What's your next step?
Found this on PostSecret.com on Christmas Day. What’s happening in the lives of the people around you these days? Do you know? Do you care? If you care, do they know it?
What’s your next step?
As the hopeful anticipation and spiritual preparation of Advent gives way to the joyous celebration of Christmas, I pray that you might experience the depth of God’s love for you. It’s a love that boggles the human mind, coming as it did embodied in a tiny baby boy, born into poverty and rejected by those he came to love. It’s a love that will always be larger than we can comprehend with our limited hearts and lives, but a love so radically unconditional, so dramatically forgiving, so magnificently gracious, righteous, pure and just, that it’s been transforming lives for centuries.
One of my favorite Christmas cards reads, “The Dream of God shall be carried in strong hearts and gentle hands.” Even as I work through this strange medium of the internet, I hope that I’ve been able in some way to be either a strong heart or a gentle hand in bearing an admittedly partial rendering of God’s dream to you. But more importantly, I pray that you will be inspired to be that strong heart and gentle hand, bearing God’s dream wherever you find yourself.
Kim Reisman
A joyous Christmas to each of you…
Peace,
Kim
food for thought...
From PostSecret.com
Who are you noticing this holiday season? Who are you NOT noticing? What’s your next step?
One of my favorite bands is the Gourds. They were in Lafayette a few weeks ago & John & I went as we usually do when they pass through. They’ve got a new album out right now call Old Mad Joy. You can check it out on ITunes. One song in particular struck me given that we’re smack in the middle of one of the most commercialized, co-opted by capitalists, holy seasons of the Christian faith – those days leading up to Christmas. It’s called I Want It So Bad & it’s a great swing type tune that John & I immediately had to dance to…
The first time I gazed upon that glorious thing/It made we wanna dance and delightfully sing/I whirled and twirled and laughed til I cried,
I love this song! I’ve been driving around delightfully singing every since I bought the CD. But there’s a little more to it…
I was so ecstatic until I realized/It was not mine nor would it ever be./Then a storm of emotion swept over me/My heart was broken, my hands were tied,/my one desire had been denied.
I want everything...
This time of year we’re bombarded with images of all the things we think we need but probably just want. And often we want those things really bad – that think-we-can’t-live-without-it kind of bad that can end up really messing with our heads…
Maybe it’s a dream, maybe it’s a thing,/Maybe it’s something that you’ve never seen/Maybe it’s happiness, maybe it’s love/Or maybe yer waiting for something to come from above
Maybe it makes you feel like you never succeed,/Maybe it makes you feel like you never get what you need./It’s a feeling that comes from within,/It’s universal between women and men
We just wanna be loved, we just wanna be whole,/We just wanna get back what we feel like was stole/From us as a child when we got schooled./Man that wasn’t fair, that wasn’t cool…
I’m still singing to my CD because this is a really catchy tune & I love to delightfully sing in the car. But here’s the kicker…
There ain’t no rule, there ain’t no law/That says we ever get what we want at all/We all know life ain’t fair/But we forget it when desire becomes despair…
Oops…got me…
I want this… no, I need this… wait, I deserve this. But I can’t have it….. Now what?
“Blue Christmas”
Blue Christmas
While I was serving as bishop in the Dakotas Conference, I found many small towns where the local funeral home teamed up with the local United Methodist Church (or sometimes with several churches) to offer a “Blue Christmas” service on December 20th which is the longest night of the year. They often called this a “Blue Christmas” and even played the Elvis Presley song (“It will be a blue Christmas without you”), and the gathering was for families who had lost a loved one in the past year. The idea was simple but very caring: those in grief need a time to name that grief (and the longest, darkest night the year seemed appropriate) in order to them to heal and be ready to celebrate Christmas.
Having lost several loved ones in the past three years, I know how hard it is to have that first Christmas without a loved one. So those “Blue Christmas” services were a wonderful way to help persons in grief to deal with their grief – and then to start moving on with life.
If you are someone who has lost a loved one this past year, please know that God’s healing love is for you. Christ came especially for those who are poor, poor in spirit, heart-broken, and in need of healing.
If you know someone who has lost a love one this past year, maybe now is the time to call them or drop by and see them, to say, “I remember your loved one, too, and I know that this Christmas may be tough for you. But you are not alone – you are in my thoughts and prayers.”
If your local church has never considered offering a “Blue Christmas” or a “Longest Night Service” for persons in grief, maybe it is not too late to offer it this year.
And most of all, every one of us can pause and give thanks for the loved ones in our lives – those who have passed on, and those who are still with us – and to ask God’s blessings on our loved ones.
Bishop Michael Coyner
Christmas is not all fun and games. Sometimes it is a sad time for those who are grieving. Sometimes it is a lonely time for those who are left behind. And always it is a time to offer love and peace to our loved ones.
Have a blessed Christmas – even if it is a Blue Christmas for you this year.
from Bishop Michael J. Coyner
Kim Reisman
Kim Reisman
Here’s a great prayer from the Iona Community:
Eternal God, in the long ago days when the earth was above the clouds, and disease was caused by demons, your son was born to lighten all our darknesses.
We now, after the enlightenment, are in bondage to different limitations. We doubt what we cannot prove; we ignore what we cannot see, and finding little room for faith, we must confess, we suspect angels and disbelieve good news.
