Watching for Gifts...

Its Advent . A time for preparation and reflection on our lives in preparation for the wonderful event of Christmas. We are trying to go a lot lighter on presents this year and celebrate the joy of the event. We will do all the usual things , the tree , the stockings, the turkey , attend a round of Christmas gatherings and remember the poor. We usually try to to have a good chunk of family time laid aside over the holiday season. Sitting in a quiet time between services reflecting on the reason for the season my impression was that I should "Watch for Gifts". Gifts?. We usually think of Christmas being a time the Wisemen give Jesus gifts, or that Christ is born to us as a gift. It not something we think of that Jesus would be sending us special gifts. But that was the impression and I left church with the kind of inner excitement one might have when you are dating and wondering if there will be a special box in the branches of the tree. I currently attend two churches on Sunday morning. St. Anne's first and CLCC the families church of choice. They compliment each other. One being Catholic and the other a community pentecostal( they are user friendly). Both have coffee and hot chocolate. Occasionally both have cookies. One has to get ones priorities straight in these matters. I don't see what the fuss is about. I was pleased to find out I was not banned from eating cookies at fellowship time in either church...Paul would have liked that. Okay so I am an ecumencial cookie eater. Anyways..I was alert to being sent"presents" something that Jesus who knows me so well was sending out this year instead of cards. I popped into CLCC and had just caught my breathe when the special music for the morning was announced a lovely latin solo from Vivaldi. Now this is a church where Latin is not spoken or sung and the stage is full of drums, electric guitar and key boards. We get out worship songs off an overhead not a hymnal and Latin solos are almost unheard of. I smiled..I am a classical music lover , and this was wonderful. rare and special. Gift number #1. He knows what I like I smiled a thank you into the eternity. Several weeks ago a big box had been sitting on the staff table with old books and for some reason I had been too busy to look. They ended up after selection in the coat rack corner and as I was putting something away I spied Little Flowers from St. Francis of Assisi. Now you have to understand my book collection. I have a goal of having a library of lovely classical spiritual reading. Only problem is I don;t have the cash to buy all those goodies, so I wait for them to come to me. (example) when I first really desired to start a library of spiritual reading one of my then youngsters found the Imitation of Christ in a discard book pile and said Here Mommy this looks like one of those books you like to read...along with several other Gems. I needed a bookshelf . We were driving by the neighbours and on their driveway was one of those take it for Free signs...just the right size bookshelf, and we hauled it home in a wheel barrow. I wanted a prayer carpet...came the same way...so when I hear Watch for Gifts I perk up....So in the now picked over box was still a number of lovely little wonders. Mother Theresa, more Francis , goodies and at the bottom of the book a for Carmelites older version of
St. Theresa of Liseux who sent me roses early in my spiritual quest. And this odd old hardback..called This Tremendous Lover by Eugene Boylan OCS ...a Cistercian...talk about custom fit gifts...and its a good read..if your looking for Cistercian formation reading ...which it is..
So these were the start of my twelve days of Christmas present...and I even won some lovely candles at the staff party..I am like a child now....I am wondering what else is under this mystical Christmas tree...I think in a way that is what Advent at spiritual level is supposed to be about. We are supposed to be like children. Waiting for the wonderful gift of the Messiah . We wait in the darkness of this winter for the light of His love to dawn on us and warm us with his company. We wait in expectation like a child. We wait with wonder and an increasing sense of joy. We light the candles. We sing the Christmas carols. We hear the antiphons of expectation.
We prepare our hearts to receive Him..this very best of Gifts who comes as a child laying in his Mothers arms. Opening our hearts to be enfolded in His.

This is a link to a particularily lovely Utube piece of Chant with a wonderful star scape...I thought it would be nice for Advent as Advent is preparation time......Lorna




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGdtll3KAqw&NR=1

Poetry Some Called Him Teacher

My daughter warns me Blogging will become addictive and I am all eager now to try out my new world. Lets try dropping in one of my poems...oh this is fun...it works..if you like this I have more on my website called www.freewebs.com/pilgrimhaven

