by Christie Purifoy | Dec 7, 2012 | Advent, book of quotations, Uncategorized
“Lots of people these days are seeking recollection, writing books about it, urging us to do it. It seems like a nice idea all right – until you try it. What a lot of the books don’t tell you about is the terror. To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge may mean not knowing much of anything else.
With the peace and quiet of recollection may come the stark edge of fear that this doing nothing, this being, this offering of oneself for God to be the actor, cannot possibly be enough. It all seems so passive. Do something, produce, perform, earn your keep. Don’t just sit there. It may be good and well for Mary to offer space in herself for God to dwell and be born into the world, but few of us possess the radical belief such recollection requires.
What matters in the deeper experience of contemplation is not the doing and accomplishing. What matters is relationship, the being with. We create holy ground and give birth to Christ in our time not by doing but by believing and by loving the mysterious Infinite One who stirs within. This requires trust that something of great and saving importance is growing and kicking its heels in you.”
– from “To Be Virgin” by Loretta Ross-Gotta, Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas
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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 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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by Christie Purifoy | Nov 1, 2012 | Family, God's Love, motherhood, Pennsylvania, Scripture, Uncategorized
Only seven weeks old, and she’s seen her first hurricane. Actually, “heard” might be more accurate. I’m not sure any of us held her up to the window to watch the rain fall, but we were both awake to hear the wind in the night.
It was a wind to make you thank heaven for thick brick walls, even while you wondered if the storm windows would hold.
She breathes warmth and peace into the side of my neck, and I am newly determined: when storm clouds hover I will, like this baby girl, expect to be cared for.
I will practice hope.
I will assume Jesus meant it when he said we have no reason to worry.
When Hurricane Sandy threatened to cut off our power and water, I lined up baby bottles on my window ledge. They were filled to the brim with clean water. Then I went and filled a few more containers with water. And then, a few more. Possibly, a few more after that.
Does the Lord of the storm (Job 40:6) love me any less?
“Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.”
(Psalm 107: 28-29)
(photo by yours truly)
