by Christie Purifoy | Dec 6, 2012 | Advent, Uncategorized, Waiting
We are still waiting for snow.
We’ve seen flurries now and again, but the inches we’ve been promised have yet to materialize.
This sixty-degree day is mocking my hope. It’s hard to believe in snow when the sun is this warm. I’ve decided it will be easier if I stop thinking about it. If I stop hoping.
If snow will come when snow will come then what is the point of anticipation? What is the point of hopeful watching? If the end result will be the same (because snow will come when snow will come), then why not pass the time thinking of other things? Why not try to forget that I have new sleds hidden in the basement?
And yet, because this waiting for snow corresponds with Advent, I can’t quite accept that waiting is pointless. I wonder if our waiting does something. Could the end be different not simply because time has passed but because we have waited and watched with heavy, hopeful hearts?
It hurts to wait. Especially when we do not know how long our wait will last. When we have no idea when the end will come.
How long, Lord, how long?
And, of course, I’m writing about more than snow. I’m writing about snow, and spring, and babies, and degrees, and jobs, and weddings, and healing, and hope and peace and love.
How long, Lord, how long?
Waiting is like wind. It appears to be just nothing, but it can do so much. I don’t mean that it teaches us some lesson, though, I suppose that is sometimes true. I mean, rather, that the waiting itself shapes us, changes us, makes us ready in some hard to grasp way.
Snow is snow, but snow we have waited for …
Snow we have longed for …
Snow we have watched for … it is what snow was always meant to be. It is more itself because we have changed.
We now have eyes to see.
What does Advent look like to you? Click here for the Advent flickr group hosted by our own photographer, Kelli Campbell.
Want to keep up with each post this Advent? Find There is a River on facebook here. You can subscribe or sign up to receive each post by email here.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2012 | Advent, Family, motherhood, Uncategorized, Waiting
We gathered around our advent wreath Sunday night.
The boys were too loud, and the baby needed to be fed halfway through, the three-year-old whined because we wouldn’t light all four candles, and then, of course, everyone fought over who would get to blow the candle out. But, the dining-room lights were low, and it was sort of beautiful, too.
We avoided wordy explanation and long prayers and passed out bread and grape juice instead (gluten-free for the big boy). My bread was a little stale, but, like I said, the lights were low, and it was all sort of beautiful.
If Advent is supposed to be a kind of journey, I wonder where we’ll be in a few more weeks. Will anything be different? Will I be any different?
It’s hard to imagine because my hormones are in new-baby upheaval and the boys I love so much are much too loud so I’m always yelling when I mean to be loving and the only change I can imagine is this:
We will sit together by the light of four candles instead of one.
The room we share will be just a little brighter.
My family may look its best in low light, but I still think this is what I want – this is the change I most desire.
A little more light to see by.
And the grace to love what it reveals.
What does Advent look like to you? Click here for the Advent flickr group hosted by our own photographer, Kelli Campbell.
Want to keep up with each post this Advent? Find There is a River on facebook here. You can subscribe or sign up to receive each post by email here.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2012 | Advent, Family, Jesus, motherhood, Uncategorized
It is dark, four children are finally quiet and in bed, and I am carrying a basket of folded laundry up the stairs.
I lift my head and see this: the tall double-hung window that presides over the turn in our staircase. The bottom is etched glass, and a battery-operated candle on the sill has filled it with one perfect rainbow. The top is clear glass, and a full moon hangs precisely at its center.
A full moon and a rainbow. I’ve heard the voice of God in signs like those.
I stop and listen, but I don’t hear that voice tonight.
Maybe I silenced it when I shouted at the boys? First, there was sword fighting with the curtain rods I had carefully placed in the corner (we’re in the middle of painting the family room). I couldn’t handle the noise, was worried the glass finials would break. Next, there was jumping from the couch, so I left them alone, yelled over my shoulder, “Someone will be crying soon!”
When the older boy started crying, I had no sympathy. Later, when I finally checked and saw the blood on his scalp, I somehow had even less.
Putting them to bed, I stepped on the baby Jesus, and I saw red. The baby Jesus from our wooden nativity set is sharp, and my foot hurt, but I saw red because I had told them, told them!, not to bring the Christmas decorations up into their room. It’s like a black hole in there, and I can’t take it anymore, and why did it have to be the baby Jesus accusing me with its painted-on-smile? Why not the donkey? I’d have had no problem throwing that donkey against the wall.
Lying in bed, I think about the full moon and the rainbow. I think about how silent they were. “Jesus, where are you??”
I hear these words in my head: Jesus was a little boy.
