Winn Collier's Blog, page 35

Advent Week Three {tears for newtown}

Do not fear, O Zion;

do not let your hands hang limp.

The Lord, your God, is with you,

a warrior who gives victory;

he will take great delight in you,

he will quiet you with his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing

as on a day of festival.

I will remove disaster from you… {Zephaniah 3:16-18}

What a word to be reading on Sunday, when Friday brought us to our knees. We hear a promise of disaster expunged, but for now, we’re buried by calamity. A quieting love — one day perhaps. But for so many, grief’s cacophony splits the soul.

Last night, while looking through some old files on a hard drive, I found a ten minute montage I’d saved, a string of old voicemail messages from Wyatt and Seth when they were three and four. The boys would call me while I was at work or away on a trip. “Daddy, I love you,” a tinny young voice crackled. “When you get home, can we go for a bike ride?” Tears came as I remembered these beautiful days, and more tears came as I remembered that for too many Sandy Hook families, these mementos are all they have left.

I could only think of my two boys, of the sorrow these fathers and mothers know. And I could only think of another child, a mere babe, who was born into a world where a madman murdered innocent children by the thousands. I could only think of a poor, blessed mother who would see her son’s life snuffed out before her very eyes. This son, this mother, know grief. They know the savagery of injustice. They weep.

They, better than most I must believe, know the promise that disaster will be relieved. They also know how much pain and suffering we will endure between here and there.

This suffering God. This is the God who is with us.

Mighty Fortress

I’m told this is Wartburg Castle, the inspiration for Martin Luther’s A Mighty Fortress is Our God. That song gives me chills every time, almost enough to make me wish I were Lutheran. In college, my friend Karsten would belt out each line a cappella, and I’d sit mesmerized by his powerful voice but even more by the intrepid story this song proclaims.

This shot appeared on the #adventpicaday advent series a few of us have concocted on Instagram. One might not think the photo belongs in an Advent exercise. Mighty Fortress isn’t often thought of as an Advent tune, but it should be. They tell the same story, a tale of fierce love and bold rebellion against evil and darkness.

The baby came, a bulwark never failing.

 

Advent Week Two {fire & fury}

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me…The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight — indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap… {Malachi 3:1-2}

When I was a boy, if I left the house with a dirty face, my mom would seize me before I exited the car. She would lick her thumb and scrub my grubby cheeks until they shined. I don’t know which I hated worse – the wet finger or how my mom could (as any good mom can) scrub down to the bone. She met my protests with a smile and a renewed tenaciousness. “If you’d clean yourself” she’d say, “then I won’t have to.” She made her point. I now wash my face each morning.

My mom had one other standard trick (is there a book somewhere with a list of such things?): soap for washing the filthy or sassy mouth. Best I remember, I never received the oral suds, though it’s entirely possible I’ve blocked it from my consciousness. I do recall the threat, and I do have a vague recollection of my sister’s ordeal at the bathroom sink. Only last week, I channeled my mother and suggested to Miska that we whip out a bar of Dial. I’ve only got a little more convincing to do.

When we think of Christ’s coming – Christ’s adventing – we often consider only the warm manger glow, the angelic carols, the hope and goodwill to all, the merry Christmas everyone. We consider only the delights. This is all most appropriate, as the prophet Malachi reminds us that the messenger who comes is one who indeed is our delight. Still, the prophet’s next question stops us short: who can endure the day of his coming? who can stand when he appears?

The prophet Malachi sets the coming Messiah as one who, not unlike an obdurate mother, arrives to cleanse with kindness and fury.

When the King comes, the King burns with fire. The Holy One washes the world with a cleansing deluge. This is a gracious terror. The Christ child comes in tenderness, but true tenderness can not allow evil to wreck us. Love could never be so feeble. Love must do what Isaiah promised, what St. Luke echoed – love must make the crooked things straight.

Who can stand when the Son of God appears in all splendor and blazing glory? None of us. And yet – each of us, surrounded by the unrelenting love of God. For the end, says Luke, is that all flesh will see God’s salvation.

 

Doors

When Miska and I roamed London’s streets, I was fascinated by the doors. It’s the same when I walk Richmond’s Church Hill neighborhood or Locust Street here in my own fair city. I watch the doors and wonder their story. Who has walked over that threshold and into warmth and life? Who has stood at the stoop, trembling as they knock, hoping against hope that the door would swing wide?

