If you are here unfaithfully with us, you’re causing terrible damage. If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love, you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen. Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning of the universe. -Rumi ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme — see this past Sunday here **

The Road Here is the road: the light comes and goes then returns again. Be gentle with your fellow travelers as they move through the world of stone and stars whirling with you yet every one alone. The road waits. Do not ask questions but when it invites you to dance at daybreak, say yes. Each step is the journey; a single note the song. -Arlene Gay Levine, from Bless the Day: Prayers and Poems to Nurture Your Soul ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and

O night of admiration, full of choirs, O night of deepest praise, And darkness full of sweet delight! -Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme — see this past Sunday here **

In deep nights I dig for you like treasure. For all I have seen that clutters the surface of my world is poor and paltry substitute for the beauty of you that has not happened yet. -Rilke, from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme — see this past Sunday here **

Whom should I turn to, if not the one whose darkness is darker than night, the only one who keeps vigil with no candle, and is not afraid— the deep one, whose being I trust, for it breaks through the earth into trees and rises, when I bow my head, faint as a fragrance from the soil. -Rilke, from Book of Hours: Love Poems to God ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme —

I know that I love the day, The sun on the mountain, the Pacific Shiny and accomplishing itself in breakers, But I know I live half alive in the world, I know half my life belongs to the wild darkness. -Galway Kinnell ** For the season of Advent I am posting a reflection each Sunday on a theme from the lectionary readings and then during the week offering a poem each day to highlight that theme — see this past Sunday here **

 The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God. -Isaiah 61:1-2 The prophetic and poetic texts of the Book of Isaiah are some of my favorite of the ancient Hebrew scriptures.  This is the third Sunday of Advent which is also known as Gaudete Sunday, Gaudete means rejoice in Latin.  During