The Contemplative Cottage

“Words don’t mean anything.”

I found myself saying that a lot in 2009.  Words I read.  Words I wrote.  Empty.

It’s not surprising that I started mixing up my letters, using wrong words, and consistently neglected endings.

There were too many words to keep track of, to remember, to reach out and try to capture, kicking and screaming, from thought to paper, sometimes jumbled, sometimes ridiculous, rarely loved enough to reveal their beauty.

The last few years, I drank from the fire hose of academic theology (and drowned)…books and ideas coming so fast, I lost the larger text of my life in a cascade of others’ ideas and opinions. I lost my words.

And the books which once gave me so much comfort lost their life, “just words on a page.” Not flesh and blood. Incarnation stripped away and the meaning with it.

Too, so much of life became virtual words, 140 character snippets of breath-taking moments, so easily sent into the ether, so easily erased and forgotten.  What about the heart and love they expressed?

(I love hand-written letters, taken out and read tenderly over the years, testimony to a life lived, honored by safe-keeping, ribbon-bound, in a special chest.)

Losing my words, especially my prayer words, woke me up.  Now, drinking from the Word is reconnecting life and heart, text and meaning.  I see that what I lost was not simply a string of letters and punctuation, but Someone to talk to, Someone I trusted to welcome my heart and reply with His own.

“In the beginning was the Word…” John 1:1

God with us. Love spoken into the world with flesh and letters,  bound with ribbons of an Always-Presence everywhere I look.  Word-who-took-on-skin, this Love, can hear and respond, can still speak today through frail earthly language.

Human words may crack under the weight of meaning.

But You do not.

Lord, may the words I speak and write be rooted and planted in Love.

My two favorite feast days of the liturgical year are not big name celebrations.

Certainly, I get goosebumps hearing the first strains of “O come, O come Immanuel” or “Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” each Advent.  Knowing that the palm branches so green the year before become cross-shaped soot smudged on my brow never ceases to quiet me, dust to dust.  And in turn, I wave those palms and wash feet and listen in morning darkness to the story of salvation across the centuries, and wear red for tongues of flame and gifts poured out.

All great and important days.

Yet two less known, not widely celebrated feasts fill me with simple, smiling delight.  The first is sometime around October 4th, St Francis Day.  All the animals get to come to church for a blessing.  Hamsters, cats, dogs, rabbits, birds. Or in rural areas… sheep, horses, chickens, goats, the whole peaceable kingdom come to worship.

“Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.  Your righteousness is like the might mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.” Psalm 36:5-6

My other favorite day is…today.  Known by a number of names, Candlemas, or the Presentation, remembers Mary and Joseph bringing Jesus to the Temple to be offered in service to the Lord as a first-born son.  In Luke’s Gospel, the family is met by Simeon and Anna, who have both longed to see the Messiah:

“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss  your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” Luke 2:29-32

In more liturgical churches, Candlemas is when all the candles set-aside for the coming year’s worship are blessed.  At St James Cathedral, Seattle, this is taken seriously: hundreds of creamy beeswax candles are stacked around the baptismal font, enfolding worshippers in their delicious honey fragrance. My mouth waters with the memory.

Although I’m no longer part of a community that celebrates Candlemas, today I light my morning candles with a prayer, honoring the Light which was foretold, birthed in the stable, held to Mary’s breast, blessed by Simeon and Anna, and presented to God in the Temple. Hope. Life. Love.

“The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word.  The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one. Everything was created through him; nothing—not one thing!— came into being without him. What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn’t put it out.” John 1:1-5

From a Christmas sermon by St John Chrysostom (349-407 AD):

“What shall I say! And how shall I describe this Birth to you? For this wonder fills me with astonishment. The Ancient of days has become an infant. God Who sits upon the sublime and heavenly Throne, now lies in a manger…

For this God assumed my body, that I may become capable of God’s Word; taking my flesh, God gives me his spirit; and so God bestowing and I receiving, God prepares for me the treasure of Life…I take my part, not plucking the harp nor with the music of the pipes nor holding a torch, but holding in my arms the cradle of Christ!

For this is all my hope! This is my life! This is my salvation! This is my pipe, my harp! And bearing it I come, and having from its power received the gift of speech, I too, with the angels and shepherds, sing:

Glory to God in the Highest! and on earth peace to all of good will!”