Finally…It’s OPENING DAY!
It’s 84 days till Spring Training
But that’s just baseball
It’s 341 days until the General Election
But that’s just politics
TODAY is the real OPENING DAY
Today…we begin the journey
Just a trip across the Welcome Mat
The one that God has put out for you
To Welcome you into who you really are
And we can begin
It’s the Advent Journey
Through stories and traditions
And choices and cleaning out the clutter
and turning up the music of the heart
and turning down the white noise of the daily grind
One trip across the Welcome Mat
to discover the decorations on the inside
and to discover that those little white lights make your own truth visible…
Where the real gift is the one you have kept from others
because it might be risky
and someone might not agree
and it might require some assembly including
reading the directions
asking for help
and deciding not to take yourself so seriously.
But the Welcome Mat is out
So…which one is it
ENTER
or
ESC
WHEW! You Are IN!
Congratulations and Welcome to the Advent “Open for Business” Journey… a little bit of quiet … some stories for the road …
remembrance of that journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem that was marked by chaos, fear, judgment, terror, taxes, being numbered, friends, faith, family and love.
It was about what happens when you love God and a child and one another and so you take the next step…without a 401(k or b), with no health care coverage, no access to internet and no strategic plan. But, along the way…we are going to do a few things…
Stop
pray
Remember Advents gone by
Tell a few stories (the ones my family might be tired of hearing)
Move the couch and see what’s under it –
– and then do the same within
Bake a few things
Laugh now and then
Be quiet for a minute
Make some room
Give away something you like
Not complain about the weather
Clear the obstacles
Write a real note with a stamp
and a hand-written address
Love
Create a community of those who have gone to the mat –
– and crossed it
Believe
Now that we have crossed the Welcome Mat..let’s enter this world we call Advent — the beginning
— the Opening Day of our church year…but most importantly, of our lives
And so, on this Advent journey — we are going to recapture some of the traditions underneath the Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday and reservations for New Year’s Eve.
During our journey, we will wind back a few of the clocks and remember what we inherited while we take the chance to reimagine in the present.
And so we begin.
So…sit back for a minute and place yourself in 1830…with the cold wind whipping through the prarie and the long nights before solstice with the power of fire honored in hearth and candle. Around these dark nights are the hopes and dreams that will become the gifts hidden under our trees –ingenuity of creativity, genius of thinking, perserverance against all odds, courage in the face of terror, faith grounded in daily sacrifice, honest sharing around a candle.
Take a wheel off the wagon you can only use in the spring and summer and take some evergreens off the trees before winter captures them and weave them through the wheel so you won’t forget that spring will come. And then, add the five candles — four around the wheel for these four weeks of journey and one in the center for the great Feast.
Today’s work is simple…take down the wheel of your own life and make it STOP…then, fashion evergreen around it in a simple circle without beginning or end of hope…possibility…promise. Then, find candles –traditionally three purple and a pink, with a white one in the center, but the color is less important than the commitment to light them — to make light — to be light.
Then, extinguish all else and light the candle, letting it be possible that the same energy that gave rise to the wisdom on those cold winter nights in the prarie might be ours this night…a bit of honest fear, a deep breath to inhale a dose of courage, the release of all that keeps us from living the faith we have received and a promise to take this journey .
Happy Wheel Covering!