Framing the season….PEACE….
The Birthing Stories:  Jesus’ and Yours!
“As In A Loving Dream…We Are Born Again…
And Again…And Again…..”
Matthew 1: 18-25, Luke 1: 26-45

December 21, 2008 
How do you frame the events of your life?  What’s worth framing? 

Where is your focus…what’s in and out of the picture?  If someone came into your day and took a snapshot now and then, what would you see yourself doing?  Would you frame it and put it on the mantel of your desires?  Or, would it go frameless in the shoe box of left over memories or seemingly insignificant moments?  How do you frame your relationships, your choices, you health, how you communicate, what you give of yourself or to yourself?  How you are framing your life….is this what you were born for?  For whatever you were born into, new life is possible….born again and again and again.  Framed by Jesus birth and the hope and joy it brings….your birth a gateway, threshold….an opening to possibility.  For your family….you were born through it, not to it!  You are more!  You just may beed a bigger frame!  And if you framed your life with joy?  ….what might you see differently? Joseph dreams and Mary sees angels.  ~What are you dreaming about these days? 

~If an angel came to you, what words of future events and purpose would you like to hear? 

~If we turn these questions to prayer, the prayer might be:  O Holy One, help me dream of things to come.  Help me find my purpose for this day.  Dreams, visions.  For all time and in most cultures and religions, people have believed God communicates through our dreams.  As we sleep, with our conscious defenses down, God whispers (or shouts!) in our ear to bring us information for our own good.  Stuff God wants us to be aware of….for our own good.  We need not be afraid….live afraid.  
And even in dreams, in visions….Mary’s, Joseph’s, yours, God honors free will…gives us the chance to make meaning out of our lives as we can.  In today’s scriptures, Mary and Joseph, separately, are told “do not be afraid” and given the choice to respond to the purpose offered, or not.  
Like with them, God trusts/knows, that when we can respond/make meaning out of our life, we will as we can..  One wonders how many other favored women God approached before God found the one who would move out of her fear and live into possibility.  One wonders how many men received a dream before God found one who would move out of his fear and follow his deepest desire to love, despite what seems to be.  And……Mary and Elizabeth.  Both visited by the angel Gabriel.  Cousins.  One quite old and one quite young.  Both pregnant with possibility.  And the young one doesn’t gloat and the older one doesn’t covet or judge….or maybe that’s the other way around.  They give each other the space and honor to be who they are and they celebrate each other’s lives.  Perhaps Mary would never have found those magnificent words of thanksgiving if Elizabeth had not recognized her great courage and faith.  Perhaps what Elizabeth needed most was someone to acknowledge her wisdom and come to her for support and comfort. It allowed her to give birth, too.  When they met, the holy leaped for joy.  It was a mutual honoring and support….intended for good…not just their own…but an honoring of the possibility that so many lives would be touched by the two people to which they were about to give birth.  The Holy leaped for joy at their maturing trust!  And our lives are touched.  And you touch and are touched.  Whose life do you touch?  With what honor and support do you touch it?  Who is touching, honoring, supporting you? I think of Mary and Elizabeth, and I think of the Sanskrit word:  Namaste…when the holy in me meets the holy in you, we are one.  I honor the place in you in which God dwells.  I honor the place in you which is of love, of truth, of light and of peace.  When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, we are ONE. The holy is within you.  It leaps for joy when it meets the holy within another.  When have you felt your heart beat fast, your spirit leap as someone confirmed who you think yourself to be, when you have shared what is really going on within you?  That rushed heartbeat and enlivened spirit just may be the clues something inside you is wanting to be born, released out into the world….something you never could have conceived of on your own….something holy. The holy within, it is like that dream you’re hoping will come true….the vision you have… for a life of integrity and justice and peace. The holy within, it helps you find the purpose for the day. Oh that it would be so easily framed…God’s plan for our well-being!  Oh that the angel would appear, the dream play out, the doorbell or the telephone ring and as you answer it everything about who you are and your role in God’s grand scheme be revealed!  Oh that we had a clear picture about our particular usefulness to God…how God is in our every day…for our good! It may not be clear, but it is right before your very eyes!What are you grateful for?  What are you longing for, dreaming about? As you go to your deepest self to reflect on just this…prayerfully, you will see that you are clearer about God’s purpose…desire…for your life than you usually are willing to admit. In some ways, when we touch our deepest gratitude and our deepest longing, which is the holy waiting to be born from within, we find a deep wisdom that is not afraid. Then….we know the difference between the things we can change and the things we cannot.  We go with what we can change. And as we find our courage to do so, we also find a serenity.  That’s the peace associated with this season of giving birth to the impossible!  From a place of integrity deep within us….we wisely give birth to God’s deepest desires, our purpose….This season, we dream dreams and see visions.  This season we give birth to new possibility for our lives.  And even though we cannot see the way through to its completion or perceive our own maturity, we live with a sense of purpose far bigger than our own existences or wants or limitations or abilities. The scriptures invite you to wonder about who you are and your role in God’s grand scheme of things.  Things are yet to be revealed and you will either make space for a new possibility…or you won’t.  Ponder this:  What is your sense of purpose as you review the snapshots of your day?  …what is captured that surprises you? Will you give yourself a chance to see yourself in a new light and so frame new possibilities?Will you look frame life differently this Advent and so begin a new year of significant, framable moments placed on the mantle of your desire? Christmas is for those who refuse to give up and let their hearts grow old. Christmas is for those to whom life comes newly and with purpose each and every day. Christmas is for those who can let yesterday go so today life can be full of new possibility.  Christmas is for those who are agitated by newness (not aggravated by newness) whatever their age! Life is for living, for those in whom Christmas is a feast of the soul that never ends, a celebration of the constancy of change, a call to begin once more the journey to human joy and holy meaning in everyday life. You see, this is no cuddly baby born in a manger….the words of the Magnificat reveal a very strong and present God, even as a baby.  No, this is not a cuddly baby but a baby who looks you in the eyes and says, “What are you going to do about your life?”

This candle shines hope, this joy, this peace into the mystery of life…this one love.  Hope and Joy and Peace and Love frame our lives…The Advent of something new. We are born again and again and again! Emmanuel, Emmanuel, His name is called Emmanuel. God with us, revealed in us, His name is called Emmanuel.