Playing with Words

 

As we continue to haul out the holly, put the tree before our spirits fall again, fill up the stockings…yes I know I may be rushing things and quoting one of the best Christmas songs ever!  (Because, yes, we do need a little Christmas now!).  Last week, we played with how preparation and expectations mix and mingle together like a recipe for sugar cookies.  That our expectations impact and influence our preparation.  “Of course,” we think, “I must send Christmas cards, what will Aunt Pheobe think if she doesn’t get a letter from me.”  Never mind that Aunt Pheobe glanced at your letter, thought, “Well isn’t that nice,” then resumed her life.  Sometimes we create expectations.  Other times we are given expectations in the form of guilt or shame from our family.  It’s like the fruit of the month club ~ family guilt can be the gift that keeps on giving.  So it is good to breathe and to ask yourselves ~ what are my expectations for the year.  What is mine to do?  What have a been given by someone else?  For example, my college age kids expect that there will be presents under the tree on Christmas morning, because no matter how many candles are on my kids’ birthday cakes, there is still that inner child that Christmas lets loose in them to this day.  I rejoice and relish this.  I recognize and realize that there will come a time when this may not be the case.  So this Christmas I am gladly taking the expectation of my kids for presents and our traditional Christmas brunch of scrambled eggs and sticky buns with joy and gusto!  This impacts and influences my preparation (e.g. shopping and wrapping), and I see this as holy.  I also have the expectation to slow down and savor the sacredness of these December days.  I want to be intentional today and not have life be a blur of hustle and bustle.  I want to listen to carols ~ cue We Need a Little Christmas again!  This expectation can direct my preparation too. 

Because I want to savor the sacredness of the season and prepare for Christ’s birth, this week I am inviting you to play with me using the words of Advent ~ Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy.  Each day this week, I want to invite you to create an acrostic prayer using the four words of Advent.  The first rule to this is…there are no rules.  You can use your dictionary, thesaurus, Google, your neighbor, and any other resource you can find.  There are no grades being passed out.  Have fun with this, the more creative and audacious the better.  The second instruction is that an acrostic prayer uses the first letter of the word to create other words that awaken your sacred imagination to explore what that word means.  For example, let’s play with the word, Hope and what this word evokes and provokes for you.  Hope is…

H ~ healing, wHoleness (I said you could be creative), holiness, holding and hugging.

O ~ openness, offering, organic

P ~ playfulness, partnering, praying

E ~ experiencing and encountering the Eternal everyday (bonus points for creating a sentence!)

Please remember there is no obligation to do this or expectation that this will be meaningful for your preparing a place in your heart to welcome God.  You may want to dance to Christmas carols instead or make cookies for your pastor or just sit and breathe.  But, if this meditation awakens your creativity and curiosity, I would love to see the acrostic prayer poem you create for each day this week.  With God’s hope, peace, love, and joy to continue to guide you to the most unusual place for God to enter this world ~ a barn!  Amen.