onehouse

Things that happened.

 

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Kind of tiny but a little too busy to fix it so it remains tiny.

Advent - First week.

Deegy and I must have been on the same wavelength this Sunday as he posted one of my favorite meditations by Henri Nouwen. I have read and listened to this address several times and as the Advent calendar rolls back into view, I am reminded that waiting is something to be deeply inhabited so that the gifts of waiting can slowly be revealed.

Unseasonably warm...

Waiting in expectation.

I have listened to this piece by Nouwen on tape several times. There can be no thoughts on Advent and Incarnation without taking into account the need to wait. This is a long piece but worth reading. Nouwen reminds us that waiting breaks through our fears and brings us to a place of hope:

A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.”

Petit a petit.

I have a friend who is doing some northern nursing in Pond Inlet on Baffin Island. For the last several weeks, they have been coming out of their twenty-four hours of dark. I get the light report from week to week. "The sky is navy now, not black." "There's a bit of lighter blue around the mountains." "I saw a faint band of pink today." And finally, this week, "I saw the sun! It came up and went down but I saw it!"

When I lived in France, the French would quote me a proverb as I struggled with my language skills, "Petit a petit, l'oiseau fait son nid." "Little by little, the bird builds its nest."

Little by little...

I think over again my small adventures my fears those small ones that seemed so big

For all the vital things
I had to get and to reach

And yet there is only one great thing
the only thing

To live to see the great day that dawns
and the light that fills the world.

- Old Inuit Song

Journeys of simplicity, Traveling Light with Thomas Merton, Basho, Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard & Others, Philip Harnden

Tubes of Joy.

Last night the tiny Church of Guinness met to eat perogies and farmer sausage, talk, and laugh a whole lot. We raised a glass to those in other parts of the world and talked about the difficulty of being a community where many members are in transit. How does that work? Is it possible? We weren't looking for solutions but possible ragged pieces of tape and bits of wire that could keep things cobbled together.

As we consumed Tubes of Joy (someone's name for farmer sausage...you can take the Mennonite out of Saskatchewan but you can't keep her away from the farmer sausage. She can even try to be a vegetarian for years and years but farmer sausage on the grill will ALWAYS be her downfall), I remembered how much of what we've learned and struggled with so far has been to do with transition and waiting. When we first started meeting a few years ago, we listened to Henri Nouwen's tapes on A Spirituality of Waiting. Difficult stuff. The Bruderhof Communities have put some of it online:

But there is none of this passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that what they are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing. That’s the secret. The secret of waiting is the faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.

A waiting person is a patient person. The word patience means the willingness to stay where we are and live the situation out to the full in the belief that something hidden there will manifest itself to us. Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. The moment is empty. But patient people dare to stay where they are. Patient living means to live actively in the present and wait there. Waiting, then, is not passive. It involves nurturing the moment, as a mother nurtures the child that is growing in her. Zechariah, Elizabeth, and Mary were very present to the moment. That is why they could hear the angel. They were alert, attentive to the voice that spoke to them and said, “Don’t be afraid. Something is happening to you. Pay attention.” - Henri Nouwen