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My first thought, on hearing Derek Webb announce via Twitter that he was working on a worship album: Is this a joke?

My second thought I shared with a friend: Hah, I bet it will be instrumental. That would be fitting.

You see, I was aware from personal experience that singer/songwriter Webb, though a committed Christian, was not one to venture into writing a worship album. In 2006, we brought him out to play for our college retreat, and over lunch Webb was insistent that he was not a worship leader but an artist, and the distinction was important to him. Later, in a brief conversation with his wife, Sandra McCracken (a tremendous artist in her own right), I asked if Derek might come and play some of the rewritten hymns he performed on the Indelible Grace albums. She smiled but replied, "Derek doesn't really do worship."

So—fast-forward to December 2009, and what do we hear but plans for a worship album? I knew this was either an ironic joke, or that Webb, known for his incisive lyrics, was probably going to do something odd, like presenting us with a worship album with no words.

Well, I'm one for two. Feedback, which released on November 2, is no joke. And, except for the closing "Amen", Webb and collaborators McCracken and Josh Moore sing no words.

But that doesn't mean there aren't words. And that doesn't mean the album is a joke. Webb has called this album his most reverent and possibly most important, and I believe he is right.

Feedback is an instrumental meditation on the Lord's Prayer; broken into three movements that follow the main sections of the prayer, each track is titled with one of the petitions that comprise the prayer. As it turns out, this album signals not a novelty but a return to a forgotten tradition: the meditative singing or chanting of Scripture.

Webb may not be singing the text—but you are directly invited to do so yourself. Each song features a repeated motif, written to the rhythm of the petition for which the song is named. This became clear about halfway through my first listen, and Webb confirmed this intention in an interview. I want to suggest that, by offering you repeating melody, Webb is encouraging you to engage in worship. You, not he, are the primary worshipper and the one offering the prayer.

Now, I want to walk a fine line here: I want to say enough to make you give this album a chance, but little enough to let you wrestle with it yourself. There are surprises along the way which I want you to discover as you listen. So let me just say this:

1. There is a great need for this album. We are accustomed to neat worship packages, verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. And we easily take appreciating someone else's worship product to mean that we have worshipped ourselves. But Webb is suggesting that it is your own consideration and encounter with God that matters, and that this takes time and attention. To spend nearly 40 minutes just rolling the Lord's Prayer over in our minds is a form of meditation and worship we desperately need. Webb is giving us a tremendous resource here.

2. This is not innovative, it is historical. For thousands of years Christians have chanted or slowly sung Scripture. In this case the music provides two important functions: music helps us pay attention (it turns out to be much easier to focus on the words for longer when there is a melody), and music gives a background tone to bring our hearts in line with the words. Rather than analytic and detached study, these songs promote heart-mind-soul encounter with Jesus' prayer. This is ancient wisdom, with digitized instrumentals.

3. This is not background music: Feedback requires attention. There is a lot going on, and it will challenge your perceptions. (My favorite moment, which I want to remain a surprise, begins by feeling offensive and ends as a perfect context for the second movement of the prayer). In fact, Webb commissioned two artists to create non-representational visual works for each song, to encourage the listener to engage all their attention to prayer. 4. Feedback is hauntingly beautiful. My personal favorite track, "Lead Us Not Into Temptation But Deliver Us From Evil," captures both our fear in the darkness and the hope that we need not fear because God is with us. This is some of Webb's best melodic work, and longtime fans will recognize his presence. But he has managed to get himself out of the way and bring us to the text, to savor it and live in it. The experience is a reminder that worship is a beautiful, life-giving, personal/corporate mystery.

One thing, to me, is clear: Feedback is a departure from the tongue-in-cheek irony Webb is often known for. This is music in earnest. If he has communicated anything in this work, it is a passionate plea to pay attention to God, above all else. We can only hope that Christian worship leaders take notice and work equally hard to create art that invites thoughtful praise.

