It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ.  Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late.  Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts. But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that we gives.  It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of

I measure my life in vessels.  They trace the contours of my days.  Teacup, bowl, oil lamp, pitcher, baptismal font, Communion chalice, basin, bathtub.   I sleep in the belly of night and wake under a downturned bowl of blue. I ponder their shapes as I begin to understand my own longing: wanting to be held, fighting against being contained.Teach me, I say.  Tea, food, oil, water, wine, stars, sky.  Teach me how to gracefully, powerfully fill my space.from Jan Richardson’s Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas Below is a bowl I designed with mosaic several years ago.  The