we all know by heart until after December 25?

My Advent wreath this year,
a sign of hope and light in winter

Taking a look into scripture history, the journey of Advent begins to make more sense.  The Jews of the Old Testament waited for hundreds of years for the One to come to earth.  There were many prophets who paved the way, many pains in communities who lived through diasporas and exodus' from their homelands, and many long winters to endure for this wonderful sign of Hope to feel even within our sights on the horizon.

So we wait today, thousands of years later, in the softness of our Advent.  Our four weeks of considering what waiting for Hope is like.  To sit in these long nights, pull our communities in close, and strengthen relationships to get us through the many pains we have today.

Some of us are not very pleased with the state of US and UK politics (among many many other issues of justice in many many communities around the world).  Some of us are very comforted by the current leadership lineup.  For some of us, these next four years are looking like the forty years the Hebrews had to wander the dessert before being allowed into the Promised Land.  We gather in our communities to seek comfort, this Advent.  To take a deep breath and gather our wits about us for the journey ahead.  Whichever path you're on, there are others walking beside you, praying beside you, and struggling beside you.

Advent is a time for acknowledging our brokenness, and acknowledging how powerful it is that our Hope came among us in our brokenness just as damaged, and said 'Peace be with you.'

And all I can say to that is Amen.

 

Reflection from 17 June 2016

Packing

The date suddenly hits you
  

One month until you finish work, another few weeks before you leave - naturally you start winding projects to a close and packing your things.  There is so much to do, where do you begin?

You start with the immediate, making sure to take in every new moment and experience, tallying up all you've yet to do and all you've already done.  Then these lists take you back in your memory to the beginning of this journey.


Lets start over


Packing started the day you arrived, in a reverse way: everything was new and you had to take it all in somehow.  Sights, tastes, smells, new people, new work, new everything.  All of it at once and you were pushing all this excitement into every day, packing in as much as you could into a day.

It very soon stopped being new, and even though you're miles from where you began it all started to feel familiar, but you were given the chance to be unfamiliar.  Not unfamiliar with others, but with yourself.  Given the chance, you now have the opportunity to grow in a new environment foreign yet familiar to the one you came from.


But now you are at the end and you've still got to pack


How do you fit all of this garden of change into one suitcase, one backpack, one sentence when people ask you how your year was?  You want to ask them, 'Do you have a year for me to adequately explain?'

All you can do is smile when you answer, 'It was good, and I am still trying to unpack all of my experience that has changed me through the past year, though I did not bring nearly as much physically back as I left with!'  But the memories you packed into your heart along the way


They take up no room and weigh the heaviest of all.

Garden from Rocamadour, France