The crooked will be made straight,
                    and rough places made smooth….
          Bear fruits worthy of repentance.
          One is coming with a winnowing fork in hand,
                    to clear the threshing floor
                    and to gather the wheat in the granary;
          and to burn the chaff with unquenchable fire.
                        —Luke 3.5, 8, 17

Don’t be afraid. John isn’t threatening you.
He’s setting you free,
relieving you of the crap that messes you up.

What are the rough places in you
that need to be made smooth,
the crooked places that need straightening out?
Surrender them to God.

What are the lies that clutter up your head,
the fears that infect your heart?
Let them be winnowed out and burned.

And what are the gifts you don’t share,
the second coat you don’t give away,
the despair you try to sell, overpriced?
Let God gently take them from your hands.

Christ comes with the music of love in his heart.
Let go of that suit of armor, attached as you are to it.
You can be free now. Throw it off, and dance.

   —December 13, 2018

We are close to an entrance of some kind,
or someone,
an opening,
or a closing of a wound which is a marriage
a meeting of our incompleteness.
Some kind of power
undresses here, emerges,
full blown but understated.
All our flesh is holding its breath.
Our dreams are dreaming.
We cannot name what is coming,
the volcano of heaven gently rumbling.
Each of us is secretly hoping,
unknowing
our hopes are a net,
unaware of our solitudes melting,
unsuspecting of a love that entangles us
in each other
In eternity
that is already,
and almost.
We are expecting.
The young mother sings a simple tune
we can’t get out of our heads.

   —December 12, 2018

Dearly Beloved,

         Bear fruits worthy of repentance.
         … Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none;
         and whoever has food must do likewise.
         One who is more powerful than I is coming.
         … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
                          —Luke 3.8, 11, 16

Christmas is not all lovely tinsel-haired angels and shepherds in their cute bathrobes and a sweet little baby, no crying he makes. Luke’s sure of that. Christmas is the coming of the Prince of Peace, whose empire will have no end… which means, of course that our empire will come to an end. The changes he describes in people’s lives are not just issues of piety or personal morality. They are issues of justice. The scriptures and the carols of the season are thick with God’s care for the poor, God’s desire to set prisoners free and lift up the downtrodden and bring down the mighty and wrest power from oppressors and remodel the world.

“Preparing the way” is more than having a warm spot in your heart. The One who is coming is the Prince of Peace, the sovereign of justice among us. He has a claim on us. He places demands of his realm upon us. We are responsible for our world, for poverty and racism and violence and the harming of the earth. We are responsible for justice, for healing and reconciliation and redemption. There is nothing more true to the heart of Christmas than doing justice.

This Advent and Christmas, visit someone in prison. Participate in a Jericho Walk. Reach out to immigrants. Write to your Senator or representative. The child Jesus and his parents are waiting outside the wall. Prepare him a way. Repent, and bear the fruits of justice.

   —December 11, 2018

         Bear fruits worthy of repentance.
         … 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.”
                        —Luke 3.8, 9

How can this be Christmas, the ax at the root?
Where are the lovely things,
the sheep and stars and frankincense?

Wake up. Christmas is meant to change us.
There is no comfort without engagement,
no good news without strings attached.

God, help me not skim through Christmas.
Beloved, let me be changed.
I yield myself to you,

to prune what you will,
to feed what you will,
to harvest what you will.

I surrender myself to your pruning,
the ax at the root of my desires,
your spade in the soil of my deepest longings.

I accept the gift of what is taken from me:
habits that harm, my heart’s diversions,
my shield from the world’s pain.

Let the coming of Christ be the flowing
of your sap up into my being,
into fruits of presence and justice and love.

Baptize me with the fire of your indwelling.
Pregnant with Christ, may I bear the fruit
of your new creation in me.

   —December 10, 2018

         By the tender mercy of our God,
         the dawn from on high will break upon us,
         to give light to those who sit in darkness
          and in the shadow of death,
          to guide our feet into the way of peace.
                                 —Luke 1.78-79

Beloved, I am your early morning dark,
your deep blue sky, shadowed neighborhoods,
velvety darkness, thirsty for light.
I am your prison cell where someone lonely waits,
looking at the little window.
I am not alone. We are all a vast plain
waiting for the lifting of the blanket,
humanity is a beautiful bride waiting for the lifting of the veil.
And you are our dawn.
We are the vessels of your light,
pitchers ready for your dawn to pour in
from the well of you
and carry out into the world.
In the shadow of death, mine
and those I abet,
my soul sits, waits,
watches the dimming stars.
Now, tender mercy, now.

