As promised, here’s the link to the guest post I wrote for Strangely Dim, the blog for Likewise (that’s the imprint my book is published under). All month they’re celebrating the Women of Likewise in honor of Women’s History Month. I doubt I’ll be making history any time soon (or ever), but you can read my post anyway.

Wishing you a blessed Lent,
Kimberlee

This year, instead of fasting from some kind of food (though my kids once again decided we should abstain from Girl Scout cookies during Lent), I’m going to do something really radical. I’m going to fast from blogging.

I know. Every speaker at every marketing seminar I’ve been to in the past year (and I’ve been to a lot – every other professional writers’ meeting I go to seems to be focused on marketing) would tell me I’m committing virtual suicide. So be it. If my blog writing has to die so my other writing can live, well, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

This is also an act of trust. I am trusting that whoever is out there reading my blog – and whoever you are, I thank you; I’m honored that you choose to spend time with me! – I am trusting you will come back in six weeks (Easter is April 4). I am trusting that my long absence will not mean starting over from zero readers come April. I am trusting that my other writing projects are worth the risk I’m taking.

I will not be a complete stranger these next weeks. I have three guest appearances scheduled on other blogs during Lent, and I’ll link to those as they go live. I may also post an author interview that’s in the works.

But mostly I’m going to ignore the siren call of the internet and focus on several other writing projects that have been whispering in my mind for some time, projects that I’ve locked in the basement because I don’t feel well, don’t have enough energy, don’t have enough time to listen to them. They’re getting loud down there, beating on the door for me to let them out. And so I don’t go totally crazy, I’m going to let them out and spend the next weeks listening to them, writing them down.

And I hope to come back excited and energized, ready for another year of blogging. (Yes, it’s really been a whole year this week since I started blogging.)

So. I’ll see you in Easter!

One of the themes Epiphany raises is of call and response. The wise men saw the star and so they left all they held familiar and dear to follow it, knowing it would lead them to something even better.

Traditionally on Epiphany, people bless their homes by marking the lintel of their door in chalk with the initials C, M, and B. The initials have two meanings. They are the names of the three wise men, according to tradition—Caspar, Melchior, and Baltasar—and they are the first letters of the Latin phrase Christus Mansionem Benedicat (“Christ, bless this home”). Marking the door of one’s home in this way is a reminder to us, each time we enter or leave, that we are to be like the wise men, willing to leave all we have, if necessary, to follow where Christ leads.

Raised in a church culture that viewed suffering and even martyrdom for the sake of God’s Kingdom as signs of true faith, I have a lot of baggage around this notion of leaving it all to follow Jesus. A dear friend of mine perfectly articulated the deleterious effect of the evangelical mindset in which I was raised when she wailed, “But I’m afraid to follow Jesus. I don’t want to go to Africa!” I could relate. I used to be afraid of that, too, of Jesus asking me to follow him to some far-away place with giant spiders. I had learned early and well that you proved your devotion to Jesus by the sacrifices you were willing to make on his behalf.

This is partly why, when I was in eighth grade, I chose Mother Teresa as the subject of a year-long research project for a national competition. Mother Teresa obviously loved Jesus; her life of (what seemed to me) great sacrifice was clear evidence of her devotion. I wanted to know how she did it.

As part of my research, my teacher insisted that I call Mother Teresa. Now, I was 17 before I could phone Pizza Hut and order a pizza without breaking into a cold sweat, so imagine my terror when, at 13, I had to call India and speak to Mother Teresa. “Why couldn’t I have chosen to research someone dead?” I moaned more than once as this horror loomed over me.

At last I could put it off no longer. My list of questions on my lap, I shut myself in my bedroom and made the call. My voice shook and my hands trembled as I lamely introduced myself and then idiotically launched into my questions. “What advice would you have for someone who wants to help the poor?” I squeaked into the phone.

I expected some great thing: Come to India and join the Missionaries of Charity, work in the House of the Dying, adopt 16 orphan children. Instead, her voice quavery, her accent difficult to understand, Mother Teresa said, “Love the poor around you. Learn to see the poverty in the people you live with, and love them in the midst of it.” That’s all she said. For years, I thought it too simple, too easy, too pat. Love those around you? That’s it? That’s how I love the poor of the world? I had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the good-Christians-go-to-Africa-and-die-of-poisonous-spider-bites worldview.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to see that loving those around me isn’t simple. Nor is it easy. It’s not easy, for example, to love my son when he whines and won’t eat the dinner I’ve prepared. It’s not easy to love my daughter when she throws a temper tantrum because I won’t let her eat a Lego. Some days, believe me, the poor of Calcutta seem a lot better deal. But that’s not where I’ve been called, not yet anyway.

For most of us, following the star means paying attention to the people around us, our families, friends, neighbors. Christ calls us to minister to them. If we don’t heed that call, what makes us think we’ll really be able to love and care for our Indian neighbors once we move into the House of the Dying?

Epiphany calls us to move beyond the familiar, to be sure. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, the familiar is not geographical. It may be the familiarity of something we own and hold dear. It may be the familiarity of an unhealthy relationship; the strained and fruitless ways we try to reach out to God; the soul-eroding habits that keep us from loving God and others as we ought; or a familiar pattern of relating or responding to others that Jesus is calling us to set aside that we might follow him.

