In the midst of the wrappings, the crumbs from the cinnamon buns, and the morse code beeping of incoming facetime calls, we pause and consider the child. A helpless infant, born in poverty to parents who have no place to stay in the middle of nowhere embodies the peace, love, joy, and hope of generations. This documented life from the four gospels urges us to walk the way of love.
We hear the call as it hurls through time and through the commercial Christmas distractions. Let us love one another, it cries.
Walk toward the cry, pick it up, hold it close, and answer yes. I will love you.
Greetings can range from a casual “hi” to a desperate embrace by a father just back from a long deployment. We learn at an early age how to say hi, how are you? It’s one of the first words we memorize when we study a foreign language. Hi, my name is Julie. How are you? I’m fine, thank you. Learning how to greet people is how we learn to be polite.
The best greetings I get in life are from children and the dog. The dog tends to be more consistent. It doesn’t matter how long I have been gone. A trip to the mailbox is enough to warrant the same type of exuberant greeting that I get when I pick her up at the Kennel after ten days. Her body is alive with enthusiasm, the tail is wagging so hard it’s barely visible, and she is emitting a high-pitched sound that in the human language would be “you’re back, you’re here!!!”
Greetings have become awkward during Covid. To hug or not to hug? And when we say we are fine, are we fine?
I have learned through the years how to reply to greetings. If someone asks “how are you doing, okay?” They want you to say okay and I say okay. If they ask “how are you doing?” They really want to know how you are doing and I will tell them.
Although the dog is the quintessential greeter, she never asks me how am I doing. She leaves that for the humans in my life. One of the greatest gifts we can give each other is to really care how someone is doing and actively listen to their response. It’s no small thing.
We all want to be part of a flock since we all want that sense of belonging. My grandson’s flock is Star Wars. He’s obsessed with Star War’s legos and he told Santa he wanted the Death Star Lego. His parents were horrified since it costs more than $1300! He loves meeting and playing with other kids that love Star Wars. They talk excitedly about their lightsabers, legos, and characters. He begged me to knit him something that had some kind of Star Wars character. I created this hat from a vanilla hat pattern and the chart from the Star Wars knitting book (Knitting the Galaxy). When he wears it to school his flock will recognize him. I wonder how long he will be a member of this flock.
It’s nice to find like-minded people. When knitters flocked together in Rhinebeck NY this year, I felt like I knew everybody there. This one thing we had in common that caused us to want to meet up created an immediate sense of community and comradery.
I have had the honor of baptizing people. The most poignant moment for me is anointing the head with oil and saying “you are marked as Christ’s own forever. Baptized people are part of the Christian flock and follow the shepherd of love. Unlike sheep, we choose to follow the shepherd. We choose to be part of the Christian flock. When we step inside a church of people marked as Christ’s own forever, we can hope to be loved and accepted. It is our role as one of the flock to make it so. This is what we expect from the flock. We belong to the shepherd and we belong to one another. Life is better in a flock because we know that what we do affects everyone in the flock.
My prayer is that all of us in the earthly flock will be cognizant of others and get vaccinated. Let’s end this pandemic and the misery it is causing. Some of my dearest friends are not vaccinated but I’m going to reach out and appeal to their sense of flock. Maybe you could do the same.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the word “Magnify” was drawing attention to my knitting mistakes! The next thing I thought of were reading glasses. We know what magnify means but when do we do it and why? When do we make something appear larger or more important or more intense than it is?
In the Magnificat, Mary proclaims how her soul magnifies the Lord. I read this as an intensification of her praise and devotion to God. She said yes to God’s gift and it must have been so overwhelming that her love spilled out in a burst of emotion where she proclaims God’s love for all God’s people especially the disenfranchised. The words are intense and are meant to disrupt the cozy view of mother and child. This is a mother’s love on steroids, one that goes beyond the son she is bringing into the world but extends to the suffering.
There is a magnification of love at Christmas. People tend to think of others, giving goes up and awareness of some of the disparate parts of our world comes out from beyond the shadows.
The Magnificat is included in Evening Prayer. Every evening, we are reminded to intensify the love of God we have been given to reach beyond ourselves and shower it on those who have been beaten down and left out.
The little girl with the wad of yarn on her needles is the same little girl that was so happy to get the blanket made on the size 50 needles. She just turned twelve in December and she is the oldest of our twelve grandchildren. We don’t get to spend much time together because she lives in Alabama but I feel a deep connection with her.
As a mother of boys, I had a lot to learn about girls. I wasn’t sure how to solve the sandal problem when it first came up at age three. She wanted to wear the glitter sandals that hurt her feet and I wanted her to wear the comfortable sandals. My sons had just worn the same dirty sneakers every day. Now, I have twelve years of experience with granddaughters. I know how to find a pair of comfortable glitter sandals!
The grandparent generation is charged with providing unconditional love to children that parents cannot. The parents have to raise the child and having been through that, I know there are times when it certainly feels like love is conditional and it is. Grandparents have more freedom to just be present to the child without the laundry list of distractions that parents have.
It’s painful to live far from grandchildren but what I have discovered is that love is not based on the frequency of connection but on the depth of connection. We have made a commitment to visit often and during those visits spend time with the children that allows us to really get to know them and help them understand how deeply we love and care about them.
I understand why generationally living can be a gift. We have lived with our children and grandchildren at different times. The love and attention we are able to give to the grandchildren make a difference in their lives.
Each generation has something to give. As we anticipate Christmas, let’s pray to be good givers and receivers!
