One of the few books I brought over with me from the U.S. to Australia was the Congregation of St. Joseph’s 2008 collection of Advent reflections, Winter’s Wisdom.
True, it’s a rather incongruent title given that it’s summer here in Australia! But, be that as it may, it’s a great little booklet full of numerous and profound insights into God’s presence in our daily life.
I particularly resonated with yesterday’s reflection by Diane Dean, CSJ Associate. It’s a reflection that focuses on “the gift God gives us with God’s presence in humanity” and the need to cultivate an “Olive Grove,” i.e., time and space to reconnect with this sacred gift within and around us.
Following is an excerpt from Dean’s reflection, accompanied by images of the Australian landscape surrounding “Swallow’s Ledge,” my parents’ condo - a landscape that’s currently serving as my “Olive Grove.”
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God experiences “up close and personal” our human distress, adversity, and afflictions, and spends His ministry hearing the sound of our cries, being gracious to us, healing us, and binding our wounds.
In her most recent book, The Road to Cana, Anne Rice pictures Jesus as a young man becoming aware of His Divinity and of His coming ministry. He is deeply affected by the cruelty and pain He sees in Nazareth and the surrounding villages. To renew Himself he frequently visits an olive grove where He reunites Himself with His Universal Being. While her story is fiction, the book is a lovely reminder of how deeply Jesus was both human and divine, and how He was as affected as we are by the distress in our communities.
We too are called to be gracious to one another and hear the cries of and heal one another’s wounds. We cannot be effective in this “call” without an “Olive Grove” as a sanctuary to renew our connection to this gracious God.
- Diane Dean, CSJ Associate
Winter’s Wisdom: Advent 2008
Congregation of St. Joseph
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Advent Thoughts
My Advent Prayer for the Church
The Centered Life as an Advent Life
Thomas Merton on the Advent Mystery
For more images of the beautiful terrain of and around Port Macquarie, see the previous Wild Reed posts:
A Solitary Ramble
Coastal ViewsBago Bluff
Rocky Beach
Pacific Skies
Afternoon
Boorgana
Flynns Beach
A Summer Afternoon
Ellenborough Falls
2 comments:
Beautiful place to be, Michael. I do get the mind expanding immensity of the views, but is there a town nearby? Paula
Advent is a particularly "British" liturgical season. As most readers know, the Eastern Orthodox, who more or less established liturgical seasons, do not celebrate Advent or Christmas, but the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), the oldest feast in Christendom after Easter.
In Northern Europe, Advent evolved to be the dichotomous feast of the first messianic herald, conjoined with the parousia of the final days, when Jesus will return to begin his Rule. The Advent Season, which is almost entirely built around pagan festivals that Eastern Christians did not need to overthrow, is simply the Scandinavian Yule, the Saturnalia of the Winter Solstice (Advent II corresponds to it), and Christmas, the Feast of Christ's Nativity has no Eastern equivalence, other than a hodge podge of Nativity (Dec. 25), until the Epiphany (Jan. 6), of which the latter is the purpose of the protoevangelion: The Messiah is with us (In-Car-Nation) or Immanuel.
Since 2,000 years according to synchronic "waiting" has occurred, and no one can claim god's kingdom is nigh (unless it was Hitler, Lenin, Mao, or some other Marxist), why do Christians celebrate a diachronic failure of the Birth Narratives? Just as Moses never existed, nor has Jesus. That should be obvious, unless his father's kingdom comes only after nuclear holocaust makes the Nazi Holocaust forget THEIR Elohim's failure to rescue the Three Young Jews (x1000, x10000) from the Fiery Furnace.
Benedictus Dominus and Benedicte, omnia opera Domini can be sung until we are blue in the face. When does the Face in the Clouds appear? It cannot? It immolated the b(B)ush? Six million Jews, many of whom insist it was Christians that caused their death -- not their atheism, because supporters of Fascism thought any kingdom from god was highly unlikely.
Perhaps we should ask them why THEY celebrate Hanukkah from the CHRISTIAN OLD TESTAMENT (Maccabees), which their own rabbis deny is canonically true -- menorah aside? Really. Then who did write the Bible? Write of the life of Jesus? Another Homer?
Oh, had it been Homer, think of the PEACE. At least the Trojans fought over something they could FEEL, SEE, and SMELL. I hope the evergreens, mistletoe, and incense provide Christians their SURROGACY in their feast of Surrogacy -- when god is supposed to have appeared as an "imprint," replica, and mighty warrior.
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