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read part 1  |  read part 2

Once we intend to become saturated in the Word, where do we turn? In bygone centuries this was an easy question. You went to church. There were no written manuscripts of the Bible available; anyway, chances were you couldn’t read. So communities gathered to hear the Word presented in the liturgy—weekly, or even daily.

They had a certain advantage—there was nothing else to hear. They did not have cell phones buzzing, newspapers proclaiming current events, televisions blaring advertisements. Mostly they had quiet. So the Bible was the only word they had to consider.

But we have a certain advantage—the words of Scripture are readily available to us, in a multitude of translations and presentations. We can pull up passages on our phones, listen to recordings, read in the most comfortable language.

The work comes in choosing to listen, every day—and really listen. This requires a plan, for unlike our forebears we have plenty of media demanding our attention. To give undivided, quiet attention to the Word takes a certain amount of effort—but not strain. Strain, in fact, is exactly what we must avoid.

The particulars will vary from person to person, but in general we will each need to consider a few factors: time, place, pace, and margin.

Time: when will you read, and for how long? Some of us are most alert upon waking, and others need some very strong stimulants to get our brain working in the morning. Those with small children may have a hard time snatching more than a few brief instants of time to themselves, while others may enjoy leisurely stretches to savor the Word. The point here is that longer is not necessarily better; whatever helps us pay attention is best.

It is unwise to assume you will read without a scheduled time. If we intend to be familiar with the Word, we must give it a secure place in our day—and treat that time as we would treat any other appointment. We would never simply stand up a friend, except in the most dire of emergencies; neither should we lightly miss our time with the Word. It is not a matter of guilt; it is a matter of relationship. One does not grow close to those one does not make time for and treat with honor.

If we find ourselves regularly missing our time with the Word, we may need to ask ourselves if we truly mean to be shaped by it, or if we simply admire the idea. If we find that we do not truly intend to grow familiar with the Bible, that is not a cause for shame; it is an invitation to ask ourselves some searching questions. What do we intend to be shaped by? What are we being shaped by incidentally? Is it best to let our formation happen at random? If we prayerfully and honestly consider these, we will generally and without shame come to the place where we do intend to make time for the Word. There is no need to compare to those who already so intend. Simply discuss it openly with God, and he will surely take care of the rest.

Place: Perhaps this will not be true for everyone, but I find that if I have a regular place, along with time, to meet God in the Word I am more likely to do so. This does not have to be elaborate. A chair turned toward the window may suffice. But we are physical, and habitual, creatures. A regular place serves to remind me of why I am there, and usher me more quickly into a frame of mind to pay attention to God.

Pace: Walk into a Christian bookstore, cast a stone and you will surely strike at least one book promising to help you read the Bible in a year. There are dozens of these on the market, and they can be helpful. Having a plan helps us consistently and rhythmically listen to the Word.

However, we need to pick a pace that is right for us. Reading through in a year may be unrealistic, given our time, attention, or desires. And many of the plans feel a bit scattered: a Psalm here, an Epistle there, and some Old Testament and Gospel for good measure. I have found this often makes me unable to consider any one of these passages.

So maybe your pace is, three chapters a day. Or three pages.

Or maybe you will take a page out of our forebear’s book and read along with the Church calendar in a lectionary. There are many good lectionaries (selected readings for each day or week) that follow the cycle of the church year—Advent to Christmas, Lent to Easter, and then the long ordinary season. A great advantage to this is the chance to feel your entire year as a cycle centering on Christ’s life.

The most common lectionaries are the Revised Common Lectionary (weekly, 3 years) and the Book of Common Prayer (daily, 2 years). These are available free online; in fact, the ESV Online will quickly dish up today’s reading for you, or any of a number of other plans.

Margin: This is the most overlooked, but most essential, part of reading the Word. It is fully possible to read without listening. We run our eyes over the Words, comprehend but retain nothing. Usually, this is because our minds are stocked full of trivia and worries and refuse to absorb anything more.

