Solidarity news and reflections of interest to the Passionist Family As we leave our Advent of waiting, expectation and welcoming the light, we continue the Christmas season leading to the baptism of Jesus. And we realize that the times we will enter in January will be anything but "Ordinary." It is honest to say our world hurts more than it did a year ago. Our job is to keep going, keep others going, and to "save pessimism for better times..." (Eduardo Galeano) The Passionist Solidarity Network offers you two gifts for this year-end/beginning. It is gift is for the ears of your soul and a little light for dark times. It is a beautiful seasonal album that was just recorded by Passionist Earth and Spirit Center Executive Director, Kyle Kramer and his family. The 14 tracks includes amazing vocals and piano accompaniment by Kyler, his wife, Cyndi and children, Eva, Clare and Eli. It was mastered by Earth and Spirit Center volunteer, Joe Brown. Click here to listen free on Soundcloud- and enjoy! Image: Pixabay A second gift is from our friend Joe Grant--for your prayer and reflection. “The pine stays green in winter... wisdom in hardship.” ~ Norman Douglas
Wintered Wisdom, by Joe Grant Like gatekeepers on the watch whether at eventide, midnight dark and break of day, ever vigilant stay! Mark 13: 34-35 Before your much-needed shot in the arm, what have you learned from this season of dark discontent? Warily we waken to winter’s deeper reason as cautiously we welcome a chilly challenging season. As north leans away from our daystar’s angled rays, we roll into a shadowland of shorter, starker days. What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! William Shakespeare Midwinter assured our ancestors, a terribly trying time: a struggle for fuel and food warmth and shelter, to safeguard them till sunlight’s return. Now watchful, we observe companion creatures endure seasonal hardships. And the awakened among us witness brutal weather ravage our kin, denied adequate hearth and home. But winter shoulders special graces to draw us close to the fire of each other with storytelling, sweet treats and new kindling, to coax the light’s return. Still it remains a time of waiting and wondering; ever watchful for: danger and distress, disease and disaster, despair and delight. Rather than decry this shadowed season in these terribly troubled times, wintering urges us to imitate our creature-kin: to prepare for it, learn its lessons, make space for its darker graces. Wintry wisdom, schools us to honor and enter the dark together. Those black sharp and flat notes in our lives are necessary keys to change and harmonies. For in meandering course, every life must traverse many veiled valleys: a dark night of the senses, soul and spirit, a long twilight of the earth. Other shadowed vales appear: Isolation and injustice, climate calamity, deprivation, indignity. Black indeed is the backdrop upon which Creation sparkles and glows. Darkness everywhere lingers. Even bright of day births shadows. For much of our brief span we are blind to the breadth of beauty and depth of tragedy. Though we cannot see it, a riot is silently running just beneath our feet. Even as winter looks like desolation, the wakeful perceive creation in frenzied preparation for another eruption to meet resurgent radiation. And while we decorate this sacred cycle in the gaudy garb of liturgy, such solemnities, and their heady abstractions, insulate us from the shivering shock of raw reality. Faith, hope, and love above all do not let us flee life’s harsh splendor by retreating into ideation. What if for one day each being acknowledged the fear and let it go? Suspended beliefs opened their arms, drew strength through earth, grass, rock, sand. Melissa Shaw-Smith With chilly bareness, earth coaches us about dying, watery light, necessarily difficult days. And turning toward the light we open ourselves to life signs amid desolation. Advent dark proclaims that wrapped in humble solidarity and fragile vulnerability Emmanuel approaches: One come to bide with us, who cannot abide to be without us; at one with all our loves and losses, aches and limitations. So I say to one what I say to all: Keep awake! Mark 13:37
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