My sister gave me a print of the “Doors of Tallinn, Estonia,” a mosaic showcasing twenty-five doors you’d find if you were to travel Tallinn’s alleys and boulevards. The print sits above my desk, close to my Berry’s “Sabbath 2007, no 9″ – the two say something quite similar, though you’d have to pay attention to know it. Whenever I happen upon a beautiful or quirky door, I pull out my camera. I’m not unique in this, as doors have always captured the photographer’s eye. This week, these Duke Divinity School doors caught my friend Juli Kalbaugh’s eye, and I’m so glad they did.

It’s made me wonder why doors capture us so. I’m sure there are many reasons, but I think this is one: we all want to be welcomed. We all want to be brought in from the cold, from the aloneness, into a warm space filled with friendship. We want to belong. We’d love to have a person fling their door open, burst into smile, throw their arms around us and say, Get yourself in here.

I wish I had more courage at some of these doors I love. Rather than take a photo, I’d like walk up and knock. If someone answers and asks what I need, I could simply say, “Just an invitation.”

 

Advent Week One {light heart}

Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life… Be alert at all times…{St. Luke}

Today’s reading, for the first week of Advent, gives us a neglected term. I’m trying to recall if I’ve ever used dissipation in a sentence. Dissipation is a hoary word referring to the ways we grasp and clinch rather than give, the ways we shovel life down our throat without stopping to savor. We dissipate our life, says Luke, by grabbing too much drink or by grabbing too much worry. Our society knows the ruin that comes from abusing alcohol. I don’t think we’ve even begun to grapple with the abuse of worry, anxiety and fear.

We can’t honestly tussle with this latter vice because in so many ways it is the fuel that turns the engines of our world. What would happen to the corporate apparatus if managers stopped worrying about promotions or being bettered by the younger class? How would our economy spiral if we stopped obsessively pouring over job data and consumer sentiment? What new terror might erupt if we didn’t live, second by second, on high alert? What tragedy will ravage our family if we don’t maintain acute vigilance?

The real danger to all this anxiety, this dissipation of any sort, is that it gives us a heavy heart. Our heart is meant to be light and free; and when we stuff our souls with anything other than love and freedom, goodness and joy, then our heart loses its vibrancy.

I’m given to anxiety. I can work a worry with the best of them. It’s an addiction, and I can surrender to cycles where I compulsively propose every possibility for relational, vocational or family ruin — just to be prepared, to ward off danger. The result, as you’d guess, is that life lived this way knows little joy, little laughter. What danger could I possibly avoid that would be worse than the danger I’m creating for myself by concocting such a confining, agitated life?

Advent is a time for watching, watching for God, staying alert to love, paying keen attention to those places where we’ve let our heart grow heavy. Disappointment, regret, shame, lethargy, willful selfishness – these things breed anxiety. They weigh us down. They shutter the eyes of our heart, and we walk in the dark, our soul heavy and blind.

Last week, I saw this discarded orange chair in front of a friend’s house. I imagined sinking into its broken-in cushions, resting on that corner and watching the neighborhood. Unhurried, unbothered. I would cradle a mammoth thermos of coffee with a few extra cups in case any passerby needed warmth. I’d have an 80′s boom box sitting on the ground playing Scottish bagpipe tunes or maybe Johnny Cash. I’d sit there, with open eyes and open heart, light and free. Advent.

Advent Hope #adventpicaday

It’s been said, at least a time or two, that a picture’s worth a thousand words. I buy it. But, as any son longing for home or any mother listening for love will tell you – it’s also true that sometimes a word’s worth a thousand pictures.

Bottom line: Pictures matter. Words matter. Love matters. Hope matters. A kiss under the moonlight matters. Tucking your boys in at night matters. It all matters.

But we’ll soon be moving into Advent, and the quiet, watchful Advent days are days particularly keen on opening up tired eyes and adding a twinkle when you don’t see it coming. Last year, a few of us helped one another pay attention, to see the days before us, by snapping a picture that spoke of Advent mercies. I figured why not go for it again.

Here’s how it works. This year’s theme will be hope. We’re watching for signs of hope, for things that give us hope – and also for the places we pray hope will arrive. As many days of Advent as you’re able (and please, let this be easy, no pressure or discipline or any such thing – this is Advent, mercy-time, for crying out loud), snap a photo (like the one above – Jeromie Rand gave us this one last year) and post it on Instagram with #adventpicaday in the caption field. That way, we’ll all see what you see.

