meditation

Like A Tent Of Light (Free ebook!)

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In the past few months I’ve been experimenting with some new pieces that blur the lines a bit between prose and poetry. I’m calling them Meditations, and I want to offer them now as a companion for you this Lent.

This free ebook contains eight meditations centering around the accounts of Emmaus and the Transfiguration, two of my favorite pieces of Scripture. These two passages have similar, other-wordly qualities, and yet they different in several critical ways.

On one hand, we recognize that God is beyond us – that at his revelation, we will be flat-faced in awe, stunned into recognizing how meaningless our attempts at communication are in the face of glory. In the Transfiguration, we see Christ as we will one day see Him again in glory, in the coming of the Kingdom for which we long.

And yet, the Church has always maintained an emphasis that this very same God can be known and communicated with through the most ordinary, bodily details of life. It has insisted on sacrament. For those who have eyes to see, the very bread which we hold in our hands can be a moment of unveiling, a communication with Christ who has become the Bread of Life.

What these accounts both have in common is their telling of an unveiling. They reveal that there is a Reality that exists below the eye-level attention we generally give to the world. They point towards a coming day when we, too, will be transfigured – when we will become truly Real.

Whether these meditations walk you through the weeks of Lent, or any other season of your journey, my hope is that they can be a launching-off point, a beginning for your own thoughts and experience.

You can access the book and learn more here. Due to some Amazon regulations, it will only be available for free download for five days before they set it to .99 (for those without Kindle Unlimited) – but you can also access the pdf version here at any time. It would be a great delight to hear what you think when you are done! You can leave comments on Amazon or right here at the end of this post.

Happy reading!

Annunciation, II

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In her brave surrender, body forms. Flesh and bone knit together, fearfully and wonderfully, the perfect Sum of all humanity. Within her womb the cosmos and the cell are One. 

And she becomes the mother of the Church—for just so are we, strange mixtures of star and sinew, knit together across centuries into the Body of the living Christ. 

We are joined by water and blood into his own birth, passing through death and into his own life. And now we each raise our lives, dripping and screaming from their baptism, and pronounce them pathways to glory. 

Now we undergo this act of slow and hidden creation. Invisible threads are knotting corners of our hearts to the souls of long-gone years. It seems unthinkable that from these clusters of carbon and cell, growing in fits and starts and in seemingly opposite directions, will come a revelation of the Resurrection and the Life in full. 

In this dimly-lit surrender, the Body of our Lord still forms. 

Within the womb of centuries, the Cosmos and the cell are one.

Advent Meditations

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Lately, I have begun reflecting on portions of scripture and the way they interweave with the whole. Centered around all of them is the essential question: What does it mean for humans to respond to the initiation of God?

Advent is the beginning of the Church calendar, and I think this tells us something beautiful about the Christian life. We begin not by going out to find God, but by preparing for God’s arrival. We begin by recognizing his coming; by seeking Him where he may be found.

This Advent, I’ll be sharing a short meditation each week exploring this idea. My hope is that these words become a doorway of sorts, that lead you into your own reflection. Think of them as “word icons,” if you like; a guide more than a teaching; a beginning more than an end.

Annunciation

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of his glory.

Perhaps the wind of Gabriel carried a whiff of incense trailing behind it. Like the seraph in Isaiah’s vision, he comes to her carrying the offer of a Burning Coal: a Fire to place within her self, an offer to tabernacle the Holy of Holies.

Tug this thread, and you run all the way back through the first strands of humanity. 

Will Abraham follow? 

Will Jacob bow?

Will Moses stop to listen? 

Here I am, Lord.

An open door. A whisper on the wind. A blaze of fire, offering itself to us.

This is the story of man and God, the call and response haunting the ancient memories of humankind. It is the yearning in the very heart of man to offer itself fully to that which it adores. It reveals the tragedy not of passion but of hardened hearts. 

And it is Life, coaxing us into a love that looks like death. But like the three young men, once we give ourselves into the fire of self-offering, we find no hair of our head is truly harmed. For He is there to greet us, transfiguring what seemed like death into a fire of union and of light.

Here I am, Lord. Send me.

I am the handmaid of the Lord.

Let it be to me as you have said.