Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A February 19, 2023 “I went up to the mountain,/because you asked me to.” It’s the first line of a song I’ve been listening to all week. It’s titled Up to the Mountain by Patty Griffin. The song was written in homage to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and it references his last speech, I’ve been to the mountaintop, that he preached the day before he was killed. “I went up to the mountain Because you asked me to Up over the clouds To where the sky was blue I could see all around me Everywhere I could see all around me Everywhere” I’ve been pondering this song all week, listening to it, and thinking about how it’s a window into our readings for today, this Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Both the Old Testament reading from Exodus and Matthew’s gospel for today start with an invitation from God to God’s people to go up the mountain. In these stories, Moses and the disciples encounter the glory of God face to face, a glimpse of glory that both awe and inspire, confuse and confound them, a rest and a respite in the midst of a hard and challenging road. “Sometimes I feel like I've never been nothing but tired And I'll be walking 'Til the day I expire Sometimes I lay down No more can I do But then I go on again Because you ask me to” As we close out this season of Epiphany, the season of light, it’s important to remember that God continues to offer us this invitation, to journey up to the top of the mountain, to gain a new or different perspective, to have a respite from the cares and concerns and challenges of everyday life, to catch a glimpse of God’s glory, and to remember… Some days I look down Afraid I will fall And though the sun shines I see nothing at all Then I hear your sweet voice, oh Oh, come and then go, Telling me softly You love me so Today we are once again offered the invitation to hear the echoes of our own baptism in God’s words to Jesus—You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. We are invited to be fully present to the wonder of God—to see, as another writer puts it “How Jesus shines. Life just shines. The glory of God spills out of things,/leaks out of every container, even people.”ii We are invited to see that belovedness shining out of every person, even when we and they are at our worst. As we head into the season of Lent, a season of preparation for the new life of Easter, the new life of the resurrection, may we remember this invitation from God is always with us, this invitation to join God “up the mountain” where we once again encounter God’s glory in Jesus, in ourselves, in each other. “The peaceful valley Few come to know I may never get there Ever in this lifetime But sooner or later It's there I will go Sooner or later It's there I will go.” i. You can find the full lyrics here: https://genius.com/Patty-griffin-up-to-the-mountain-mlk-song-lyrics ii. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/02/13/weird/ iii. Hear Patty Griffin sing the whole song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az4DGPSiSFg