Perhaps these days I am called to leave behind my usual response of raising my voice and barking orders at Jack when he whines about his dinner. Perhaps Jesus is inviting me to quit throwing my arms up in frustration at Jane when she wails because I won’t let her choke on Legos. Perhaps, instead, I’m supposed to give them a hug, extend my arms—and my heart—toward them with love.

After all, isn’t that what God did for us?

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

Psalm 148 is the lectionary psalm for almost every Friday of the year, including today. It is creation’s song of praise to its Creator, to the God who created each thing that exists by His Word—the Word that has now become flesh in Jesus Christ.

What, I wonder, happened at the moment of incarnation? What gasp did all creation sharply inhale at once when the Word through whom and by whom and in whom they were all created took on flesh, became one of those He had made? What love, what immense love is this that the eternal, infinite God should limit His eternity, should bind His infinity in human flesh?

No wonder the sun and moon and shining stars sing praise, the mountains and hills and trees, the wild beasts and cattle, the creeping things and winged birds, the kings and all peoples—young and old, men and women—indeed, the very rocks cry out in praise of such a God.

Wishing you all a joyful, wonder-filled Christmas!

An extra bit of Christmas cheer for Susan Forshey: my friend, Jack picked your number; Lost Mission will be on its way to you come Monday.

The word for the fourth and final week of Advent is “love,” and it is associated with Joseph. When God’s angel told him in a dream to not be afraid to marry Mary, Joseph loved his fiancee enough to make her his wife, in spite of the raised eyebrows and innuendo that would be directed his way because of her illegitimate pregnancy. He then loved as his own the son Mary bore, though the boy was neither flesh of his flesh nor bone of his bone.

As we wait, not passively, but actively, for Christmas and Christ’s coming, we have the opportunity, like Joseph, to see one another as the God-bearers we are, and to support and love one another as we attempt to bring to birth the new life that God has planted within us.

Henri Nouwen sees this loving support not just in Joseph and Mary’s relationship but also in the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary (Luke 1:39-45):

These two women created space for each other to wait. They affirmed for each other that something was happening that was worth waiting for. I think that is the model of the Christian community. It is a community of support, celebration, and affirmation in which we can lift up what has already begun in us. The visit of Elizabeth and Mary is one of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of what it means to form community, to be together, gathered around a promise, affirming that something is really happening.

Mary and Elizabeth’s mutual support points beyond itself, giving us a picture of what Christian community looks like.

In a similar way, Joseph’s love for Mary and for Jesus, with its attendant self-sacrifice, points beyond itself, giving us a glimpse of God’s great outpouring of himself in love for all of us, love that is seen so clearly in the Incarnation, the coming of the God who created the cosmos to live among us as one of us.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

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Taproot Theatre Blogathon Update: Thanks to the generosity of Herb and Esther Arden, Adam Bailey, Scott Cummins, and Tiffany Werner, each comment will raise $5 for Taproot’s reconstruction efforts after the fire. We need just 10 more comments to raise $250! If you haven’t yet, please go leave a comment on the blogathon post.

The watchword for the third week of Advent is “rejoice,” and it is connected with Mary whose “soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46 KJV). This week also has a different color than the other weeks: pink, for joy.

Mary’s words and the change in liturgical colors remind us that this time of waiting and preparation is a joyful time, that even in the midst of fasting and penitence we can know joy because, as Mary sang in the Magnificat, “God has done great things for [us].”

In my Protestant upbringing, Mary was simply a Jewish peasant girl who was the mother of Jesus. I’ve since learned that Catholic and Orthodox Christians have a much richer and more symbolic understanding of Mary. They call her theotokos, Mother of God, God-bearer. She is the symbol of humanity itself, fallen but willingly entering into a restored relationship with God through her “yes” to the angel’s proclamation that she would be the mother of the Messiah….

By bearing in her womb the Son of God, Mary makes possible the Incarnation and, thus, later, the crucifixion and resurrection. In so doing, she turns the mourning of our fallenness into the rejoicing of our redemption. It is God who does these great things, to be sure, as Mary herself proclaims, but how great a God we serve, that he would allow us, invite us, long for us to participate in his redeeming work in the world….

During Advent, we are to be like Mary, waiting actively, joyfully, and expectantly for the new life that has been and will be born into the world. And also like Mary, we are to be agents of this birthing. We are to bring the Light of the world into the world.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

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Taproot Theatre Blogathon Update: Thanks to the generosity of Scott Cummins and Tiffany Werner, each comment will raise $3 for Taproot’s reconstruction efforts after the fire. If you haven’t yet, please go leave a comment on the blogathon post.

for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way,

to give God’s people knowledge of salvation

by the forgiveness of their sins.

In the tender compassion of our God

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

–Luke 1:76-79

This week’s word is “prepare,” and it is linked with John the Baptist, the voice “crying in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord” (Luke 3:4 KJV). During these weeks before Christmas we are to be preparing a place for Christ to come into our midst.

