Epiphany…January 6…the end of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle…I had a lovely time at Secluseval, even with awful weather on Christmas Day. It was 70 degrees on Christmas Eve and my sister and I enjoyed the sunshine on the Big Front Porch once again. I then had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a New Year’s retreat at a very special place called Laity Lodge out in west Texas. My friend, Buddy Greene, invited me to be one of the musicians for the retreat, and I never miss a chance to play music with Buddy. Another old friend, Scotty Smith, was the speaker for the retreat, and his focus for the retreat was Epiphany…taking a deeper look at how God ‘broke through’ then and continues to ‘break through’ now to those in this world. I sang…I rested…I feasted…I shared community with others who are seekers…it was a glorious time and I am grateful to have been a part of it. I hope to carry the spirit and grace of the retreat into every day of this new year…may your days ahead be filled with hope, good health, peace, and grace…pax, Tricia
The Longest Night of the Year…
Advent…the season of waiting…and tonight is the longest night of the year….but there is hope in this dark night of waiting even with the unspeakable sorrow of Newtown and the uncertainty of what lies ahead in 2013. I had the privilege of singing last night for some beautiful patients and caregivers at our local hospital…there was birth and death and the fearful waiting of the emergency room all within three floors of each other, and yet music held us together for a short while during the cold night.
I came home to read an Advent selection by Brennan Manning titled, “Shipwrecked At The Stable.” Manning writes of how the world does not understand vulnerability and how the spirituality of Bethlehem is incomprehensible to the advertising industry…how true. But in his commentary on the mystery of Bethlehem and the trivialization of the divine scandal, Manning quotes the Spanish author, Jose` Ortega, whose thoughts of being shipwrecked resonated with me in this Advent season:
“And this is the simple truth…that to live is to feel oneself lost. Whoever accepts this has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order to the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.”
Those who are shipwrecked cannot bring along baggage from the past…they can only be in the here and now, facing the reality that they are lost…we are lost…but we are captivated at the Bethlehem stable by joy and wonder, and the Child there is the One to whom we cling.
This Christmas, whether you find yourself literally at home or at home within your heart, may you find peace and comfort there in knowing that there is Hope for the shipwrecked….from the Big Front Porch to your home,
Tricia
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Here’s to 2012 from the Big Front Porch….
Ok…no sense in adding the undue pressure of a hard and fast resolution to this post, but I do intend to try my best to bring you news from the Big Front Porch on a more consistent basis than I have been…’nuf said.
Here’s a glimpse of the Big Front Porch…it was lovely to sit on the porch yesterday on the first day of this new year and take a few moments to enjoy the smell of a wood fire, the colors of the sunset, the feel of the crisp winter air on my cheek, the sound of a hoot owl in the woods, and the taste of my sister’s perfectly cooked black-eyed peas. God is good…all the time. I hope you and your friends and family will take some time in the coming days to sit on a porch (inside, of course, if it’s too cold for outside sittin’) and be quiet long enough to hear the ‘still small voice’ within…
And since we’re still in the days of Christmas, here’s a sweet little cedar that is our Christmas tree this season…cut from the fields of Secluseval…a special place.
Pax,
Tricia