The Great Bending Down

We enter a new liturgical year and the great season of Advent. It is a twilight time, a time of fertile darkness, a time of waiting, of looking for something. Culturally we find ourselves in a kind of mist. We strain to make sense of what is going on. So what are we waiting for in 2020?

We want peace…we want order…we want truthfulness and honesty. We want to be saved…from ourselves. Advent is a time of hope, a time that tells us that what we want is already on the way. It’s message centers on the birth of a baby, not an army, not a new foreign policy, but a baby.

The Mystery that is saving us bends down, wrapping itself in our DNA. Infinity binds itself in littleness. We ponder this, amazed. We know what’s coming. There will be the growing up, the ordinary eating, sleeping, being in the family. There will be living the limits of being able to do only so much. Then there will be the bending into rejection, arrest, conviction, and execution. And because such love can’t die, it takes one more step down. It finds a way to stay with us in the struggle, it becomes our food, strength for the journey, our bread.

What is this bending down of our God? Are we fools, to preach a God who wants to be eaten?

Or is this the epitome of wisdom, to present a God who is bent on making us divine? So we enter into the Great Bending Down. We slowly become what we eat. And the Baby laughs.

Little mite, who charms us,

You lure us to bend our stiff necks and rigid backs

To capture us in a perennial kiss!

Tear-filled Hope

To speak of hope to those who are desperate, it is essential to share their desperation. To dry the tears from the faces of those who are suffering, it is necessary to join our tears with theirs.
                                                                                                                                        --- Pope Francis


We’ve been reflecting on hope as we live these days in between what we have been and what we are becoming. As we enter the fertile darkness of Advent, it is a good time to risk entering the space of those who grieve, of those who seek answers and find none.


Sometimes we grieve and we don’t want to be consoled. Sometimes there is no way of alleviating a wound that cannot and does not want to be healed. It is a pain proportionate to love. Every mother who loses a child knows this pain. To dry the tears of those who suffer in this way we need first to join them in their desperation. Only when we have joined our tears with theirs might our words be capable of giving a little hope. If we cannot do this, speak words with tears, it is better to be still. A hug, a gesture, but no words.


I will never forget the experience of this when my mother died. I was living with a group of four Dominican women from Sparkill, New York. My mother in Milwaukee had suffered an abdominal aneurysm and died in the emergency room. When I got the call, I couldn’t speak. I just sat down in a living room chair. The four sisters came in and just sat down around me. They didn’t say anything. They just sat with me. It was the most precious gift they could have given me. They were just there for me in my grief. They entered into it with me. They didn’t try to push it away. They just sat.

These tears, flowing from love, generate hope. Although not easy to understand, this is true. Often in life, tears sow hope. Tears are the seeds of hope because hope comes from longing and the heart aches for what it longs for but not yet have. The tears of suffering born of love produce hope, and we would not have it any other way.

I am, God says, the Master of Three Virtues.

Faith is a soldier, a captain who defends a fortress.

Charity is a doctor, a Little Sister of the poor,

Who nurses the sick, who nurses the wounded,

But it is my little hope

Who says good-day to the poor man and the orphan.

I am, God says, the Lord of the Virtues.

                                                                                                                 --- Charles Peguy 

Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness.

                                                                                                                   --- Desmond Tutu

Really…? In Every Situation?

When I first read 1Thessalonians 5:17-18 I caught my breath. I could do OK with “Rejoice always (actually a little hesitation here…), pray without ceasing (I protested, after all, I do need to do the laundry…), and give thanks in every situation, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.” Now here is where I caught my breath. Really…? In EVERY situation???


When this happens with scripture, you can go one of two ways: either you dismiss the text as pious exaggeration, or you question if you really understand what is behind what it is asking of you. Guess what I chose.


November is the month of thanksgiving. We celebrate gratitude as a national holiday. I figured it would be good if I ate humble pie and admit I was rolling my eyes and protesting this text because I really didn’t understand it. So here is where that took me. Actually, it turned my life on its ear.

Now about this “Rejoice always…” thing. I don’t think I’m the only person who would rather weep after I watch the evening news. As for the prayer thing, I can’t be on my knees 24/7. My bills need to be paid and I need to do my laundry. As for the thanking in all situations, thanking is not my first impulse when someone is laying on the horn because I’m driving too slowly.


Then it dawned on me that I’m living on the underside of the paschal mystery…the passion and death side. What if I lived from the other side …the resurrection and life side…the side I’ve been baptized into? Suddenly I found myself rejoicing at the outrage evident in the news over the evil allowed to continue. I found myself praying for those folks at the border in between each bill I paid and each towel I folded in the laundry basket. And lo and behold, I found myself thanking for the fact that no evildoers…not even the political power-brokers…can withstand the power that tosses death onto the scrapheap and transforms human life. It’s quite a view from that other side of the paschal mystery. It’s the view faith promises and hope offers.


November is also the month when we remember those we have sent on into that new life. Yes, I still weep at the news. But I also rejoice that the promise still holds. I still need to shop, pay my bills and do the laundry…but now the background music of my prayer has the backs of those slugging it out across the world and in my own city. I also find myself thanking when the challenges to my complacency and fear come…for they call me out of my mediocre love to compassion and involvement. Yes, it’s quite another view from the other side of the paschal mystery. Try it. You’ll like it.


I rejoice that your resurrection has already begun; help me midwife it.
Marinade each breath, each blink, each heartbeat, in love to bring it on.
And thank you…for calling me to help create such a certain future. Amen.

Hoping against Hope

“Hope opens new horizons, making us capable of dreaming what is not even imaginable.”   -Pope Francis

Were you amazed when the Berlin Wall came down? Me too. It was beyond my wildest dreams. No war, no fighting…not a shot fired. People just came and started to knock that wall down, and the soldiers guarding it did nothing to stop them. I think this is what Pope Frances means.

Hoping when that little inner voice says we are crazy is not easy. Poor Abraham waited and waited. Still, no child as God promised. But in due time that child came. Recently our liturgy reminded us, “Write down the vision clearly...for the vision still has its time…it presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint; wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” (Habakkuk 2:2-4) Our difficulty is like Abraham’s. When, O Lord? Yet the timing will be perfect. God is faithful, and so we wait. We live in hope.

The Christophers describe what hope really looks like: “Hope looks for the good in people instead of harping on the worst. Hope opens doors where despair closes them. Hope discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot.”

A final word on hope from the delightful poet, Charles Peguy:

I am, God says, Master of three virtues.

Faith is a faithful spouse.

Charity is a mother burning with devotion.

But hope is a very small girl.

I am, God says, Master of three virtues.

Charity is she who extends herself over the centuries.

But my little hope is the one who each morning

Says Good Day to us.

And so we keep company with one another, and in hope wish one another Good day…