There is a certain whole pace of life that helps us approach the Word to listen. If we are rushed, hurried, and frantic we will not hear well; we will be composing lists of to-dos and solving problems with 3/4 of our brain while the Word passes by in the background. 

So, over time, the Lord leads us to simplify and quiet down, and restore healthy margins. This does not mean we become hermits and refuse to participate in the daily grind of life. Instead, it means we reserve sufficient space within our lives to pay attention.

This is a very personal matter and I hesitate to make any clear instruction about it, because we quickly become legalistic. You will know if you are too harried to hear the Word. And, with prayer and time, the Lord will help you find a proper balance. Jesus often simply wandered away into the wilderness to restore his soul; I believe the Spirit usually beckoned him there. Similarly I think the Lord teaches us each when it is time to say that powerful word: “No.”

But a good place to begin is to have a simple five to ten minutes of quiet someplace in our day, where we simply sit and enjoy being still with God. There is no agenda here; there is no strain. It is simply time to remember that God is in control, you are not, and there is just no need to worry. This is the start of a life with appropriate margin, a mindset that allows us to put down our business and listen when it is time to read the Word.

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read part 1  |  read part 3

The Bible refuses to be used for instant satisfaction. The pages won’t be handled as a technical manual or an index for life principles. The Word won’t budge, any more than you would if a perfect stranger asked for your intimate secrets. That, you’d insist, only comes with time. And commitment.

Unfortunately, unlike you, the Bible will not protest when prodded and used. And, like teenagers who think holding hands and necking sounds the depths of intimacy, we often don’t know there’s more to reading the Word than pulling verses and tidy rules out of the text. We have no idea what a steady faithfulness to absorb and sit under the Word will do for us.

That is the kind of knowledge that can only be handed down, elder to younger, parent to child—and was in fact meant to be. Moses charged Israel to center parenting around oral repetition and saturation of the Word. Any young Jew of Jesus’ day would have memorized at least the Torah, if not the Writings and Prophets as well. This was a way of life, handed down with the assumption that the blessed life could only be understood from within.

But ours is a generation stranded, cut off from tradition both by circumstance and choice. We inherit the suicidal notion that anything worth knowing must appeal to us before we study it; wisdom counts for nothing if she cannot explain herself to the detached observer.

But the Bible won’t play along. Any Christian who has seriously tried to practice a daily quiet time can attest to this. In fact, so can any Christian who has grabbed a Bible and tried to find out, “What does God have to say about...” There is no index, and those publishers who include one do as much harm as good.

The very structure of the Bible preserves hints of what we have forgotten—this is a Book to be absorbed, not used. Unfortunately our (Greek) ordering of the books obscures the original structure of the Old Testament. Its (very intentional) order began with Torah: instruction, the first five books of Moses. This was the heart. The following sections—the Prophets and the Writings—served as application of Torah to history and to human experience, respectively. They were a unit. You could not isolate a book, let alone a sentence. Isaiah illuminated Exodus; Deuteronomy was the spring from which the Psalms flowed.

The New Testament bears a similar structure. We begin with four Gospels and Acts—all that Jesus did, the full revelation of the heart of Torah. Then come two more parts—Letters and the Revelation—which again show what Jesus means in particular situations and in the whole of human experience. From the genealogy of Christ to the church’s cry, “Come Lord Jesus!” all is meant to be read together.

And so it is with the two parts together as a whole. To borrow an image from Flannery O’Connor, Jesus lurks in the background of the Old Testament, peering out from behind trees and rocks as we read Law, Prophet, Writing. And when he is fully revealed, he tells us that he has come, not to abolish what came before but to fulfill it.

So we are reminded of what generations of Christians and Jews have known—this is a book to listen to, sit under, absorb. The Word is eager to reveal its mysteries, not to the proud scholar or impatient consumer, but to the patient, faithful love who will listen and grow in understanding.

