[Propertalk] 3 meditations for Advent IV

[Ann Fontaine]

from Suzanne Guthrie
http://edgeofenclosure.org/advent4c.html

Meditation One
waking in the womb

Her salutation
Sings in the stone valley like a Charterhouse bell:
And the unborn saint John
Wakes in his mother's body,
Bounds with the echoes of discovery.

Sing in your cell, small anchorite!
How did you see her in the eyeless dark?
What secret syllable
Woke your young faith to the mad truth
That an unborn baby could be washed in the Spirit of God?
Oh burning joy!

What seas of life were planted by that voice!
With what new sense
Did your wise heart receive her Sacrament,
And know her cloistered Christ? …

Thomas Merton 1915-1968
 From The Quickening of John the Baptist (1949)

Meditation Two
room within ourselves


We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this  
eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly, but does not  
take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full  
of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the  
Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in  
my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the  
Son of Man is begotten in us.


Meister Eckhart    1260-1328


Meditation Three
room for others

It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to  
give room to Christ.  Nor will those who live at the end of the world  
have been born too late.  Christ is always with us, always asking for  
room in our hearts.
    But now it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks,  
with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he  
gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban  
housewives that he gives.  It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps  
that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for  
shelter.  And giving shelter for food to anyone who asks for it, or  
needs it, is giving it to Christ. …

If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the  
sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet,  
then people would have fought to make room for her.  But that was not  
God’s way for her, nor is it Christ’s way for himself, now when he is  
disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth.

Dorothy Day  1897-1980  Selected Writings, ed Robert Ellsberg


The Rev. Ann K Fontaine
Wyoming--->Oregon