Monday December 2 “imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty”
The Advent Season began yesterday. Readers from last year may remember that these 3+ weeks leading to the Christmas feast run deep in me. Since late childhood I’ve kept a precious family gift on a shelf in my room, a Hummel titled “Advent Angel.” The angel shields a candle flame that gutters in the wind, taking care for Advent’s privileged time of stillness and inner attention. Each year, I take the angel off its shelf and put it in the center of my room’s prayer space. This angel shows some wear from a half-century of living where I live; a few decades ago I broke off the tip of one wing. Close inspection shows a pretty good glue job, certainly enough to take whatever would be its current market value down close to the ground. Me? I love beautiful gifts that acquire some history of dents and bruises.
Today has a second focus in my life. Last Saturday, November 29, was the anniversary of Bill Pauly’s sudden death at 59 of a heart attack while taking a lovely sabbatical after years of demanding pastoring on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation in western South Dakota. Before Pine Ridge Bill was pastor in a South Milwaukee Hispanic parish. Bill is a soul friend and I miss him at especially at this time. Bill loved beauty, and hospitality, and play, and sacred stillness. He stays in my memory and imagination as another Advent figure. He did not fear grief or fatigue.
Bill introduced me to the poet Mary Oliver. There’s a lot of him in “Wage Peace” and a lot of Advent too.
Welcome to these last days of Term One.
john sj
Today’s Post – Mary Oliver – “Wage Peace”
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and fresh mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
