Decades ago, I wrote a blessing prayer for this season that began with a reference to nothing but a flicker of hope in “the fading glory of these autumn days, when night creeps early on to darkness; and leaves us, bound in shadows, longing for the light.” And yet, it remains that flicker of hope that I want to write about.

If we want peace, it has to start with us. We must uproot violence from our language, in the ways we relate to one another.

Advent holds such a sacred space – the story and formation of the womb is tucked into our souls. Advent is most often thought of as an individual journey, even though we may celebrate together.

In this season of Advent, may we all be a little more perfected in love so that we may hear, perhaps for the first time, the message of Jesus and the angels, “Do not be afraid.”

As the days grow shorter and autumn deepens its hues, this past Sunday marked the beginning of the season many Jesus-followers call Advent. Once, Mary began her long journey to Jerusalem to oblige their state’s census while growing the life of Emmanuel (God-with-us) within her. Now, we attend to the ordinary matters of life while carrying the hoped-for life of the Divine kin-dom, culminating in our collective celebration of the Christmas season.

At the end of Christmas Eve worship we light candles and sing the familiar hymn, “Silent Night.” Yet how many of us will find ourselves in the lonely silence of Christmas this year? Oh silent night, we cry out. How long until we can raise our voices once again? So we sing out...

Hi friend,Are you looking for community on the way to Christmas? Make Advent Great Again just might be what you're looking for. We’re back to compassionately struggle - not against some fabricated ‘war on Christmas,’ but against the steady dehumanization that attempt to desecrate God's image in the face of each other - the war on Advent.

In this season, I drink in silence whenever I have the opportunity to engage it, whenever I become aware that I need it. No matter how hard I try each year to create space around the holidays, to be less busy, to say no to overload, I find myself craving even more simplicity, more presence offered and received. In the past week I arrived an entire day early to not one, but two different appointments and had to ruefully smile at myself for allowing my calendar descend into chaos. And in those moments, after something has fallen through the cracks, I take a breath and let the silence do its work. It’s interesting what happens then: sometimes grief’s sinewy fingers tighten around my throat; sometimes my thoughts continue to race and that spot just between my eyebrows feels achy and tight; sometimes love warms my belly and bleeds into my fingertips; sometimes joy feels like a sunrise in my chest.

On this first Sunday of Advent, consider the new that is coming. Take some time to discover what you are most missing in your life – and then give that thing away. Where you long for a friend to support you, instead be the friend who calls another to find out if they are well. When you long to know peace, instead be the non-anxious presence during times of tension. Where you long for community and connection, be the heartbeat of whatever group you are with. When you long to feel less afraid, be the hand that reaches out with generosity. When you long to know your presence here matters, be the gift of welcoming.

“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” are both 19th century American carols created in the context of war which address its horror directly.

A Not So Obvious Message For instance, most everyone I know contends that the mustard seed parable (Matthew 13:31-32) is about faith. I think that’s an easy route to take. When you read the parable, on the surface it’s about something tiny growing into a large tree or bush, and it seems to make sense why someone may think it’s about faith. For me the power in Jesus’ teachings is that he posited the NOT SO OBVIOUS, in order to short-circuit and dismantle our conventional ways of thinking and being.

Although Christmas is mostly thought of in terms of feasting and celebrating, Jesus’s, birth — like his death -- was born of struggle, and that struggle was to be fully accepted. Similarly, when I think of the birth of Jesus, one of the themes that looms large for me is LGBTQ youth and young adult homelessness.

Why do we care so deeply for the child born to Mary and Joseph in a Bethlehem cave and not the millions of other children born into a poverty of one kind or another? Is it because of who he became, or simply because we can only care for one person at a time?

As we approach the Third Sunday of Advent, I can’t help wondering why the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary (the list of prescribed readings for Sunday worship) have failed to remember the stories and names of our foremothers?

This is the season Christian faith communities of every sort prepare in one way or another to observe the nativity of something deemed to be holy and salvific. We recall ancient prophecies that foretell a “prince of peace, and wonderful counselor” comes around each year with a message to save us from ourselves. (Isaiah 9:6) Once born into a world of violence and terror not unlike our own, the message remains unchanged. Regrettably, so too has been the obstinate ways in which we have collectively refused to live with one another in response to that message.

Christ came to me in Karen. “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” Christ comes to us in the most unlikely of places wearing the most unlikely of faces.

I might be "preaching to the choir," but these five December tips are worth remembering.

As Christmas draws near, we turn to stories to express the inexpressible. Like the Gospel writers we are at a loss to explain the activity of our God in the world and so we too resort to story telling. Families gather and the reliable old stories are told. And each year new stories are added to our treasure troves as we seek to express the inexpressible and touch the hem of our God who is love. And what better way to touch and be touched by God than to tell stories of God’s love in the world. We all have treasure troves of stories of Christ taking on flesh and dwelling among us. My story took place when I was a young woman determined that my first Christmas living out in the world would be the type of Christmas that dreams are made of.

On several occasions I have persuaded George Lynch to tell his story about fellow students at the conservative evangelical Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston kidnapping the baby Jesus from the manger of the Christmas crèche, holding him hostage until the food in the dining hall was improved.

For reasons I cannot explain, I have often find myself as an adult mired in a bit of darkness during the Christmas holidays.