Body language

There is a lot of physicality to hope.  Say the phrase...."I hope......" and I naturally inhale, put my shoulders back, head up, jaw set, a slight grin, eyes wide and with forward intention.  The posture of hope is one of readiness and anticipation. 

On Sunday when the news broke of another variant and today when there was yet another school shooting, I hung my head, my sholders sagged, I looked down, I folded in upon myself....I think it's what they mean when they say one is deflated.

Hope is integral to this Advent season, it's the first candle we light, the word emlazoned on banners and church paraments. 

Hope fills us, we expand and look outward, we stand ready and set.  The major lesson of the season is that God, the Creator of all that is, comes to be with us...to be human, to become enfleshed, one of us.  Wow.  It's one of the way cool notions of having a body. You want positive body image?  God became human.  That works.

Throughout this season of Advent pay attention to your body, how you carry yourself. Are you more inflated or deflated?  Are you fearful and downcast or trusting and looking up?

Listen to your body language...you speak volumes.

Light it up

 

The last couple of days have brought a bit of a weather warm up....not balmy, yet, enough to be able to be comfortably outside to decorate for the holidays.  A drive through the neighborhood last evening revealed several houses now fully lit. One particular residence evidently purchased mulitple strands of red, green, blue and purple lights and then strung them around trees, on the porch, around every available railing, up on the roof and for that needed extra touch lined them on the ground (!).  True, it was a Griswold-ian effort -- yet, it did look good and left me thankful they do not live right next door...yowzers!

Advent is the church season when we most look upward and outward; may we also in all the silent nights look inward.  A favorite line found in the Benedictine Sisters daily liturgy is "and in Your light, we see light."  It speaks of our incarnate-ed-ness, the Divine spark dwells within each of us and in our being present and showing up we bring the light.

If you have a toddler on your gift list, I suggest a flash light. Kids are as fascinated by lights as they are also intrigued by darkness. A flashlight provides the great opportunity to bring light into the darkness and watch all the cool stuff that happens --- the shadows, the reflections, the patterns. A kid with a flashlight will shine it all the time and everywhere.  Kids anticipate nightfall so they can break out their flashlight; no need to flick the lightswitch the kid is armed with their trusty flashlight and enjoy being needed to bring the light. 

I believe we each are needed to bring the light. We too should enjoy it.  When you have a flashlight and good batteries you want to be outside in the nighttime; the darker the night, the deeper the woods, the better!  Get out there!  You got a working flashlight!

When times are the darkest is when we need the brightest of lights. Shine! Light it up!

Pondering

 There is so much ritual, roles and responsibiliites to Thanksgiving.  As a child, I remember the ritual of breaking the wishbone with my father and the responsibility I had to read the "Dear Abby" prayer which my mother put beside my place setting.

As my siblings and I got older we took on different responsibilitiies for the dinner. One brother agreed to bring dinner rolls and make vegetables, another brown-nosed and made a homemade pie; me?  Mom asked me to bring the dinner mints.  She knew her daughter. 

I stand incredulous at the time and preparation and work that goes into preparing Thanksgiving dinner for a family. For the majority of her life, my mother did so every Thanksgiving; she was awake at 5 am to get the turkey ready and in the oven and was a dinner dynamo making the stuffing (really wish someone would've paid attention as to how she made it....), the vegetables, putting together the fruit cup comprised of the fruits of summer which she would freeze for just such an occasion; mashing the potatoes, stirring the homemade gravy and the years she went a little wild and served flaming peaches. Yet with precision, annually. we would sit down at table at 2:30 pm. 

When Mum finally got to catch a break and rest she smiled at the raucousness of the board games being played; every trip into the kitchen for a drink of the Women's Temperence Union cocktail: cranberry juice and ginger ale, she would ask if the person was hungry and could she get them anything. !!!???!!! Seriously.....     

Yet, I wonder if when everyone had gone home or scooted off to bed what she pondered. Another successful Thanksgiving dinner has passed; we all ate too much; we are all safe; the board games got a bit heated; we are very loud; the stories shared were familiar and also new; how many years in this house, around this table have members of the Beale line gathered? We have much for which to be thankful. The line holds strong;