Week One, Day Four Hope

I invite you into the prayer practice of Visio Divina by first focusing on your breath.

Breathe in to the count of three...exhale to the count of six or seven.

Breathe in the One who invites us to reside in hope... exhale all that declares such a street/location/place doesn't exist.

Breathe in the smell of fresh baked sugar cookies that taste like hope on the tip of our tongue...breathe out the sour taste that sometimes sits in our souls when we are 'too much with the world'.

Look at the image and let your eyes stay with the very first thing that you see. Keep your attention on that one part of the image that first catches your eye. Try to keep your eyes from wandering to other parts of the picture. Breathe deeply and let yourself gaze at that part of the image for a minute or so.  

Now, let your eyes gaze at the whole image. Take your time and look at every part of the photograph. See it all, from the first image that captured your imagination to the tiniest detail you must lean in to see or even enlarge the photo.  You may want to list want you notice and ask the question, why?

Consider the following questions:

What emotions does this image evoke in you?

What does the image stir up in you, bring forth in you?

Does this image lead you into an attitude of prayer? If so, let these prayers take form in you. Write them down if you desire.

Reflections...

Okay, wait, we've already been here before.

Growth in the desert.

Green where there should only be brown.

Life where we think of only barrenness.

I may not remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but the past photos of the desert in Alaska with flowers and then the picture of few small blades of grass still lingers as an invitation to hope this season of Advent.

We got it. Why another photo of something growing in sand?  Can we really see anything different or new or fresh?

Only, this isn't in Alaska. This is in Boca Grande, Florida.

This photo is taken from the light house I showed you a week ago when we dove into the topic of perspective with framing and focusing.

I am at the top of the lighthouse, looking down at endless horizon of water, the sea of sand, the ways the tall marsh grass are waving in the wind at me, and suddenly into my frame and focus comes this evergreen tree just hanging out as if to say, "How are you doing?"

Evergreens are native to Florida.  But in order to grow and bloom here, evergreens must be able to withstand the salty sea air and strong winds from storms.  This is true not only of the evergreens in my neighborhood, which is 10 miles away from the beach, but especially the tree pictured above which is 10 feet from the waves!  While this evergreen has a source of water and plenty of sunlight to soak into every single needle, the tree is constantly surrounded by the wind and waves, the surf and storms that can be strong.   When I first saw this, the evergreen looked even more out of place here than the ones in Carcross Desert!

Hope today will need to withstand the winds that want to suggest that we are naive or sticking our heads in the sand.  Hope will need to weather those who want to offer all kinds of evidence that we should just give in or give up and join them in the misery that loves company.  We know well those who want to say the only party in town is one thrown by Debby Downer where there are no Christmas cookies and eggnog because it’s all just empty calories, we will have to work off at the gym come the New Year.

I think hope can come in forms that are very familiar (like an evergreen), but at the same time meets us in different places and from different perspectives as we move about the world.  Hope sings one song in a desert in Alaska and a variation of that same tune on a beach in Florida.  The invitation of hope is to be open to how the traces of grace are moving in our lives in that particular place and space.

This is the invitation of God, who is willing to enter our world, not among the rich or powerful.  God enters not in palaces or places of prominence.  God enters not with trumpets blaring, blasting, announcing for all the world to hear!  Rather this is how Caesar (then and now) works in the world.  God's hope writes a different script.

God in a barn.

God born to two unwed parents and because of Mary's courageous, "Yes".

God noticed only by shepherds because everyone else was too busy bustling about dancing to Caesar's charge.

God who is found in a desert in Alaska and then 4,300 miles away in an evergreen on a beach in Florida.

Hope interrupting and disrupting our ways with a whole new way to be in the world.

What familiar sights, sounds, and scenes might keep repeating in your life this day as we seek in this season of Advent to stay awake, alert, and aware of traces of God's grace today?  May the connections across time and space to be woven with hope in your life in these days.

Blessings ~~