Bits of Being

thoughts on life, faith, family….and, yes, just learning to "be"

The Love Of Advent

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So much wants to divide us. Politics is an obviously divisive subject in our county right now. But so many other things divide us as well: religious dogma, family squabbles, offensive statements, and differing opinions. And then there’s natural divisions like distance, time, and life’s changes. Sometimes my heart feels overwhelmed with heaviness when I think of all the disunity that is close to me. I’m an Enneagram 9, which means I’m all about peacemaking, seeing from others’ perspectives, and not wanting to rock the boat. I want to bring everything and everyone together. I want things to be mended and fixed. I want there to be equanimity. But sometimes I just can’t do it. This leaves me disoriented and sad.  

This season I will sit in the Love of Advent and let it wash over me. I will let Love take over when I am feeling depleted. And I will open myself up to the work of God’s Spirit that is all about connecting. Though I can’t always fix it, I will do my part to love all and find paths of connection to all. Isaiah 58:12 says, “You’ll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.” Will I be known as a restorer? Some things seem out of my reach, but the Love of Advent is working behind the scenes everywhere to do this work of connection. My job is to sit in God’s Presence and let Love fill me and lead me into joining God’s work of healing in our disjointed world. Isn’t that what we’re waiting for in this season of Advent? The Incarnation of God overcoming the greatest division of all between humanity and God by becoming one of us. The God of Love showing us the Love of God.

Our pastor two Sundays ago mentioned a poem by John Roedel called Wonder Theology. One line says, “the Weaver of Life is more interested in stitching us together into a quilt than how to separate us into metal bins.” May the Love of Advent continue putting together this rag quilt full of all our colorful, unique, and wildly diverse patterns and designs. And may I let the Spirit of Love connect me to all others in an inseparable way that offers stability and strength and comfort and warmth to the disquietude around me. 

If you’d like to read the full John Roedel poem, it is below:

Wonder Theology by John Roedel

I’m a conditional atheist
God does not exist for me on 
the tip of a sharpened sword
or on the lips of a sermonizing 
hate-evangelist who is foaming at the mouth
or in the licking flames of a torch held 
by a marching bigot 
or in any dogma that have been soaked in the ancient poison of guilt and self-shame 
the divine doesn’t 
exist for me anywhere
where wounds are being 
caused in its name 
I don’t know about 
how any of this works 
but I’ve never found 
much of God in the towering 
hierarchy of unchecked power 
the Great Mystery isn’t a cracking whip
or a flag or an internet manifesto
or a pointed finger or a political party
or a dividing line or a box of ammo
or a corvette driven by a tv preacher 
or a specific gender or a book bonfire 
Creation is more of a florist 
than she is a fundamentalist 
the Weaver of Life is more interested
in stitching us together into a quilt 
than how to separate us into metal bins 
to come into relationship 
with Unending Love shouldn’t
require us to loathe ourselves
~ it should be the exact opposite
to know ourselves 
is to know God
to love ourselves
is to love God
my love, 
I believe that the divine 
is just about everywhere 
~ except in the slow-poison
sands of fear and control 
where so many have built temples
for us to worship inside 
~ in those places 
I am an atheist 
but everywhere else
there is so much 
fertile soil 
where we can let the sunflowers 
of empathy grow wildly in 
the spaces between us
and I’ve heard 
that if we remain still
and listen so very closely 
these evangelizing sunflowers 
will whisper to each of us 
a secret we once knew while we 
were cooking in the cosmic womb:
“We are all loved equally.” 

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