I tend to think of the incarnation and remember the baby. Or, the man. Never the little boy.
And the truth is, I don’t want to think about Jesus, the little boy. I don’t want to imagine Jesus jumping off the furniture. I don’t want to consider whether Jesus knew how to use his inside voice.
I want God to speak to me in rainbows and full moons. I want to see angels and follow stars.
I resist the thought that Jesus might be nearer than I think. Perhaps as near as the toddler bed down the hall where a little boy clutches a wooden Mary in one hand and a Lego astronaut in the other.
Too near.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 3, 2012 | Advent, Poetry, Pregnancy, Uncategorized
For a while now, I’ve reserved Mondays for poetry. If nothing else, poetry slows us down, and I usually need that on Mondays.
Here is a poem for the first Monday of Advent.
No doubt you can find many English-language versions of Rilke’s poem “Magnificat.” I’m afraid I couldn’t say which is best, whatever “best” means when we are speaking of poetry in translation. Most accurate? Most beautiful? As much as possible of both?
I chose this translation because of the words which begin the final stanza: “That he found me!”
Despite the trouble that sent Mary to seek refuge in the home of her cousin, she praises God because he saw her. He noticed her. He found her.
He is God-who-sees-us.
He is God-who-knows-us.
We are all of us lost, we are all of us found. Some of us don’t yet know that we’ve been found. Some of us just have a hard time remembering.
Rilke’s version of Mary’s song reminds me that even in the midst of trouble, even when I feel most lost, I have been noticed. I have been found.
Magnificat
Already gravid, she ascended, nearly
bereft of any solace, faith, or hope.
The pregnant matron, proudly and austerely
knowing, met her on the slope,
aware of all that Mary need not share.
Since she was resting on her suddenly,
the heavy frau embraced with patient care,
and waited till the younger spoke: “You see,
I feel as if I were to live forever.
God fills the rich with vanities, dear friend,
almost not even looking at their clever
glitter; choosing maidens, though, He’s never
rash, but fills them with life without end.
That he found me! Consider, that on my
account His fiats moved the stars. Oh, raise
Him up, my soul. Exalt the Lord on high,
for all that you can praise.”
– Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Len Krisak
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 2, 2012 | Advent, Jesus, prayer, Uncategorized
A prayer for the first Sunday of Advent:
Father in heaven, you came to earth in the person of your Son, Jesus Christ. …
Fill, we pray you, our every moment with his threefold advent. As then he came and now he comes and will one day come again, awaken us to the then and now and one day of his presence in this present moment. As we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, may all our time be clothed by eternity until we find ourselves at last in the home you have prepared for seekers and searchers who, in our seeking and searching, were hopelessly lost. Give us, we pray, the grace to surrender to being found.
This we ask in the name above every name, the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen. Let it be.
– from a prayer by Richard John Neuhaus, God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas
Read Advent 2011 (Day 1) here.
by Christie Purifoy | Nov 27, 2012 | Advent, Blog, Jesus, motherhood, Seasons, Uncategorized, Waiting
As I write this, we are waiting for snow. I can hear rain on the metal roof of the red barn, but I am straining my ears for quiet. When the rain turns to snow (as the forecast promises it will), quietness will spread the news.
Silence heralds the advent of snow.
There were so many silent years between the words of Malachi and those of Matthew. I imagine the silence building until those who strained their ears, like Simeon and Anna in the temple, could hear the silence speak: He is coming. Hold on. He is coming.
I want to be like Anna.
I want to pray him in with my waiting.
My own season of intense waiting may have ended (with an old Pennsylvania farmhouse and a new baby girl), but I need Jesus more than ever.
I need his presence because, apart from him, this home is just a pile of old bricks crushing us with endless to-dos. Apart from him, there is no hope for me as a mother (the best and hardest thing my firstborn taught me, and it’s a lesson I learn again with each child, is I do not have what it takes).
I desperately need him for today (to give meaning to my dishwashing and the endless picking up of toys), and I need him for tomorrow (because, apart from him, my life has no destination; what am I walking toward?).
And so, this month, I will pause in the midst of online shopping and tree decorating. I will put down the toy catalog and the cookie cutter (which, let’s be honest, will be a relief. I could write a book on the horrors of holiday baking for the child allergic to butter, wheat, and nuts).
I will turn my face towards darkness and watch for light.
I will listen to silence.
I will pray him in with my waiting.
“… come quickly to me, O God. You are my help and my deliverer; Lord, do not delay.”
(Psalm 70:5)
You can read the introduction to last year’s Advent series here.
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