Hope
You might find it helpful to seek from God a very essential spiritual gift which makes incompleteness bearable: hope. Hope is an expectant desire. Hope is an expectant desire that something will come, something change, something will be birthed within you or around you in the fullness of time, but not before. Hope is an expectant desire.
-Br. Curtis Almquist
Full Sermon: http://ssje.org/ssje/category/sermon/?p=589
Mazzy Star – Mary of Silence
Hope Sandoval is the singer for Mazzy Star. As I read this meditation, it seemed Br. Curtis was almost exhorting a Mazzy Star song to be selected! The tone of this song is a perfect showcase for her enigmatic vocals. Her vocal contains a sweetness, but it is a sweetness tempered by weariness and seemingly a burden. She is searching, questioning, but at the same time reaching out, grasping for clarity. Of course during the Advent season, how could this song not conjure up thoughts of Mary the mother of Christ. Just as it is helpful to consider the human Christ, so too with Mary, and Joseph, for that matter. What could possibly have been the pressures Mary faced throughout her pregnancy? What anguish did she bear in the silence of her heart and mind? Was her faith and trust so sound she was imbibed with certainty? The brooding atmospheric sonic soundscape the band builds here also is a perfect fit with imagining the wanderings of the holy family as the journeyed through the dark winter night. A stark beauty is heard, yet it is also mysterious, inviting one to wonder what may lurk in the shadows. In his wisdom, Br. Curtis again reminds us of time – we must not rush time. We must not force events to our desired time frame. We have much to learn through patience. Through waiting. And as Mary and Jesus and those awaiting a messiah would soon discover, what we get may not match our expectations. Then what? For those awaiting a savior clad in armor, with supernatural guns a blazing conquering our earthly enemies…..the vulnerable baby in a barn was not exactly fulfilling that expectation. Yet Christ would teach us and demonstrate how to conquer matters far deeper and more powerful than mere mortal enemies. But to learn this, to know it, requires our participation and our adapting ourselves. We may not expect Christ to demand that we conquer ourselves, yet in many ways that is precisely what we must do. Through him, we are birthed and made whole. Just like in our physical birth, we may arrive to this new life kicking and screaming and vulnerable and barely able to exist on our own. But through love and nurturing and taking our baby steps, we grow in our new life. And as we do, we learn we will face more death and births along the way, and though those too may be painful and fearful, from them life grows anew again and again. As Hope Sandoval sings:
Help me walk with you
To the sky in ?