Much of this preparation is watchfulness. “Be on guard,” Jesus says to his disciples—and to us (Luke 21:34). We are to be always on the watch and to pray as we wait for Christ’s return. As Paul writes to the Thessalonians:

…the Day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. It is when people are saying, ‘How quiet and peaceful it is,’ that sudden destruction comes upon them, as suddenly as labor pains come on a pregnant woman; and there is no escape. … so we should not go on sleeping, as everyone else does, but stay wide awake. (1 Thess 5:2-6 NJB)

Preparation involves paying attention and staying awake, so that the coming of Christ will not take us by surprise and so that we will be ready and able to recognize that day when it comes.

In the circle of the church year, Advent follows a long season of Ordinary Time in which the busyness and dailyness of our lives can distract us, making us forget to pay attention or to remember that we are living in expectation of Christ’s return. That is why we need Advent—it reminds us to pay attention, to be on guard, to keep watch that we might be ready for Christ when he comes.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

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For those of you who’d like daily reflections during Advent, Christine Sine has gathered a whole host of writers on her blog, all of whom are sharing what they’re waiting for in this season of preparation.

Each Tuesday during Advent, I’ll be posting an excerpt from the Advent chapter of my book. Here’s today’s reflection on waiting:

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning
more than those who watch for the morning.
–Psalm 130:5-6

Each of the four Sundays of Advent has a watchword for the day as well as a Biblical figure with whom it is associated. The word for the first Sunday is wait, and it is associated with the prophet Isaiah: “The Lord himself…will give you a sign…: the maiden is with child and will soon give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel” (Is 7:14 JB). It this sign, this Son, for whom we wait in Advent.

Our Advent waiting occurs on two different levels. Certainly we wait for Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth in history past, but we also wait for the risen Christ to come again. In fact, the Gospel passage for the first Sunday of Advent is not the story of Jesus’ birth—the Annunciation or Mary’s response to the angel’s startling proclamation or Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem. Rather, it is part of Jesus’ speech about the signs of the end of the age, when we will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk 21:27). The Church’s choice of this passage speaks to me of the larger significance of Advent. Yes, it is a time of waiting and preparation leading up to Christmas—the celebration of Jesus’ birth in history—but ultimately, we are not waiting for Christmas; we are waiting for Christ’s return.

In English, the word “wait” tends to imply passivity, maybe even boredom. But this is not the implication that Jesus would have had in mind when he spoke of his disciples waiting for his return. In Hebrew, the word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.” (Thus translators can render “Wait for the Lord” as “Hope in the Lord” with equal accuracy.) This linguistic equation of “wait” with “hope” means that for Jesus, immersed as he was in the language of the Hebrew Bible, there is no conceptual differentiation between waiting and hoping. They are one and the same activity. This melding is especially apropos during Advent, when we wait in hopeful expectation for the return of Christ. Henri Nouwen calls this “active waiting.”

Active waiting, he says, “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.”

One of the traditions I find most helpful in cultivating this attitude of mindful attention during Advent is our family’s nightly lighting of the Advent wreath. Each week during Advent, we light an additional candle, proclaiming as we do so, “Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, the Light no darkness can overcome.” This progressive lighting of the candles reminds us to wait with attentiveness through the darkness of December, because the Light who is coming into the world already shines in the darkness—if only we will watch and see.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

As for this blog, my intention when I began posting back in February was to change the focus come summer. So, starting Tuesday, I’ll be blogging about the 3R’s: reading, writing, and revision. (Did you really think I’d write about arithmetic?) I hope you’ll come back and check it out–and invite your reading and writing friends to visit, too.

Today’s Scripture passages include all three Persons of the Trinity, sometimes in the same passage. Let’s take a quick look:

The Old Testament reading is from Isaiah 6, the story of Isaiah’s commission, when he sees the Lord—a frightening experience, for even the seraphs who attend the Lord of hosts cover their eyes. This vision of God prompts Isaiah to realize that he is “a man of unclean lips.” But God in His mercy and grace, sends a seraph to touch Isaiah’s lips with a coal and proclaim to him the words of absolution, “your guilt has departed, your sin is blotted out,” foreshadowing the work of Christ on the cross.

Psalm 29 focuses on God’s power, and specifically on the power of God’s voice. I love this image of the voice—it hearkens back to Genesis 1, when God speaks all creation into being, and it holds Trinitarian undertones: the voice of God requires a Speaker (the Father), Breath (the Spirit) and a Word (Christ, the Son).

In Romans 8, Paul reminds us that we “did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but… a spirit of adoption.” God is our Father, and the Spirit witnesses to our spirit that we are God’s children, joint heirs with Christ who suffered for our sake that we might have life as children of Love.

And in John, we read Jesus’ famous discourse about being born of water and the Spirit. God the Father, Jesus says, so loved His creatures that He sent the Son so the world might have life through Him. We who would receive that freely offered gift of life must be “born from above.” The Spirit births this new life in us and leads us in the ways we should go, like a mother bearing and rearing her children.

The God of glory thunders.
In his temple, they all cry: “Glory!”

Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.

The lectionary passages for Trinity Sunday:
Isaiah 6:1-8
Psalm 29
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17