Enjoy the last of the holiday goodies before the ball drops!

An as yet unnamed baby hippopotamus stays close to its mother, Kathi, in Berlin Zoo
Gero Breloer/EPA

What is to give light must endure burning.


- Victor Frankl

A cobbler makes leather shoes inside his workshop in Jammu (India).

REUTERS/Amit Gupta

Godly sorrow

According to the monastic tradition, godly sorrow comes when a person recognizes she is at fault and in need of forgiveness, and at the same time realizes that forgiveness is possible.

Patterns IX

O holy Child of Bethlehem,

be near to us, we pray;

cast out our sin, and enter in,

be born in us today.

Cradled in a manger, meanly,
Laid the Son of Man His head;
Sleeping His first earthly slumber
Where the oxen had been fed.
Happy were those shepherds listening
To the holy angel’s word;
Happy they within that stable
Worshipping their infant Lord.

Happy all who hear the message
Of His coming from above;
Happier still who hail His coming,
And with praises greet His love.
Blessèd Saviour, Christ most holy,
In a manger Thou didst rest;
Canst Thou stoop again, yet lower,
And abide within my breast?

Evil things are there before Thee;
In the heart, where they have fed,
Wilt Thou pitifully enter,
Son of Man, and lay Thy head?
Enter, then, O Christ most holy;
Make a Christmas in my heart;
Make a heaven of my manger:
It is heaven where Thou art.

And to those who never listened
To the message of Thy birth,
Who have winter, but no Christmas
Bringing them Thy peace on earth,
Send to these the joyful tidings;
By all people, in each home,
Be there heard the Christmas anthem;
Praise to God, the Christ has come!

George S. Rowe, 1879

When I have called to him
. . . He has answered me.
When I have trusted him
. . . He has proven more than worthy of that trust.
When I have been weak
. . . He has given me strength.
When I have been selfish
. . . He has given me love.
When I have been sinful
. . . He has given me pardon.
When I have reached the end of my rope
. . . He has given me unconquerable hope.
When I have been lost
. . . He has shown me the way home.


Howard Edington, The Forgotten Man of Christmas, Synchronicity Press, 2000

Patterns VIII

Buckingham Palace

Dominic Lipinski/AP

A soldier on patrol in Mosul, Iraq. The house is marked "for sale."

Petros Giannakouris/AP

Beatitudes for Caregivers

Blessed are those who care and who are not afraid to show it —
they will let people know they are loved.

Blessed are those who are gentle and patient —
they will help people to grow as the sun helps the buds
to open and blossom.

Blessed are those who have the ability to listen —
they will lighten many a burden.

Blessed are those who know how and when to let go —
they will have the joy of seeing people find themselves.

Blessed are those who, when nothing can be done or said,
do not walk away,
but remain to provide a comforting and supportive presence —
they will help the sufferer to bear the unbearable.

Blessed are those who recognize their own need to receive,
and who receive with graciousness —
they will be able to give all the better.

Blessed are those who give without hope of return —
they will give people an experience of God.

Author unknown

O God, thy sea is so great, and my boat is so small.

photo: Darren Staples

Patterns VII

Members of the European Parliament attend a debate on the EU response to the world financial crisis, in Strasbourg.
REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

Advent prayer

Holy God, our days and times are in your hands.
Help us to set aside our fears to walk in faith and hope
and trust in you.
We ask for the courage to live boldly;
for the grace to forgive ourselves and others;
for the spirit of expectancy, of watching for your presence
in our lives and in the world. Amen.

Heavy rain falls at a temporary shelter for around 19,000 displaced people during post-election violence in Kenya.

REUTERS/Georgina Cranston

PatternsVI

More than 77,000 cups at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, promote a TV documentary on the amount of coffee a German citizen consumes -- on average -- in a lifetime.

Tobias Schwarz/REUTERS

Mourners pay tribute to Patriarch Alexiy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, as he lay in state in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

Denis Sinyakov/REUTERS

Muslim pilgrims move around the Kaaba inside the Grand Mosque on the final day of the annual haj pilgrimage in Mecca, Saudi Arabia

photo: Hassan Ammar/AP

Let it be

I have simply stopped arguing with reality. How do I know the wind should blow? It's blowing. How do I know this is the highest order? It's happening. Arguing with 'what is' is like teaching a cat to bark. It's not very fulfilling. I want reality to change? Hopeless. Let me change my thinking. Some of us mentally argue with 'what is.' Others of us attempt to control and change 'what is,' and then tell ourselves and others that we actually had something to do with any apparent change that took place. This leaves no connection or room for God in my life. In the peaceful experience of no opposition to God, I remain aware of my nature: clear, vibrant, a friend, listener.

Byron Katie

Advent haiku

How many said no

Gabriel before Mary

said yes to your word

A way where there is no way

A way where there is no way; this is what God, and only God, can provide. This is salvation, which in Hebrew means widening or making sufficient. As we move from death to life we discover grace, a force as real as gravity, and we are reminded of its presence in the changing of the seasons, and in the dying of seeds from which new life emerges, so that even our deserts may bloom. It permeates the very language we use, and we are fortunate indeed that our words are far wiser than we are. Any poet knows that they can spark with new meaning, even years after we have written them, and tell us what we most need to know. Poetry might not seem like much in an unjust and violent world, in which acedia tempts us to give up on the fight for something better. But poetry - psalms and hymns - can be a remedy for the human tendency to take refuge in indifference.

Illustration: Hope in the Midst of Despair

Quote: Kathleen Norris, Acedia and me

If I were to wish for something, I would wish not for wealth or power but for the passion of possibility, for the eye, eternally young, eternally ardent, that sees possibility everywhere.

from Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard

Patterns V

A prayer by Walter Wink

Give us a heart for simple things:
Love and laughter
Bread and wine
Tales and dreams

Fill our lives with
Green and growing hope.
Make us a people of justice
Whose song is Alleluia
And whose name
Breathes Love.
Amen.

On Mary

She was thirteen or thereabouts,
pregnant,
still a child herself.
No vote, no rights, no husband,
no education,
in a small village in an occupied land.
So why would you,
the Great God of the Universe,
pick this peasant girl?
Why not some queen
dressed in blue and gold
like those statued madonnas?
I think we've had it wrong all along.
It's not that she was so saintly,
so pure,
so serene,
so special,
but that she wasn't special at all.
Maybe she even had zits.
It was God picking someone mundane,
to show that we are all special,
God choosing what is simple to confound the wise,
the banal
to shock the glitterati,
the castdown
to shame the exalted.
Mary understood.
Why has God chosen me, a handservant?
To pull the mighty down from their thrones,
and raise up the lowly,
to fill the hungry with good things
while the rich walk away empty-handed.
She could have been any downtrodden woman,
broken,
child of oppression.
In fact,
that is who she always is,
always has been,
and those peasant children of hers
have been messiahs,
but we were too busy
with our census, our mutual funds
our wars
to notice.

mbmillar

Patterns IV

Solar panels, Soemmerda, Germany

Jens Meyer/AP

A homeless Indian boy sits in a carton in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata.

REUTERS/Parth Sanyal

Bull elephant Noppakhao (Peter), aged 7, paints a picture of another elephant in Ayutthaya province, 50 miles north of Bangkok. Noppakhao paints to earn an income for himself and his owner.

REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang

A homeless Afghan boy sits in front of his tent on the outskirts of Kabul.

REUTERS/Ahmad Masood

Patterns III

A Sudoku competition in a Singapore shopping mall.