Wednesday December 20
Yesterday, after our weekly senior management meeting, I set out on an Advent ritual I love. I drove down the Ohio Turnpike — pretty ratty construction in 3 places before I settled onto I 80 — to the working class suburb of Pittsburgh, Baden. I will spend some of the days deepest into Advent hanging out with 6 or 7 Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, soul friends of 40+ years. We will tell each other some stories of the year as it winds down towards the Christian Christmas feast, some of them playful, some tender, some burdened with grief or anger: storytelling as prayer and kinship: a seasonal grace as 2017 turns toward 2018. I’ll savor Ohio’s northern turnpike again on Friday when I head back to Motown and our campus.
Have a blest day, the last before Winter Solstice with its graceful turning in the dimmest light of the year.
john sj
O Antiphon #4 O Clavis David – O Key of David
“O Key of David,
and scepter of the house of Israel,
you open and no one closes,
you close and no one opens
Come and lead us who sit bound with chains in the prison house,
sitting in darkness and the shadow of death.”
To listen to the Antiphon sung in Gregorian Chant