It is this joyful expectation of God’s coming that offers vitality to our lives. The expectation of the fulfillment of God’s promises to us is what allows us to pay full attention to the road on which we are walking. {Henri Nouwen}

Now that’s hope.

Boy oh Boy

The two boys fight like brothers which, I suppose, is exactly as it should be. Yesterday, the younger (9) was yet again sticking his grubby paws into the elder’s (10) bowl of munchies (this young one had the nickname ‘juice bandit’ by 18 months old). When the melee concluded, we had a raging red welt, brief concerns for a bruised appendix and one boy laid out on his bedroom floor.

The other night, Seth (younger) asked, “Dad, what does mischievous mean?” This is like Donald Trump digging for the definition of ‘money.’ Seth, though he’s known as the juice bandit, could just as well go by Dennis the Menace. The boy’s heart is pure as gold, but my, he can concoct some outrageous schemes. I explained mischievous while a knowing grin broke across his face. Do you remember a time when you were first handed a word that told you more about who you are?

Of course, Wyatt would not play second fiddle to little brother, cataloguing his own rascally ways. If Seth is Dennis the Menace, then Wyatt is Marcus Elliot, the scarily sharp-witted 10-year-old in BBC’s Spy. When Wyatt calls out from his loft bed at night, asking for a hug, it rarely actually means he wants a hug. The truer translation runs roughly something like, Dad, could you fill up my water bottle? or Dad, would you snag that book over on my desk? or Dad, I’ve been contemplating global economic theory and I’d like to hash it out a bit.

Yesterday, someone placed a response card in the offering plate at church. People fill out the cards if they have something they want us to pray for in weekday morning prayers or if they have a spiritual issue they want to discuss. This card simply had an X beside the ‘talk to pastor’ line but the rest of the card was blank, save this:

David Collins

6th Street #207

No phone number. No email address. Brendan (one of our other pastors at All Souls) and I talked about how to find this fellow and the oddity that he left no other contact info. We decided to handle it on Monday, gathered our families and headed out the door.

On the way to the car, Seth walked up beside me and asked calmly. “Dad, do you know anyone named David Collins?”

Seth wrote the card. Seth would send us on a wild goose chase.

These two boys, they fight and they scheme and they keep us in stitches. And I love every little spec of them.

A Prayer for Around the Table

Prayers around the table, everyone holding hands while keeping one eye squinty-open in the direction of the turkey or ham or turducken or tofu, is a sacred moment. Here’s a good prayer, if you’re looking for one:

Give us this day our daily bread, O Father in heaven, and grant that we who are filled with good things from Your open hand, may never close our hearts to the hungry, the homeless and the poor; in the name of the Father and the of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. {The New Clairveaux Abbey}

Or simpler fare from yours truly:

Thanks, God. This is grand.

 

Like Thunder Follows Lightning

There are few things more subversive in this world than someone who sees grace in every corner, who chuckles easy and loves easy and has both whimsy and mirth mixed in with even their honest assessments of the way things truly are. These glad-hearted people have discovered that thankfulness is not merely a discipline but the only sane way to live in a world offering so much gritty beauty, so much possibility for love, so many joys.

These unlikely provocateurs have not caved to rose-tinted glasses or withdrawn from bitter reality. They simply know that sorrow does not finally own the day. They do not ignore the pain. Quite the opposite, their heart has grown so large that the life they know possesses the courage to see all that is wrong and yet has strength enough to gather the afflictions into itself, allowing love to tend to the wounds. They know that joy, not misery, holds the ace. And they are so very, very thankful.

“Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth,” say Barth. “Grace evokes gratitude like the voice of an echo. Gratitude follows grace as thunder follows lightning.”

Bless All the Daughters

Like me, one of Miska’s true joys is to speak a blessing over others. I think I must have learned this from her. Recently, Miska wrote a blessing for women in our little All Souls community. Receive these good words as your own – and they work just as well for those of us who go by the name ‘sons.’

Blessed are you, beloved daughters of God.

Lift up your hands, your eyes, your hearts

to the Living God.

Get into that soul posture of receiving.

May you continually re-orient your Being

to what is Real;

May you have the courage and grace

to receive Life from God in whatever

astonishing and unexpected ways He sends it.

Enter into the mystery!

May you hear Jesus calling your name–

calling your name–

inviting you to rise up, come forth into life

and be unbound.

Be blessed–may it be well with your soul–

for the Lord is your God,

and He is making all the sad and broken things come untrue

and He is making all things new.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit,

may it be so.