Hope
Read Daily
Matthew 3:1-12
3:1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,
3:2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
3:3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'"
3:4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
3:5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan,
3:6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
3:7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
3:8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
3:9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.
3:10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
3:11 "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
3:12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
2nd Week of Advent Day 1, December 8
“Who are you?”
Scripture
Matthew 3.1. In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming:
Reading
In Silence
Thomas Merton
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
(Day 1 continued)
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”
Reflection
A proclamation involves something of great importance. John has something very important that he wishes to announcing: the coming of the one who is much greater than he is. He wants everyone to know who this coming one is.
If someone was to go through the streets, saying: Listen I know this person (you!), what would they say. Who are you? This is the point of Thomas Merton’s poem. How do you find stillness to help you know who you are?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 2, December 9
Repent
Scripture
3:2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
Reading
Joy Harjo
A Map to the Next World
BY JOY HARJO
for Desiray Kierra Chee
In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map for
those who would climb through the hole in the sky.
My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged
from the killing fields, from the bedrooms and the kitchens.
For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.
The map must be of sand and can’t be read by ordinary light. It
must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.
In the legend are instructions on the language of the land, how it
was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.
Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the
altars of money. They best describe the detour from grace.
Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; the fog steals our
children while we sleep.
Flowers of rage spring up in the depression. Monsters are born
there of nuclear anger.
Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to
disappear.
We no longer know the names of the birds here, how to speak to
them by their personal names.
Once we knew everything in this lush promise.
What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the
map. Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us, leav-
ing a trail of paper diapers, needles, and wasted blood.
An imperfect map will have to do, little one.
The place of entry is the sea of your mother’s blood, your father’s
small death as he longs to know himself in another.
There is no exit.
The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine—a
spiral on the road of knowledge.
You will travel through the membrane of death, smell cooking
from the encampment where our relatives make a feast of fresh
deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.
They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.
And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world
there will be no X, no guidebook with words you can carry.
You will have to navigate by your mother’s voice, renew the song
she is singing.
Fresh courage glimmers from planets
And lights the map printed with the blood of history, a map you
will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.
When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers where they
entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.
You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.
A white deer will greet you when the last human climbs from the
destruction.
Remember the hole of shame marking the act of abandoning our
tribal grounds.
We were never perfect.
Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth who was
once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.
We might make them again, she said.
Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.
You must make your own map.
Reflection
Joy Harjo says: “An imperfect map will have to do.” Which means we often fall for a false life, attracted to things that will not bring us fulfillment. Joy Harjo identifies them well. Thinking about the poem, and your own journey of turning towards grace and hope, what brings you life, and life abundant?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 3, December 10
Prepare the way…
Scripture
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.
Reading
Life Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.
Reflection
How are you preparing the way for what is important in your life? What has caused you weary years and silent tears? How do you pray to be kept forever in the path?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 4, December 11
The Holy Spirit and Fire
Scripture
But the one to come will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
Reading
The Ball
by Wislawa Szymborska
As long as nothing can be known for sure
(no signals have been picked up yet),
as long as Earth is still unlike
the nearer and more distant planets,
as long as there’s neither hide nor hair
of other grasses graced by other winds,
of other treetops bearing other crowns,
other animals as well-grounded as our own,
as long as only the local echo
has been known to speak in syllables,
as long as we still haven’t heard word
of better or worse mozarts,
platos, edisons somewhere,
as long as our inhuman crimes
are still committed only between humans,
as long as our kindness
is still comparable,
peerless even in its imperfection,
as long as our heads packed with illusions
still pass for the only heads so packed,
as long as the roofs of our mouths alone
still raise voices to high heaven -
let’s act like very special guests of honor
at the district-firemen’s ball,
dance to the beat of the local oompah band
and pretend that it’s the ball
to end all balls.
I can’t speak for others -
for me this is
misery and happiness enough.
just this sleepy backwater
where even the stars have time to burn
while winking at us
unintentionally.’
Reflection
The end is really nearer than any of us think (meaning, each of us will die, one day). So, how are you living this out:
let’s act like very special guests of honor
at the district-firemen’s ball,
dance to the beat of the local oompah band
and pretend that it’s the ball
to end all balls.
How’s your dancing?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 5, December 12
How Does the Light Come?
Scripture
Matthew 3:4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.
Reading
How The Light Comes
Jan Richardson
I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
Reflection
How does the light come for you?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 6 December 13
Be Helpless, Dumbfounded
Scripture
Matthew 3:9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor…’
Reading
Zero Circle, Rumi
Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace
To gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we say No, we don’t see it,
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Besides ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.
Reflection
John is agitated and unwieldy. He is full of warnings and begging folks to not make presumptions. So I put up this Rumi poem as a kind of reflection on humility and openness.
How do you stay open in your spiritual journey? How are you becoming a mighty kindness? What does surrender mean to you?
2nd Week of Advent, Day 7, December 14
The Kingdom, part 2
Scripture
3:1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,
3:2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
Reading
Buoyancy, Rumi
Love has taken away my practices
and filled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating
𝘕𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘵𝘩 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴, but I couldn’t.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable, chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.
That is how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
quickly reduced to smoke and ash.
I saw you and became that empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence.
The sky is blue.
The world is a blind man sitting beside the road.
But whoever sees your emptiness
sees beyond the blue and the blind man.
A great soul hides like Muhammad or Jesus
moving through a crowd in a city where no one knows him.
To praise is to praise
how one surrenders to the emptiness.
To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.
Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.
So the journey goes on,
and no one knows where.
Just to be held by the ocean
is the best luck we could have.
It is a total waking up.
Why should we grieve that we have been sleeping?
It does not matter how long we have been unconscious.
We are groggy, but let the guilt go.
Feel the motions of tenderness around you,
the buoyancy.
- Rumi -
Reflection
Rumi describes the path of faith. How do you notice the motions of tenderness around you?
How do you understand the phrase: “It is a total waking up.”?
Bonus Poem.
For the Anniversary of My Death
WS Merwin
Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star
Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what