6th Sunday after Epiphany Year A

6th Sunday after Epiphany—Year A i February 12, 2023 It’s been a hard week in the Lemburg house. We’ve had a run in with our next door neighbor (yes, it’s that same neighbor that I’ve preached about before). It’s been bad, and I’ll confess that I’ve spent the week fantasizing about horrible things that might happen to her. And then I read today’s gospel. I thought about ignoring it and preaching on something else. But it was too late for that. It had already taken hold in my heart in the midst of this horrible week. It became clear that it was something that the Holy Spirit was encouraging me to wrestle with. But I couldn’t see, through my hurt and my anger, through my hardness of heart, any good news in this challenge this week. I knew I had preached on these lessons numerous times over my 18 years of ordained life. So I looked back at the good news that I had found before, relying on earlier foundations of my faith in my wrestlings with the readings and my integrity this week. So, today, I’m sharing with you what I preached on these readings in 2011; it’s what I needed to hear today (they say we preachers really just preach the sermons that we, ourselves, need to hear), and I hope it will be a gift of good news for you today as well. There is nothing like death to help give us perspective on life and how we are living it. Moses shares some of his own insight with us and the Children of Israel as he faces his own impending death on the outskirts of the Promised Land and as the Children of Israel prepare to enter the Promised Land and begin their new life there. “Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.” There at the end of his life, Moses encounters the reality that most of us are not able to choose the manner of our death, but that our lives are made up of millions of opportunities in which we are allowed to choose between adversity and prosperity, curses and blessings, death and life. In his valedictory sermon, Moses doesn’t just tell the Children of Israel to choose between life and death, blessings and curses. He tells them how they may choose death or choose life. You choose death, he says, when your hearts turn away from God; when you do not listen to God, when you do not obey; you choose death when you bow down and serve other gods. You choose life, he says, when you love the Lord your God. You choose life when you walk in God’s ways and when you observe God’s commandments. You choose life when you hold fast to God. Jesus’s message in today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a much harsher and hyperbolic way of articulating this choice between death and life. “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” Jesus tells his disciples. Others have said this in various ways: “You’re either for us or against us.” “Do… or do not….There is no try.” While we know that neither of those sayings is really faithful to life because life isn’t about such dramatic extremes, the message is clear. Choose life. Jesus speaks strong words about the choices people face over the course of their lives: the choices of nursing and nurturing our anger against one who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged versus doing the difficult work of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this he tells us to choose reconciliation, choose life. He speaks of the choice of lusting after another, of coveting aspects of another’s life versus being reconciled with the reality of our own lives and what we have, and again he urges us to choose reconciliation, to choose contentment, to choose life. He speaks of divorce and urges people to work to preserve marriage, and he lays out again the choice between divorce versus reconciliation. When at all possible (and he acknowledges that it isn’t always possible in marriage, in relationships), choose reconciliation; choose life. Finally, he offers the choice between making false vows versus reconciliation between your values and your action, reconciliation between your words and your works. Choose reconciliation; choose life. In his piece of the Sermon for today, Jesus says that the Way of God is the path of reconciliation; it includes being reconciled with ourselves, who we are, the reality of our lives, and being reconciled with others, rather than holding onto our anger, past wrongs or injustices. Choosing life means recognizing that our relationship with God is deeply connected with our relationships with others. Choosing life means knowing and believing and holding fast to the reality that no matter what we have done, God continues to reach out to us, that we do not have to live a life of curses, of adversity, of death; we may accept God’s forgiveness and our restored relationship as God’s beloved that we might choose life. Again and again we are offered this choice, between death and life. It is the choice between living our lives for ourselves alone, not worrying about who we crush to get what we want versus striving for justice for all people and care for the poor, searching for something deeper than our own comfort. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between living our lives in a rush to meet deadlines that are, in the scheme of things, completely insignificant, and ordering our lives around those lesser things versus spending time with those who are dearest to us, and letting them know how precious they are. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shutting down our emotions, not dealing with the reality of grief and loss in our lives versus acknowledging our losses and grieving…. grieving well. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shuttling our children through the countless rounds of school and sports and clubs and social activities, expecting as much or more from them than we expect from ourselves versus spending some time every day playing with or being present with them, enjoying their childhood and youth, and sharing in their joy that they so freely give. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between being polite and saying what we think the other wants to hear, our tongues held captive by the fear of hurting feelings versus speaking the truth in love when the truth begs to be told. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between making all our decisions, living our lives based on fear versus living our lives out of a deep and abiding hope that nothing can separate us from God’s love. And we are urged to choose hope, to choose life. It is the choice between bowing down and serving anything less than God: ideas that are not worthy, the demands and priorities of our culture, our own over-programmed calendars, our jobs, our loneliness, our despair, our own deep control needs and plans for how our lives should go versus holding fast to God, offering to God nothing less than our whole hearts during worship, praying, and giving thanks for all of God’s good gifts. And we are urged to choose life. And here’s the really good news in all of this. We are always offered the choice, and even when we continue to choose death, for whatever our reasons, God can and will redeem that too, if we will let God. God can take the death that we choose, and God offers us in its place reconciliation… redemption…. resurrection. It is the very heart of the resurrection: that God’s love is stronger than anything this world has to offer—stronger than our bad choices, stronger than evil and hate, stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than death. Therefore, when we choose God, we choose life. Your invitation this week is to join me in looking for ways to choose life, to choose God, in the midst of the hardness and the challenges of our lives. One way I have been doing this this week has been when I find myself nursing my anger, I acknowledge that. I take in a big breath, and in my heart and mind, I say to God and myself, “Choose life.” i. This bulk of this sermon was originally preached at St. Peter’s by-the-Sea, Gulfport, MS on February 13, 2011