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read part 2  |  read part 3

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need of today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.

- Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline

Modern Christians reading the Word have been drilled into practicing a daily “quiet time.” We expect we will “get something out of it”—daily. Each and every time we open the Bible, we must get some kernel of encouragement, or doctrine, or a glowing worship experience. That fruit—given in 15 minutes or less—is our proof that we have met God.

In reality this is problematic. Much of our “quiet time” leaves us grasping for a product: a verse that didn’t move us, but probably should have; a command we’re not sure how to apply, but seize upon; a story which may or may not have relevance for our situation, but we can force to prooftext a conclusion we had already made. Instant gratification, when applied to Scripture, is a wretched hermeneutic.

The pressing need, as Foster points out, is not for intelligent or gifted people who can swoop upon a text and grasp it at once, catching its full meaning and savoring its literary art. Bible reading is not wine tasting. The Scripture is not for connoisseurs.

What we need, instead, is to become deep, and by this I mean deeply rooted. We need to know the Word through familiarity: long, rooted familiarity. Picture old, crinkled lovers, liver-spotted hand in hand, who have through long seasons of joy and pain come, at last, to know one another.

The intelligent and gifted person can analyze the sentences of Scripture. The deep person can complete sentences of Scripture.

The only way to become the deep person is time. Lots, and lots, of time.

I first recognized this when a favorite pastor mentioned that he had been reading through the Bible every year for twenty-five years. I sat up in my seat like lightning. Twenty-five years? How rooted would you be in story after story, page after page? How much would that Book have shaped the way you see the world?

I will never know unless I do it myself. When I am 50, I will only know what that pastor knows if I actually read the Bible, year after year, starting now. There will be no shortcut and no catch-up. Just three or four pages a day, every day, for thousands of days.

Listen to Eugene Peterson describe Annie Dillard, a writer he and I both admire:

She has assimilated Scripture so thoroughly, is so saturated with its cadence and images, that it is simply at hand, unbidden, as context and metaphor for whatever she happens to be writing about. She does not, though, use Scripture to prove or document; it is not a truth she "uses" but one she lives.

Saturation counts for more than mastery. Or, rather, saturation is a kind of mastery. As Charles Spurgeon used to say of John Bunyan: “If you pricked him, he would bleed Bible.”

So let us read, day after day, not for the immediate fruit (though this will come along the way), but instead to become so saturated with the images, poems, and cadences of Scripture that they are simply at hand. Let us know the Word with a familiarity that unveils its mysteries before quick-eyed love, grown over decades of faithfulness.

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Last night I reached a breaking point in my heart. We do this occasionally—only so long can we carry a burden of pain and sorrow before it spills out everywhere, one direction or another. Mine spilled out into prayer, and it took the form of unusually direct prayer: I asked for what I wanted, without apology. Generally speaking, when I do not know a desire is God's will, I try to add as many conditionals as possible to my prayers. "If it's your will... I might be wrong, so if this is good... This is my perspective, but if it's not yours..."

But last night I simply asked for what seemed good to me. No conditionals. Not that I was demanding; but it seemed right to lay out what seemed good to me as clearly as possible.

Now, here was the striking thing: I realized that I was asking with fear, not with faith. My deepest emotion, if you pulled it up and stated it as a proposition, was: "I want this very deeply, therefore God will take it away (for my good)." In fact, this belief has been operating quietly in my heart for as long as I can remember. I think a good many of the conditionals in my prayers have come from this place of fear—ask for what you want, but don't let God know just how badly you want something, because then he will surely deny it. After all, it has become an IDOL—and what better for you than to take away your idols?

There is a sort of logic here. We need to love God most of all; check. Things we want deeply can often become idols; check. We have a hard time letting go of idols; check. God loves us and wants us to love him; check. ERGO, God will seize and destroy all the things we want most deeply so that we can love him alone. QED.