Some Called Him Teacher

Some Called Him Teacher
I find Him here
Among the smiles
Of students laughing in the halls
The sweat upon their brows
As they walk into study halls
Some facing crucifixion
The quiet in the chapel
Is sudden and sweet
Like spring rain
In a drought
And it is tempting to think
That I find Him only here
Though the candle burns
I force myself to remember
That life is a prayer
As some paper airplane
Floats overhead
And the graffiti never says
Have a nice day.
People called Him Teacher
He wrote in the sand
Told stories
Provided illustrations
Rewarded effort
Allowed for less then intelligent questions
Corrected error
Directed towards change
Challenged their thinking
Teacher
Teach us How to Pray
Teacher
Tell us about the Kingdom of God
Teacher
Who is my neighbour
And he taught them from life
From the present, from the past
By example, by action, word & deed
His Life is a Prayer
In the dust and in the dark
In the laughter
In the sorrow
He leaves us to follow
Not on our own
Though we stumble, like children
Like students
Like pilgrims
On the road
He meets us where we are
Dusts us off
Helps us find the answers
To those questions
He has placed in our souls.
Eternal Teacher / Mentor / Christ

Lorna J Tatomir © 06/12/2001

Creating a Mission statement for your life

Searching at the Library for a book to help me finish my career portfolio, I picked up this little book called "The Path Creating your Mission Statement for Work and Life" by Laurie Beth Jones. Having taken some workshops before on mission statements being something you could write on a T shirt I wondered what her approach would be. Her first key concept seemed to be that a mission statement acts as both a harness and a sword -harnessing you to what is true about your life and cutting away the false."Having a personal mission statement can help you make decisions in both your work and home . Knowing our personal mission statement is the best career insurance you can have, because once you are clear about what you were put here to do, then "jobs" become only a means toward your mission, not an end in themselves." You get the feeling you she knows people are skim reading for the good stuff because she starts chapter one with ;

Three elements of a Good Mission Statement...

1. A mission statement should be no more then a single sentence long.
2.It should be easily understood by a twelve year old
3.It should be able to be recited by memory at gunpoint.

I thought about some Mission statements of people service agencies I has seen and they were several pages long. Pretty but not exactly memorable. This portfolio course was suggesting we have one and my hand in date was looming. Not exactly gunpoint but enough of a reason to recognize the book was a "gift" to help me get there. Some days the Universe as Oprah calls it speaks to you in a really loud voice and trucking off to church I was still thinking about what my statement would be. Today was the feast of Christ the King and the readings for the day covered those familiar verses on how in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and visiting those sick and in prison we indeed do this to Christ himself..something strongly held by folks like Mother Theresa and similar personal heroes. The homilist pushed us to take this a step further and realize that we all had a final exam. If we all knew the question on our final exam wouldn't we want to be preparing for it. "What have you done for the least of these." Martin Luther is waving frantically from the back of the room....justification by faith .....great Martin but what do you do with this idea that if we don't take care of the poor, the hungry, the naked and the prisoner Christ might not give us a high mark on our finals.I stuck Martin back in his box and tried to concentrate on the rest of the sermon. Its kind of hard to refute key essential texts. Okay rapid self assessment ." Well spent my life working with handicapped kids,( which I got paid for ) alright I stuffed some hampers at the food bank, I fed the homeless once that time at the downtown center, we give to charitable organizations ,I want to go visit seniors, maybe I should send a letter to my Mom, and there is a woman's prison in town. I could kind of see myself with some kind of sketchy list, not bad but was it Final exam material? So I get a bare pass, but what if I really wanted to focus my whole life to answering this question well. What if I want to Ace the exam. What if there is a step A and a step B.What if because the directions for helping the poor etc are there not just to get an A on some end of life Golden Gate Gold Card but is about living and having a quality of life that has value now. I want to be able in my final reflections to have a sense that my life has value. That I my I was a significant other in the life of my family and community. That I could truly rest in peace knowing that I lived for more people then just myself..yet find my true self in sharing the grace and blessings I have received with others. So a step towards this would be? A Mission statement . Not just for the front of my career portfolio but for the rest of my life. If life is divided up into sections like a pie, I could easily be in my last quarter.If there was ever a time I needed to have a Mission statement that would give some focus to my life it would be now. So what would it be.Understandable by a twelve year old did not work for "lift up the hands that hang down". Feed the hungry,cloth the naked , visit the sick and prisoner wasn't bad...after all I didn't exactly come up with the idea. It was a part of what I wanted to own but it wasn't distinctly me.Maybe there is a way I could build some writing into the "visiting "part .What about...Bring Hope and healing...no what about Share Hope and Healing...yes that says it.I could put that on the front of a career portfolio.So here is the first Blog on Sharing Hope and Healing . Well at least until I get to chapter two of The Path ..