5th Sunday after Epiphany Year A

5th Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A February 5, 2023 “Have you heard the story about the life house?” my husband said to me when we were talking about preaching this Sunday. Once there was a community by the sea, and they realized that so many people kept drowning. They decided they needed to do something, so they built a life-house and they trained life guards to go out and save people who were drowning. They were very successful in their mission, and all the people were glad. A generation went by, and the people of the life house spent all of their time sitting around and talking about the good old days of when they founded the life house. And while they were busy talking and reminiscing, people began drowning again, and there was no one to save them. Some members of the life house noticed this and asked for change, but others didn’t want to give up their stories and their time for reminiscing. So a fight broke out. One group argued that there are souls out there drowning, and we need to get back out there because we can save them, and the other group was comfortable and not really up for the risk of life-guarding any more. So, the ones who wanted to save the people from drowning went a little ways down the beach and built a new life house, and a generation later, the same thing happened. Our Old Testament reading for today is a reading from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is a long book that scholars think was written by at least three different people during three different time periods. The first portion of Isaiah-what scholars call First Isaiah- takes place when Israel is headed for trouble, the enemies are at the gates and the kingdom is about to fall to foreign invaders. The second portion—Second Isaiah—is written to the people of Israel who have been taken into captivity by the foreign invaders into Babylon. They are trying to figure out how to be the people of God removed from their land which had been promised by God, trying to figure out how to continue to be God’s chosen people when it seems God has forsaken them. The portion for today—Third Isaiah-- is what is happening after the people in exile have been allowed to return to Israel. They have come home and find their homeland is in ruins: the temple is destroyed; there is no infrastructure; they have to completely rebuild the trappings of both their common life and their worship. In today’s passage, the prophet is writing to them that they are spending too much energy on the trappings of worship; they are trying to influence God in their fasting, and they are quarreling with one another and mistreating their workers and the most vulnerable among them. The prophet reminds them of what God’s priorities are and therefore, what their priorities should be: “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.” The gospel reading for today is the second portion of Jesus’s famous teaching known as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has started with the beatitudes (which we heard last week), and he is now teaching about discipleship—how to maintain our “saltiness.” In the Beatitudes, Jesus is teaching that blessing is closely connected with our relationships with both God and our neighbor, and in our portion for today, he is teaching about the mission of his followers must be to serve others through their example. We are to be bearers of God’s light in the world’s dark places, and our self-offerings will be signs of God’s presence and redemptive work. Jesus is reminding us and his disciples that there are people out there who are drowning, and he have the gifts and abilities to help save them. Several years ago, when my husband David and I got to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, we went to the site where people think Jesus gave the sermon on the mount. It was actually one of my least favorite sites that we visited, and I felt unsettled the whole time I was there. There’s a monastery that exists near the site of the sermon on the mount now. And there’s a church on the site that was very clearly built sometime in the 60’s. It is a shrine to 1960’s church architecture and 1960’s religious decoration and opulence—strangely frozen in time on this timeless spot. All around the church on the grassy hillside are sidewalks, so much concrete, that lead up steps to the monastery, to restrooms near the parking lot and to a gift shop. The church is built to look out over the side of the hill where the disciples and crowds would have gathered, but there’s no way to get down to that area as a pedestrian. After visiting that site, I felt completely disconnected from what we know of Jesus’s teachings in the sermon on the mount and about the topsy-turvy nature of the kingdom of God and the good news to those who are perishing. It’s easy to see how we as the church can insulate ourselves from risk, from change, from believing that we are bold and brave enough to make a difference, to help save the lives of people who are drowning. All churches can fall into that trap from time to time. We gather here, week after week, to engage together in the public act of worship. When we worship together, we participate in, give our hearts fully to the saving mission that God has begun and continues to carry out through Jesus Christ. We open ourselves to being drawn closer to God in and through our worship, to being drawn closer to the rest of human kind. In and through worship, our desires become a little more closely aligned with God’s desires: that every person will have all that they need to live whole-hearted and healthy lives. And then, transformed, we go out into the world to try to do our part, working with the Holy Spirit, to make that a reality. This week, I invite you to pay attention to how you are transformed in worship of God today, and look through that lens on the world around you in the coming days.