But there is a hidden premise in this argument, and a hidden belief in many of our hearts: God prefers to teach us to love him by withholding things from us.

Really? Is this Biblical? Or is it more of the same lie that we heard so long ago in the Garden: "Did God really say you can't eat of any tree in the Garden?"

Part of what led me, last night, to question this, is the story of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1-2. This is a familiar story to anyone who grew up in Sunday School:

There's a man with two wives (never mind that, children, moving along): Hannah and Peninah. Peninah (who in my mind was always ugly, warped with bitterness) has many children, and mocks Hannah (young and pretty—I think I got these images from Disney, or flannelgraph) who has none. One year, as they go up to the Tabernacle to offer sacrifices, Hannah reaches her breaking point. She slips away to the presence of the LORD, and pours her heart out, asking for what she deeply desires: a son. After mistaking her for a drunken woman, Eli the priest prays that her desire be fulfilled. God hears and, sure enough, she has a son—Samuel.

There is an interesting detail in this story which I missed as a child. Elkanah, Hannah's husband, says to her in her grief, "Am I not more to you than ten sons?" Interesting. There is a way in which Hannah's desperate grief is all out of tune with her situation. She is deeply loved, regardless of her barrenness (very unusual in that culture). All she can see is her shame, even though the one whose love really counts treasures her. In her somewhat inappropriate grief, she cries out to God to take her inappropriate shame away through an unnecessary child.

And God says yes.

How does that fit in with our paradigm? Is this the act of a God who really prefers to teach us by withholding? It seems like God has concern for how Hannah actually feels and the language in which she will be able to receive love. She is broken; she can no longer hear her husband's love; she can only understand her value if she bears a child. And rather than make her suffer long into a realization that she doesn't need a child, God gives her one. And then many more.

This seems like the action of a God who is concerned for Hannah's joy, to the extent that he will give to her the deepest need of her heart. It seems like God is more interested in blessing Hannah tangibly than running her through the grinder. Now, yes, of course, Hannah had to wait and experience much pain before she received her son. But for goodness' sake, her son was Samuel. Her name is in the Bible, as an example of faith. Her name is known everywhere and she is remembered with honor. That's a bit better than getting your first child right when you wanted it.

We are taught that God is working everything for our good. But somehow our assumption is that he will do so by repeatedly beating us over the head. In our inner hearts, we believe that God prefers to grow us through pain. For example, how many times have you heard someone say, "We really only grow in the hard times!" Really? God has nothing to teach us in times of blessing and abundance? He only uses suffering? His entire sanctifying toolkit is torture devices?

I want to explore a different idea—one I think is more Biblical, and therefore more true. What if God prefers to teach us through kindness, abundance, generosity and mercy? What if using pain is something he does only when it is really necessary, but not by default? How would that change the way we see Him? How would that change the way we pray? How would it change our faith and hope in the midst of hardships?

My conviction—which I hope to demonstrate—is that we are better able to accept discipline from a God we believe would prefer not to have to administer it. We are more ready to believe He is doing good in our hardship, when we assume that His normal way is blessing and abundance.

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--Gerald May, Addiction and Grace, p. 96

