Mediations During Advent: Practicing the Peaceable Kin-dom Within….

Wolves living with lambs, leopards lying down with kids, lions eating straw like oxen, nursing babes crawling over snake holes. These images from Isaiah are vivid, and while I can clearly picture the wolf or the lamb or the leopard or the child separately, it is hard for me to put them all together in one peaceable, calm scene.

I wonder if, in this Advent Season, we are invited to hold the images together for a reason.

Life—as you know—is not so simple as predator and prey. Protector and protected. Maybe we are offered up this text again as an invitation to move inward--as we know that the lives we live are much more complex than a straightforward, simple scene.

When I was a teenager, my mother died during the Christmas season…and for that reason, this time of year is always difficult for me. Grief and sadness are surely part of my inner world at Christmastime.

What I also know to be true is that my grief sits alongside deep joy as I watch Matthew enjoy decorating our Christmas tree, or as I take a long walk in the quiet woods, or when I go for a run with my dog and a good friend and have moments of needed soul connection during the week.

Our feelings of sadness and joy are close neighbors, maybe even kin-folk…that often feel like they cannot and do not belong together on the same street. And yet, when we pay attention, when we turn inside, we can notice them together.

What we know is that it is not always easy to have these neighbors who are kin living inside of us, especially this time of year. So part of the practice is to pray and live towards the knowing that they can peaceably exist without one swallowing the other.

Just as with grief and joy, so can be the same with fear and peace, shame and belonging, anger and despair, doubt and belief.

The beautiful passage from Isaiah from this past Sunday offers an aspirational image of God’s peaceable Kin-dom...and the invitation on this day is to practice blessing our inner kin-dom. Where we are able to hold tenderly all the parts of ourselves, all of our experiences as Beloved by God, held within the Circle of God’s Blessed Love.

 

- The Rev. Mary Catherine Cole