4th Sunday after Epiphany-Year A

4th Sunday after Epiphany-Year A January 29, 2023 “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters,” Paul writes to the divided church in Corinth. And it’s not unintentional that in the first chapter of that letter, Paul talks about “call” 6 different times. For Paul, the church is those who are “called out” to represent Jesus in the world, and his letter to this young, church in Corinth shows all the ways that they are struggling together to understand what it means to be the church, the body of Christ in the world. I am thankful that we at St. Thomas do not find ourselves in a time of conflict. And yet, as followers of Jesus, we are always called to wrestle with what it means to be the church, those who are called out into the world to share the news of God’s love through the person of Jesus. Our Book of Common Prayer reminds us that the mission of the church is “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” It teaches us that “the Church pursues its mission as it prays and worships, proclaims the Gospel, and promotes justice, peace, and love.” And it reminds us that “the Church carries out its mission through the ministry of all its members.” i. Church isn’t just a place, a building, that we go to on Sunday mornings. Church is us, and we are called to ministry beyond the walls of this place in ways that are inspired by God’s Holy Spirit working in, among, and through us. This year, we are celebrating 100 years as the worshipping community of St. Thomas. We have lots of celebrations planned, and we also want to look back and remember all who have come before us and the ministry that they carried out in this place. It is also a time to ponder who we are being called to be in the next 100 years. How is God inspiring us to be a reconciling force out in the community beyond the walls of these buildings? To that end, I invite us to begin conversations today around listening for where God is calling us this year and beyond. I have three questions that I’m going to invite you to reflect upon at our Annual Parish meeting today or in an electronic format. It is my hope that these questions help us get to the heart of where God has been working in and among and through us this past year, and may give us an inkling on where/how God is calling us into the future. The questions are: 1. Where have you encountered God in life at St. Thomas in the last year (2022)? 2. When was St. Thomas at our best in representing Christ in this past year? What made that possible? 3. What aspects of our church are we being called to let go of to create space for new life and growth? I invite you to take some time pondering these, which I’ll reflect on more in the Rector’s report at the annual parish meeting, and to share your thoughts in small groups with vestry members at the meeting or via an online survey that was shared on social media today and will be in the email tomorrow. In conclusion, I’ll pray one of my favorite prayers about church and calling. It comes from the ordination of a priest and is also found in our Good Friday liturgy. Let us pray. O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things which were being cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. i. Book of Common Prayer 1979. P 855 (from The Catechism—under The Church)