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1. Everyone is wrong somewhere. Let’s just get that on the table. Anyone who tries to express truth, will miss something someplace.
2.  That includes you. It’s really helpful, as a reader, to remember that you might be wrong. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to find truth; it just means, don’t be arrogant.
3. Listen/read the way you’d want others to treat you. If you were trying your best to speak the truth, and got something way wrong, how would you want your reader to respond? Your listener? Be honest. You’d want them to know you were wrong, but you’d want to be treated with grace. And you’d want them to keep listening to the stuff that is right.
4. Expect to find truth in weird places. The writers who have most helped me in my Christian walk have often been deeply opposed to Christianity (Ayn Rand, Iris Murdoch, Plato) or [I believe] wrong in important ways (Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robinson, Simone Weil, Kathleen Norris, Charles Taylor). Where they are wrong, I try to learn from their mistakes. Where they are right, though, is in places that often evangelical Christianity doesn’t get to see.
5. Expect to find lies in weird places. No writer gets it all right, as we said before. So that means, even with the pastors/teachers you like most, consider whether what they are saying is, in fact, in line with God’s Word. Don’t just take stuff on the fact that they’ve been good so far. Engage thoughtfully.
6. Understand that communicating to a broad audience is really hard. Many times, the nuances of what we are trying to say get lost in the medium. Plato distrusted writing for this very reason: you can’t ask questions of the text and get clarification. What’s written/said is done, and unless you can find the author you can’t have them say it a different way. But lots of times we need people to say things a different way. Think of how many times you have to adjust in a conversation because someone isn’t quite getting what you’re saying. Many times, a pastor/teacher/writer is not wrong, they’re just talking to somebody else in a way that doesn’t sit well with you. If you could converse you might discover more agreement than you initially believed. Try to get to the intentions of the author, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
7. Give it time. Even today I was reading a book and came across a Scriptural interpretation that I did not like—and an hour later I finally understood what the writer was saying and agreed. Sometimes it takes way longer. Years later I’ll return to a book and find that I can now understand the nuances of what the writer is saying.
8. Try to augment, if possible. If someone is writing or speaking, it is because they have a message. But not the whole message. No one can say everything. And sometimes authors leave out very important qualifications or considerations, or fail to make connections that are crucial. Many times what looks wrong is just incomplete, and if you can supply the missing subtleties, you can unearth great truths. Give pastors and writers a break; they can’t see every angle.
9. Ask other people how something strikes them. You might just not understand. It happens.
10.  In the end, accept only what seems to mesh with the Gospel—but still try to understand the rest. That may mean that there are whole areas of thought that you cannot bring to complete conclusion. That’s alright. Many people, much smarter than you or I, couldn’t either. There is enough clear truth in the Bible to start building a life on; the rest will come as it does. But only if you have the humility to draw the line between what you do understand, and what you don’t. If you don’t fully understand, don’t be quick to write ideas off.

I hope that’s helpful. And, by the way, I’m wrong here somewhere.

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I have gotten a lot of feedback from my sermon on Revelation 19. It seems like God gave words to share that a lot of people needed to hear and process. Me too. Understanding (and feeling!) the passionate heart of Jesus for us is so important and so difficult. 

So I'm going to keep processing it here with you all. I want to be intentional about giving this attention regularly, because it seems we all need it quite a bit. 

To start, I want to share a verse from Song of Solomon that I am turning into a breath prayer.

Breath Prayer

We generally think of prayer as a way to ask God for things that we desire or need. Or, perhaps, a way to express our hearts to Him. While these are both certainly important components of a prayerful life, I think we need a fuller definition of prayer.

Simone Weil wrote that prayer is essentially paying attention to God. I think this comes closer to the mark. To attend to something means that we look on it, gaze on it, with our full energy and concentration, in order to see it as it really is. A good student will attend to the problem set before her—she will consider it carefully until she sees it clearly, rather than rushing forward and bungling it.

Prayer, then, is at least in part an effort to see and know God for who He is, rather than reducing Him to the size of our preconceptions. Prayerful attention to God most certainly will overflow into praise, adoration, as well as asking for His help. But it will also involve listening, waiting, beholding Him.

Breath Prayer is one form of prayer that focuses especially on waiting for the presence of God, listening to His words. In this prayer, we choose a short sentence, and repeat it over and over again with the rhythm of our breath. For example:

"Abba / I belong to you."

"Daddy / let me feel your love."

"I am yours / save me."

"You are worthy / of my praise."

We select the sentence based on what we need at the moment, as best we can tell. Then we find a quiet place to sit in God's presence, or go for a walk, and focus on the words with every breath.

