advent 1 (turn to light)

I once heard that Christmas was celebrated at the time it was because it was the time that pagans celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. It was the time when people ran after candles and lampposts and fires, tried to beat back the darkness for the sake of the wild light that illumines, keeps safe, anchors. It was the time when the dark  was long and the sunlight raced across the sky and it feels, it always feels, like light is a scarcity we must hoard for ourselves and keep close until summer comes again.I'm not sure if that's the entire reason Christmas is celebrated in December, or if there is something beyond that, but perhaps it isn't as important as this word, light.And all the poets who have used the word seem to take a step toward me in my quiet non-writing life these weeks, all the lines of poetry that echo through the hallways of other years:somewhere overhead, the geese are turning into light again  - David WhyteFor the child at the bright pane surrounded bySuch warmth, such light, such love, and so much fear. - Richard WilburShe is awake and stars at scars of light - Mark Strandhe fixes a funnel of mirrors, a trap for light. - May SwensonI think of the word, "light" the way it cuts us off even as we want it to go on forever, sounding the promise of seeing. I think of the way that we hunger and wonder for the light, the way it moves, the way it must move, beyond us.And you and I today are the people who have walked in this great darkness, these lengthening shadows, and today we are the people who must, who must always, turn our hearts in Advent towards the coming of the light.And on us, who have dwelled in a land of deep darkness, on us the light has dawned.Can you see it now, the shimmers of it on each other's faces? Can you see how it begins to warm us, color our eyes bright with its beams? Can you feel, just softly at first, how even the promise that we have been walking in darkness, even the word light, stops our hearts short with its certainty?Might we be the people who turn to light again.Love,hilary

He made you this promise

Feet shuffle quietly in the pews around me as I walk towards the lectern. I can feel my the soles of my feet touching the carpet through my thin shoes, and as I walk, I suddenly pray, desperate: O Lord don't let me mess this up. This is Your word. Please don't let me mess up. I'm reading for Lessons and Carols, a service where we journey through the story of God's redemptive love in nine Scripture readings and choir music and old hymns. It's the kind of service where you want to leave your mouth hanging open, that God teaches us His story through words, and music, through sound and light and air waves moving back and forth. And somehow, He's given us the chance to tell each other the story again. He's letting His Word go forth from human hands and human mouths and human minds. Because He loves what He has made. Because He became incarnate to live among us. Because He, too, was a human who wrote and thought and spoke.My passage is Isaiah 11. The peace that Christ will bring is foreshown. I stand at the lectern, look at the page, look up at the faces twinkling from the candles lining the aisles.I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and suddenly, I hear His reminder: I make these promises to all my people. You, tonight, are my people. You, tonight, are the messenger for this promise. Won't you tell these bright faces what I have promised them? I begin to read. I feel my voice grow inside my chest as I hear the words echo around and around the wide sanctuary. The candles dance on the altar. Someone opens the back door and I feel the rush of winter wind on my face. And I am struck by this sudden richness, this service of festival and prayer, this journeying even again to Bethlehem at the beginning of Epiphany, the feast of light, to meet the Light.His promises are to all His people. To His people who heard the words of the prophet crying in the wilderness and on the streets and in the temple. To His people in the pew in front of me, with their blue and tan coats and weary faces. To His people who have been scattered across the globe - in poverty and fear, in hunger and thirst, in injustice, in need. To His people who have been grieving. To His people who have lonely hearts. To His people who I know and don't know, who I see every morning in Starbucks but never recognize, and to His people who I have yet to know.These promises I read tonight - these are the light He shines on our path as we journey towards Him. These promises, that one day no one shall kill or destroy on all His holy mountain, that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the seas:these are for you.He made this promise for you, in this singular, remarkable, irreplaceable way.This is what I hear as I tremble back towards my parents in our pew. This is what I hear as we bend knees and hearts.He made you this promise.Isn't it miraculous, that a love so vast as to cover the earth with the knowledge of the Lord, is also the love that makes you promises of peace and life everlasting?I cry a little on the long drive home. For the bright faces, and the brighter promise.Love,hilary 

to the newlyweds

While Preston and I are on sabbatical for the summer in our letter writing, I thought I would keep up with letters. These, though, are letters with a bit more of my imagined, someday life, and a little bit less of the every day. I wanted to store them up, these daydreams, because even though we should live in the present, there is something to every once in a while glancing out and imagining the horizon.Dear newlyweds,I saw your pictures on Facebook the other day, pictures of rings against flowers and book pages, pictures of you staring in amazement at each other, pictures of pinwheels and cakes and dances between you and the hundreds of people who gathered around you to love you.I saw your pictures and I thought about you. About the work that this is. About the wonder that this is. About how you might be wondering and fearing and rejoicing all at once. I don't know very much about the world, not now, probably not for many years. I don't know a thing about marriage except that it is beautiful and difficult and rich with blessings.Sometimes the blessings feel heavy. Sometimes we don't know how to be ourselves. We don't know how to be ourselves AND be one with another person. We don't know if we can surrender that much, trust that much, stay faithful when we desperately wish to run away. We don't know what the big step was, exactly, only that together there is more than when we are alone, and together you are something new. Between the showers and the barbeques, between standing in line at the DMV to change your name, between hoping you don't trip down the aisle or lose the rings or forget the dance steps you both practiced diligently... I wanted to say that what we see, from our pews and from walking down the aisle in borrowed shoes and stiff hair?We see miraculous love.We see promises made right on the edge, the edge of who we are and who we are called to become.We don't worry about whether your napkins are the right shade of coral or if you missed the double spin. We don't second guess your choice of cake or how you made the seating chart. We are too caught up in rejoicing that you love this boldly. That you live with a wild love for each other. I wanted to tell you this because maybe after it all settled down, you still feel the strange surreal heaviness of this new life you're making together. Maybe after you came home to your apartment or your house, to your boxes and leftover spaghetti, you wondered what we all witnessed, what it is that happened.We saw the joy, raw, palpable, spilling out of you. My friends and I sometimes joke that there is a flood on facebook of weddings, of matching dresses and clinking glasses. Sometimes we are jealous of you, jealous of what we worry we won't find, hopeful and fearful all at once. But the secret is that even in that we recognize the heart of what you have done. We love it. We feel the raw joy spilling out over the megapixels and crackling phone lines and from pew to pew.I am touched and changed because I get to see how you love.I learn about love because I get to celebrate with you.Your new marriage, the baby bird of it, helps us remember the feeling of leaping into the unknown and being caught in the wonder of it.So I pause in my day, in between emails and grant proposals and puzzling out the new work before me to whisper to you: remember that your baby bird marriage is a beacon of love. You shine bright.Be unafraid of the big work ahead. There is more grace than you can imagine in store for you. Be unafraid of where you go, what you eat, how you burn brownies and fight over jobs or church or money. Be unafraid of it all.The secret of that big leap is that grace always catches us.Love,hilary