With These Hands

Dear Friends,

For months and months, we have weathered the storm. It has been work. Hard work. There has been grief. Deep loss. Disconnection. Uncertainty paints our days, with highlights of possibility. Some have gone through too much. Others have found abundant blessing. We have had bad days, and other days when we can stay positive and open to the evolution we are riding.

And now Advent is here (almost here and gone as these days fly by and away). Advent is here, and we again face scripture that is very much not full of Christmas trees and carol singing; but rather John the Baptist, apocalyptic language, and trying times.

So, what do we need in this Advent space? Apparently, today, I needed Bruce Springsteen.

I clicked a link in my email, sent to me by a clergy network, and found myself with “The Boss”, live in Berlin, crying….(me, not Bruce).

He sang of the organ sounding out through the open doors of an empty church and that is about where the tears began. But then he cracked me open. Do you know the song? My City of Ruins. Sounds like bad news right? But the chant, the mantra, at the end brings the redemption (at the very least, listen to the last 2 minutes). Yes, the city is in ruins (the city of our hearts, the city of this pandemic, the global city….), it is in ruins.

But there are hands that can hold it. There are hands that can fold into prayer. There are hands that can hold one another. There are hands that can build a new city. There are hands to raise up, so we can rise up. Your hands, my hands, our hands. Take a look at yours….go ahead…how beautiful right? I bet your hands are unique and marked in some way that tells of your life. How beautiful it is - what your hands have done. How beautiful they are at rest. How beautiful your hands are when they are engaged in the work of Advent.

For at Advent we pick up the heavy boxes of our ruin, and move them away, we make space, so we can re-centralize the love, the pain, the grief, the beauty. Re-centralize our own hearts, and all else that is asking to be held, in these hands, so we can rise up.

Yours in Christ,

~Becky

Photo of 2002 drawing, B. Binns