When I’m in a large crowd of people, I often think about how people need to eat three meals a day. If we think about everyone on the planet, it’s a lot of food. There should be enough for everyone but there’s not. I work in a part of Rochester that has a challenged population. People are living below the poverty line, they have to rely on very unreliable mass transportation, and there are no groceries stores within walking distance. There are stores that sell processed foods and sugar.
We took the admonition from Jesus to Peter to “feed my sheep” literally. At St. Mark’s and St John’s on Culver road we are gardeners. We grow vegetables at seven gardens within walking distance from the church and then give away the produce to the neighbors. Our priest says we are saving the world one tomato at a time.
The gardens are also a place to connect. They are a place where we can leave knitted items for people to find and take home. They are a place to gather and revel in the harvest.
The children in the neighborhood think that the garden is magic. Food appears out of the ground and they can pick a bean and eat it. They see how hard the volunteers work to grow food for them and they realize, they matter.
Just one tomato at a time. We can change the world.
When I think of “Blessing” I think about making something holy with a special prayer. I am a priest and this is what we do. Making something holy means recognizing the presence of God in the holy object. We recognize the presence of God in the bread and the wine since God is the creator of the wheat and the fruit of the fine. It also means setting aside, making it special. We do this every Sunday when we bless the bread and wine of communion. We acknowledge the real presence of God in these things that God has given us from the creation.
We have all received God’s blessing. We have been given life. We are all special and we all contain the presence of God.
Sometimes we don’t believe it. We don’t feel the presence of God and God can seem very far away.
Prayer is the way to finding our blessings. One form of prayer is to acknowledge the blessings of this life every day. Some people call this a gratitude journal. It is life-changing. When we focus on our blessings we see where God is working and we build this sense of gratitude that helps us understand our own place in the world.
What blessings are you counting today? How can you extend blessings to others?
St. Augustine said, “Singing is praying twice.” There is something about music that moves the soul. It goes beyond words just like pictures. A haunting melody in a minor chord may cause a melancholy mood and then moving on to a lively march can change the mood. Music is powerful. It touches our emotions in a way that just doesn’t happen with only words.
The combination of music and Christmas is transforming. Singing Silent Night in a dark church by candlelight brings us side by side with the shepherds awestruck by the presence of a newborn child filled with divine love. We sing with exultation because our hearts are filled with the love that came down on Christmas. All of our senses are engaged, the smell of wax, the sight of the light, the vibration of our vocal chords, and the sound of voices raised together in song. We are truly alive.
We were not able to sing for months during Covid in church but that didn’t stop the singing. People figured out ways to sing together. They gathered on balconies, over zoom, in parks, and in studios. Nothing can silence the music in our hearts. It makes its way out in the most creative ways.
Last week, I heard a three-year-old humming “O Come, All Ye Faithful” as he lay next to the train around his Christmas Tree looking at the lights. He was smiling.
The Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck NY provides a bountiful supply of every kind of yarn you can imagine. It is overwhelming with booth upon booth of soft squishy yarn in a rainbow of colors. It takes me the first day of the festival just to get oriented before I can begin to sort out what kind of yarn I want to buy. This year I went in with a plan because I was already worried about my yarn stash exceeding my life expectancy. I bought one sweater quantity of yarn.
To say that there is a bountiful supply of beautiful yarn in the world is an understatement. I have an abundant quantity myself. It certainly meets the first definition of the word bountiful – large quantity. This is where the second definition of bountiful is helpful – giving generously. I have through the years, gone through my yarn stash and culled out some yarn that I will never use. This is not cheap or bad yarn, it’s beautiful, expensive, and in demand. I did this just recently and brought it over to “Sew Green” my favorite store. They take donations and sell the donations at a fraction of the original price which makes expensive yarn more accessible to all knitters. I have brought my share of yarn from them as well. They are my exclusive source for knitting needles. Needles are expensive and they have almost every size available for a few dollars.
Bountiful begets bountiful. Sharing the bounty is what it’s all about and I’m so happy we have a place in Rochester that allows my bountiful stash to become a bountiful gift.
Late Bloomer Mittens from Makers MagazineEmbroidered flowers on Late Bloomer MIttens from Maker’s Magazine
The free dictionary defines gladness as a condition of supreme well-being. We all have moments of supreme well-being – sitting at Sunday dinner surrounded by family laughing and talking while enjoying a good meal or standing in a sun-drenched field admiring the vivid colors of flowers and the smell of concord grapes or warm hands in the middle of winter covered by soft beautiful wool. These moments can be fleeting as distractions or the uncertainty of life takes over. We may even feel like we are on the roller coaster of life navigating the joys and the challenges, the ups, and downs.
A search for the word gladness in the New Revised Standard Translation of the Bible reveals 65 entries. Most of the time, gladness shows up attached to joy. It’s joy and gladness together. Add joy to the idea of well-being and we have found the perfect state.
The angel told Zechariah that he would have joy and gladness at the birth of his son John the Baptist because John would be filled with the Holy Spirit at birth. (Luke 1: 13-15) We have this same experience at the birth of Jesus.
Christmas issues the most compelling invitation, O Come all ye faithful. We aren’t just invited to join in, we are told to be joyful and triumphant as we behold the love that came down at Christmas. This pivotal moment of the birth of the son of God changed everything in the world. We could finally experience the divine love in human flesh. In this small way, we could start to know God.
In the candlelight of the church, sitting in prayer surrounded by our community, we have a glimpse into the kingdom Jesus came to inaugurate. As we sing Silent Night we are transported to the manger scene to stand with the shepherds and stare at the infant face that will radiate love to all he meets in his short life. We desperately need that love, we need to know that we are uniquely valued and that we are not alone in our sadness or in our joy. God is with us. Emmanual, God with us is where we can experience joy and gladness.
Contemplative Knitting 