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

3rd Sunday after Epiphany—Year A January 22, 2023 I’ve been reading a book titled The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. The author is The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, who is a canon on the staff of our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. In this book Spellers is writing about the seismic changes that are happening in the Church since 2020, and she is unpacking some of what she thinks is happening there. I’m about half-way through the book, and she is painting a bleak picture, indeed. So, I’ll confess, I looked ahead to the conclusion (mainly to decide if I could keep soldiering through this challenging read), and I was heartened by this paragraph: “No one asks to be cracked open or disrupted. No church seeks to decline in membership or stature. Most people don’t go looking for experiences that will humble them and break their hold on a treasured identity and culture. We did not choose to land here in this wilderness; we were shoved by pandemic, racial reckoning, decline and economic and social disruption. But now that we’re here, humbled and open, we have a choice and a chance.” i It’s an interesting idea to think about how a crisis can crack us open, and in and through that process give us a choice and a chance at something new. It’s true for us as a church, and it’s true for us as individuals. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is beginning his public ministry in Matthew’s gospel, and he begins it under the shadow of a crisis. His cousin, John the Baptist, has just been arrested by Herod after John has offered public criticism about Herod’s marriage to his brother’s wife. In the midst of this crisis, Matthew tells us that Jesus decides to move from Nazareth to Capernaum, citing the fulfillment of scripture from the prophet Isaiah for the reason for this move: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,/ on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—/ the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,/ and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death/ light has dawned.” But what’s interesting about this is that at the time of Jesus and even at the time of Matthew’s writing, Zebulun and Napthali weren’t on any maps. They had been wiped out by foreign occupation 700 years before. So Jesus is starting his ministry under the shadow of a crisis, in a place that is marked by darkness and failure and loss, and in an area that is especially connected with the shadow of the occupation of the foreign power of Rome, under which the people of Jesus’s day lived. And what is Jesus’ message in this crisis-shadowed time and place? “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” (This is from the Common English Bible translation.) In the midst of crisis and failure, Jesus offers an invitation to change, to new life, and new hope, and new opportunity. When talking about how crisis can be a time to experience new life, our Wednesday healing service reflected on crises that they had weathered in their past—how we as a church changed and adapted to the crisis that has been the pandemic, how they recognized new life and growth in their spiritual lives after having coming through personal crises. Some of us shared how, even as we are in the midst of crises now, we look toward tried and tested sources of wisdom or learnings from how we navigated other challenging experiences to help us look for the sprigs of new life that are sprouting even now and that we hope will bear fruit on the other side of this crisis. The gift of that conversation was also a reminder that community is another gift in the midst of crisis to help weather and navigate change together. There have been no shortages of crises of late. Many here have known the death of a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a child, a friend. Some have known the loss of a job or income. Many are tasting the lessening of mobility or independence. We have heard a new diagnosis. We have been held by the uncertainty of waiting for what may be to come. And that’s all in addition to the changing landscape of the world around us, the changing landscape of the post-covid church. But there is good news. Jesus who is God with Us, the very heart of Matthew’s gospel, doesn’t leave us alone in our crises. And let me be clear and say again, I do not believe that God is giving any one of us these crisis, so please, stop saying that to yourself or about yourself. (God isn’t giving you crisis to handle!) In the times when we are being cracked open by the circumstances of our lives and of our choices and other peoples’ choices, God moves there—into the moment of crisis, into the no-man’s land—to make God’s home there with us. And God calls forth new life, even in the midst of the worst experiences, even when we are not able to yet see it. And Jesus acts to spread the good news of God’s love and to heal us. The gift of community, of church, is that we can help share some of the burden with each other, and we can help each other see the sprigs of new life which God promises will come. i. Spellers, Stephanie. The Church Cracked Open: Disruption, Decline, and New Hope for Beloved Community. Church Publishing, Inc: New York, 2021, p 95.

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany-Year A

2nd Sunday after the Epiphany Year A January 15, 2023 A letter to Mason Lanier Johnston upon the occasion of your baptism Dear Mason, Today is an exciting day in your young life! It is the day that you are being baptized into Christ’s body the church in this special place where your mom grew up and where your parents were married. It is the day when your parents and godparents will make promises before God and this congregation about how they will raise you and how they will teach you to live. It is the day when they will acknowledge on your behalf that God has already called you and claimed you as God’s beloved and that you will live your life accordingly. And it is the day that this congregation will promise you and your family that we will support you as you grow in your faith in Christ, no matter where you go or what you do. Because you see, sweet Mason, being baptized changes us. In and through our baptism, we become who we already are; we become more fully who God has created us to be. The baptismal covenant that your parents and godparents will say on your behalf this day, that we will all say alongside them and you, and which we will all continue to renew together again and again throughout the years means that we live life with a different sort of intentionality. And through baptism, we are bound together in community through the body of Christ, not just with all those who surround us now, but also with all those who have come before us and all those who come after us by these promises to this way of life, this commitment to following this path. In and through our baptism, we are called by God to continue to be transformed, to be open to God’s work in our lives, in the lives of those we love, and in the world around us. And we need each other to see, sometimes, how we are called; to understand things about ourselves that we cannot always see or understand. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul is writing to that community there. He’s gearing up to let them have it because they have been fighting and acting up, and he’s not at all happy with what they’ve been up to since he’s been away. But first, before he does this, we have our portion for today, where he reminds them about what he loves about them. He holds up the mirror before them to show them and remind them of the best of themselves. This is one of the gifts of Christian community—that we can see and recognize and name things for each other, speaking the truth in love, that we can’t always recognize in ourselves. Paul also reminds the Corinthians that God has already given them all the spiritual gifts or the tools that they need to be in community and to share the good news of God’s love for all through Jesus. So, today, sweet Mason, we give thanks for you and your baptism. We promise that we will help you recognize things about yourself that you might only be able to find in and through Christian community. We will help you remember that you are called and claimed as God’s beloved, to live your life accordingly, and to trust that God will give you the tools that you need in order to do this. And we will support you as you grow, nurturing you in the faith and helping you to see the ways that God is at work in your life, in the lives of those you love, and in the world around you. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