   —December 7, 2018

         …that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
         might serve God without fear…
                        —Luke 1.74

Our worst enemies are no one else,
but our own fear, greed and resentment,
our urge to be right and safe and powerful.
They soldier on, as if the war is not over.
But God has set us free
from the enemies of our wholeness,
enemies of life.
We are free to serve, to love, to risk
without fear.
We are free from the traps and tangles in our heads,
the tales we spin of what can’t be.

Our fear, already safe on the other side,
still mumbles about impossibilities
while the bird flies through the bars,
the imaginary mountain.

Nothing but the lies in our heads prevents us now
from being the perfect vessel of the Beloved,
being fearlessly forgiving,
being the light in the darkness.
That is who we are now.
We are free.

   —December 6, 2018

          Prepare the way for Love,
          make straight a path for the Holy One.
                        —Luke 3.4

Enough of your junk drawer clutter
bucket of old used punctuation
heartthrob amusement ride of distraction.
Prayer is a snow shovel.
You plow it all aside. All of it.
Clear a space.
Admit it: your heart is a hoarder.
Clean out your piety’s basement.
You don’t build the way, don’t accrue it.
You empty it.
Rough made smooth, crooked made straight,
busy made empty.
Empty it all.
Silence the noise, the chorus, the committee,
the crowd.
The empty place is not long, stretching away.
It’s just right there, around you,
a circle of light,
empty air,
silence—not what you hear,
but how you listen,
what you practice.

Silence.

Now there’s a way.

Wait.
For the Coming One,
who speaks silence,
who blesses the emptiness,
the Presence
who is the negative space itself

where you’ve made room
for a little friendliness.

   —December 5, 2018

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

         The angel Gabriel was sent
         to a young woman…
                  —Luke 1.26

         I am confident of this,
         that the one who began a good work among you
         will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.
                        —Philippians 1.6

You don’t know it
but you have that glow
of a young woman
who is pregnant
and has only just now found out
or maybe hasn’t yet
but somehow you know
God is in you, growing,
something started you can’t stop
which will flow out from you,
escape you, transcend you.
All you have to do is say Yes
and let heaven slowly blossom
in you.

The calming of a single heart,

or justice for the oppressed—
the life has already begun.
All of you, look around,
ask each other,
What has God begun in us?
How shall we attend
as God brings it to completion?

   —December 4, 2018

Every year
he says, “I love these people.
I’m going to go be with them,
just to walk them through the darkness.”
Every year the angels tell him,
No, this is a bad idea.
It never works.
But the Eternal One nods at him and smiles
a sad little smile,
and he pours himself out
into a great mysterious emptiness,
and he comes.
He always comes
and walks with us,
and every year I walk with him,
he smiles and nods that same smiling nod.

There is the brief moment in the stable—
despite the hardship quite lovely, really—
but then the hard work,
the road, the town square, the disputes….
And then he is taken.
Every year, taken:
shot beside me as we walk,
jailed, deported, lynched, crucified.

I walk on without him,
looking for a welcome place for him,
trying to bear that light,
let it gleam just a little…
And then it gets darker,
until it seems stupid and hopeless and foolish,
and then once again,
the angels shaking their heads
but singing glory anyway,
he comes.
Knowing, he comes,
every year he comes.
And I watch for them to take him,
and they do take him, every year,
and I say,
“The angels are right, this doesn’t work.”
He nods and smiles and says,
“Yes it does.”
And he comes again.
And I,
a tiny light in a great emptiness,
already
I am waiting for him.

   —December 3, 2018

         Be on guard
         so that your hearts are not weighed down
         with dissipation and drunkenness
         and the worries of this life,
         and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.
                        —Luke 21.34-35

God, wake me from the fog of my low expectations,
the cement of worry that clings to my feet.
Help me shake off the world’s despair,
its pointless habits, desires and attachments,
the awful busyness, the downward spiral
of judging, consuming, and protecting myself.
Give me the courage to trust you are moving and acting;
give me the vision to embrace the unimaginable.
Help me stand with clarity and purpose.
Give me the urgency to act—for now is the time—
and the patience to wait for the fullness of time.
May I look upon the world with eyes of grace,
and act with a heart of love and hope.
Amen.

   —November 30, 2018