Sunday, Advent 1: Peace

The Psalms of Advent

I invite you to light a candle and join me on this first Sunday of Advent, as we wait with the psalms and listen for a word to guide us during this dark season of winter.  We begin with the psalm appointed for today, Psalm 122, described as a “pilgrimage song,” appropriate for this winter journey. You can find the entire psalm here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%20122&version=CEB. Another word may very well speak to you, but the one that calls to me is repeated three times: peace.

Pray that Jerusalem has peace:
Let those who love you have rest.
Let there be peace on your walls;
let there be rest on your fortifications.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I say, “Peace be with you, Jerusalem.”
(Verses 6-8, Common English Bible)

The pilgrims singing this song are on their way to Jerusalem, a city where justice prevails on the throne of King David.  Their pilgrimage replicates our own as we journey this life, sometimes knowing exactly where we are going, with determination and joy, and sometimes not, confused and lost.  Yet even within this sacred city, the psalmist makes a cry for peace.  Considering the never-ending turmoil in the Middle East, this psalm could have been written today as well as thousands of years ago: the plea for peace, both within and without.

Peace.  If ever our world needed peace, it is now.  If ever our own lives needed peace in these confusing and turbulent times, it is now.  Someone once said that peace isn’t the absence of worry or conflict but the ability to stay centered within it.  That is quite an ability, keeping other people’s choices and voices from disrupting our own grounding in Love.

What would it take for you, and me, to stay centered within the whirlwinds of our private lives and the life of this world?  I have developed an unhelpful habit of reaching for my phone first thing in the morning and checking the news.  Nothing like seeking peace when reading about gun violence, the war in Ukraine, and politics in America a I start my day!  This Advent Season, I am putting the phone aside and instead sitting in quiet where, in the inmost chambers of my heart, I envision God’s light shining in and on all the areas of my life and the world’s that need peace.  Practicing peace is both a grounding, a guide, and a gift.  How will you practice it?  I would like to know. Peace be with you.  ~  Rosemary

Peace

You can’t stay there forever, you know,
in that fern glade hidden in the woods
or sitting on the bench under the
golden ginkgo tree where the leaves
spread a silent blanket before you
and you remember, as a child,
the innocence of burying yourself
in them.
You can’t keep to the rippling mountain stream
cascading over velvety moss-covered rocks
white foam spraying thickets
of budding rhododendron
(though you wish you could)
nor can you hide forever on the empty
hilltop with the sun
caressing your face
as spring’s first breath
whispers into your hair.
Oh yes, you would like to stay
because here you are at peace
you are peace
and it’s yours, yours, yours.
But you have a way to go,
a gift to give,
a presence to share.
Now grounded, inhale the ginkgo
the fern the stream the breeze.
Drop them like anchors
into your soul
and go breathe them upon
this heartbroken and turbulent
world
before returning to find your center
again.

(c) Rosemary McMahan

Photo credit: Rosemary McMahan