Holy Name 2023

Holy Name 2023 January 1, 2023 Today is the Feast of the Holy Name, when we mark Jesus’s naming and circumcision 8 days after his birth. Our Old Testament reading gives us a glimpse of how God gives God’s name as a blessing to the people of Israel in Exodus, so I’ve been thinking about the sort of naming that we do in blessing this past week. Jesus’s own name is, of course, a blessing. In his native tongue, Jesus’s name is Joshua, which means “the Lord is salvation.” Jesus’s person and his name serve as a reminder to any and all that God cares about what happens to God’s people and that God will continue to offer salvation. In our Episcopal tradition, a priest is able to offer blessing at certain times during certain services, and a blessing is essentially the pronouncement of God’s love and favor for God’s people. And that’s important. But there are other ways to offer blessing as well. The Irish priest, poet, and mystic, John O’Donohue, has written an entire book of blessings. Its title is To Bless the Space Between Us, and in the book O’Donohue explores what the gifts of blessing are. He writes that blessing is a way of manifesting kindness, of holding a circle of light around the one being blessed. “There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things;” he writes, “it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitable reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul deems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves… The word kindness has a gentle sound that seems to echo the presence of compassionate goodness. When someone is kind to you, you feel understood and seen. There is not judgement or harsh perception directed toward you. Kindness has gracious eyes; it is not small-minded or competitive; it wants nothing back for itself. Kindness strikes a resonance with the depths of your own heart; it also suggests that your vulnerability, though somehow exposed, is not taken advantage of; rather it has become an occasion for dignity and empathy. Kindness casts a different light, an evening light that has the depth of color and patience to illuminate what is complex and rich in difference. Despite all the darkness, human hope is based on the instinct that at the deepest level of reality some intimate kindness holds sway. This is the heart of blessing.” i. As I was thinking about blessing this week, I was joking around with people in the office. At the end of each conversation, I offered a blessing to them of what we had talked about in our conversation or what I thought they might need. To Jane, I offered her the blessing that she could find the grocery item she needed without having to go to the Big Kroger. To Amy Jo, as I was parting, I said that I hoped that she would not need to talk to me or I to her over the long weekend (because that usually means there’s some sort of crisis). These blessings were said as jokes, but I noted how good it made my heart feel to offer these friends my hope for goodness and blessing in their lives. So this week, as we continue in this Christmas season (yep, it’s still Christmas through this Thursday), I invite you to look for ways to offer kindness to those you love and those you encounter. Look for ways to name the hopes that you have for them, to shine a sphere of light around them and be alert to the ways that God offers God’s love to you through others. In closing, I’ll offer you an excerpt of one of O’Donohue’s blessings: At The End of the Year As this year draws to its end, We give thanks for the gifts it brought And how they became inlaid within Where neither time nor tide can touch them... Days when beloved faces shone brighter With light from beyond themselves; And from the granite of some secret sorrow A stream of buried tears loosened. We bless this year for all we learned, For all we loved and lost And for the quiet way it brought us Nearer to our invisible destination.ii i. O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us. Doubleday: New York, 2008, pp 185-186 ii. Ibid. pp 159-160