We admit ourselves to be both infected and affected by the spirit of our times. Behind talk of world peace, we hear the machinery of war; beneath talk of global equity we detect the posturing of the powerful; beside talk of your church being renewed, we recognize the bondage to failed patterns of the past. Rather than embrace the light, we become fascinated by darkness, and must confess, we suspect angels and disbelieve good news.
Ah, God, who will save us? Our cynicism is the fruit of our experience, not the key to the future. Our suspiciousness helps us to smell the rat, never to recognize the dove. Our perfect analysis may describe the mountain, but is helpless to move it. It is with little pride we must confess, we suspect angels and disbelieve good news.
As Christmas approaches, give us a share of that divine naiveté enjoyed by Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, and unnamed country folk, who encountered angels and believed the Good News and recognized Christ among them. Amen. (1997 Wild Goose Resource Group, Iona Community. GIA Publications, Inc.)
Infected and affected by the spirit of our times. Caught up in the analysis of the mountain, and missing the power to move it…Yikes. Sounds familiar…
tired of smelling rats...ready to see doves
But I want the power to move the mountain. I’m tired of smelling rats and ready to see doves. But the question is what am I going to do to make it so? More importantly, what am I going to do in order that it might be so, not just for me, but for others? What are we all going to do so that others might encounter angels and believe good news?
Standing By…
Kim Reisman
Stephen - the first Christian martyr
In the book of Acts there’s a story of the stoning of Stephen. I’ve read this story many times but the most recent time it struck me a bit differently. I love how the story begins: “Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.” That’s a great description – full of grace and power. How amazing would it be to have someone describe you as full of grace and power! But of course, when people are full of God’s grace and power it can be threatening to those who hold worldly power, and that’s what happened with Stephen.
He was sharing what he’d experienced, how it all fit together with what he believed as a faithful Jew and those in power decided he was a threat so they set him up to be arrested. As he’s standing before the council his speech makes the high priest and the rest of the council really angry. Here’s another great description – they were so angry at Stephen that they gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen is empowered by the Holy Spirit and God is revealed to him in a vision as he stands before the council. Well, this is the last straw; they can’t take it anymore so they drag him out of the city and stone him.
The stoning of Stephen
Here’s the part of the story that struck me this time. Apparently, while they were stoning Stephen, a young man named Saul was standing by watching. That, in itself, isn’t that significant. This is the Saul who was persecuting Christ followers with a zeal that would make your blood run cold. So we shouldn’t be surprised that he stood by, watching and doing nothing. But this Saul is also Paul, that champion of the gospel. Actually it was Paul, BCE (before his Christ Event). Paul, BCE could do what Paul, AD (After Damascus) could never do. Paul, after Damascus, would never just stand by.
That’s the way it should be with all Christ followers. If we’re following in the Jesus way, we can’t just stand by. That’s what the whole incarnation thing is all about. It’s not about standing by, it’s about entering in. So the question for me as I begin this season of Advent – when we’re focused on the incarnation – God becoming human in Jesus – the question is, when have I just stood by? What’s happening in the world right now that I’m standing by, just watching? If I take the incarnation seriously, if I truly believe that the miracle of Christmas is that ‘the word became flesh and dwelt among us‘ - that God really did put on skin and bones and made God’s home on earth – then I really can’t stand by; I have to enter in.
Paul of Tarsus
The Jesus way can never be about standing by in the face of injustice, or poverty, or hunger, or oppression – or any of the other aspects of our world that break God’s heart. The reality is that if it’s bad news for the world, it’s bad news for God. So the Jesus way can never be exclusively about a private experience that stands by and watches the world go by from the safety of our spiritual sanctuaries. We’re not to be Paul, BCE, we’re to be Paul AD.
Thankfully the Church has a long history of entering in. But we’ve also done our share of standing by. So where are you on that spectrum? Are you standing by? And what’s your next step if you are?
it would be an incomplete story. What makes the story complete is when Christ followers are serious about remembering that the little Christ child grew up to be a man whose life, death and resurrection changed the world. What makes the story complete is when Christ followers live in a way that reflects the revolutionary ethic of unconditional love and lived-out forgiveness that the baby born at Christmas grew up to embody; when we remember that the little Christ child about whom the angels sang grew up to be a trouble maker who challenged the powerful and welcomed the marginalized and excluded. What makes the story complete is when we remember that the kingdom the baby grew up to inaugurate was unlike anything the world had ever seen. It was an entirely new realm defined by the tearing down of boundaries and barriers, by the forgiving of enemies and turning the other cheek, by the triumph of love over violence. Ultimately, the story begun at Christmas is complete when we remember that the precious baby worshiped by wise men from afar, grew up to be a man rejected by his people, arrested as a subversive, tortured at the hands government soldiers and crucified by the power of the empire. For the story to be complete there can never be a manger without the shadow of the cross.
The inside of one of the Christmas cards my family sent out this year read, "The Dream of God shall be carried in strong hearts and gentle hands." Even as I work through this strange medium of the internet, I hope that I’ve been able in some way to be either a strong heart or a gentle hand in bearing an admittedly partial rendering of God’s dream to you. But more importantly, I pray that you will be inspired to be that strong heart and gentle hand, bearing God’s dream wherever you find yourself.