After 10-15 minutes, I find that the prayer becomes a quiet background and I am ready to move on to whatever I need to do with my day. But as often as I can, I return my focus to the words of the prayer. In fact I often find myself repeating them quietly without realizing I was doing so.

Breath prayer reminds me of God's continual presence, that He is closer than my breath and just as necessary. It also allows truth to shape my mind, rather than lies—I find it easier to resist condemnation or temptation when I have been meditating on truth all day.

I am my Beloved's

Here, then, is the breath prayer I am drawing from Song of Solomon:

"I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me." (7:10) 

The church has long read Song of Solomon as, at least in part, representative of Christ and His Bride's love for one another. Here the Beloved sings that she belongs to her Beloved, and relishes the fact that His desire is for her. 

This is as good a place to start as any. Today (and as often as I can in the near future) I am going to pray these words, again and again: "I am my beloved's, and his desire is for me.". Hard to feel? Yes. Hard to believe? Yes. But it is true. Nothing is more true. So I'm going to say it again and again, and underneath those words the prayer: Let me feel it. Let me know it. Let us all feel it, so deeply that everything in our lives finds its proper place. 

My prayers are with you all today, brothers and sisters, and in a special way with those who are hurting to feel God's love. 

You are your beloved's. And his passionate, matchless desire is for you. 

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But most—if not all—of the lies we believe are about ourselves as relational beings. And so they must be replaced, not with an abstract idea, but a concrete experience of love. I cannot just tell myself the truth. I need my community to tell me who I am.

This is why love is central to the church. Not sentimentality, but speaking the Gospel to one another clearly. When I have forgotten who I am in Christ, I cannot force myself to believe a Bible verse. Not usually. Nor, I think, does God prefer such autonomous devotion.

Instead, I need other Christians to look me in the eye and speak grace. I need them to remind me of the Cross and resurrection life, of my new identity as Beloved. They speak truth, and that is important—but with the speaking is the very experience of what is being spoken.

This is also why we must have chrurches where it is safe to struggle. If I cannot be honest about my fears and failures, my community can never speak the truth and restore me gently. They can never help me replace lies with truth if I must wear a mask in order to be accepted.

But a community where grace is the rule opens space for tremendous healing. Even in the knowledge that I can speak honestly about failure and doubt, I find the beginning of belief that I truly am accepted and welcomed by God.

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I stepped into one of our (many) local Starbucks today to enjoy a cup of coffee courtesy of my family. Giftcards for coffee are always a winner with me. It took me a moment to recognize why it looked sparse inside the cafe; after a pause I realized that nary a Christmas decoration remained to be seen.

Now, given that their religiously-neutral red-and-white snowy winterscapes had been up since Halloween, I understand. And anyway, this week America lies sprawling in the wake of buyer's remorse, sugar- headaches and the melancholy that accompanies getting your cake, eating it, and feeling rather ill afterwards. (My friend Steve commented today, "All I want to eat is fruit. No more chocolate!")

All the same, as far as the church calendar is concerned, Christmas is only started. For centuries, Christmas was a season. Lasting 12 days, from the Feast of the Nativity on the 25th (Christ's mass), until Epiphany on the 6th of January, the church recognized that meditating on the incarnation was too big a job for one day. Advent prepared us, turning our longing toward the presence of God—and now is the season to rejoice! Emmanuel—God with us—has indeed come.

So this year I am celebrating still. My advent wreath is lit each night (the first candle is getting perilously low), the tree is glittering in the window and I am unabashedly playing my Christmas music in the car. But more: I am trying to ponder the mystery of the entrance of God into this world as one of us.

Luke tells us of Mary's quiet pondering, treasuring up all the wonder surrounding the birth of her Son and meditating on them within her heart. She is our guide in this season—a time to continue on in quiet, rapt wonder of our God.

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