St. James Episcopal Church - Black Mountain, NC

Meditations During Advent: A Cherokee Legend

The forest contains two types of trees: evergreen, which keep their leaves and remain green all year, and deciduous, which lose their leaves in autumn. Cherokees explain how this came to be: When all the trees, plants, and animals were created, they were asked to stay awake to fast and pray for seven nights to honor the Creator. The first night they all stayed awake, but the second night some fell asleep; the third night more dropped out, and so on. By the seventh night, only a few were still awake. Of the animals, the owl (u-gu-gu), the panther (tsv-da-tsi), and a few others were still awake. These animals were given the power to see and go about in the dark and make prey of the birds and animals that must sleep at night. Of the trees, only the cedar, the pine, the spruce, the holly, the hemlock, and the laurel were awake to the end. The Creator gave these trees the ability to keep their leaves and stay green all year round and gave them special power to be medicine for the Cherokee people. Therefore, these trees are sacred and used for medicine by the Cherokee people to this day.
From the Essay for the 2022 Capitol Christmas Tree
Cacuce Micco Tiger
 
The Christmas tradition of lighting a “People’s Tree” on the west lawn of the United States Capitol is personal this year to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians and the residents of Western North Carolina. The 78-foot red Spruce tree, named Ruby, was harvested in the Pisgah Forest, the ancestral lands of the Cherokee. The youth tree lighter, Cacuce “Choche” Micco Tiger is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Coche attends New Kituwah Academy language immersion school, where he learns to read, write, and speak the Cherokee language. He is in the 4th grade, and his favorite subjects are Cherokee, Math, and Science. Coche enjoys playing baseball, soccer, fishing, and playing outside. He also enjoys participating in his traditional Cherokee ceremonies.
Choche introduced himself to the group gathered on the Capitol lawn in his native languageand then recounted the legend of evergreen. Then he joined Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Governor Roy Cooper to turn the lights on the tree. I must admit I wept during the ceremony.
 
CLICK HERE to watch it.
 
 
When asked why the environment is important to the Cherokee, Choche replied, “Our environment is so important because my ancestors lived on this land, and I want to take care of it like they did. Also, the animals live in the environment, and I want to take care of them because they are related to me.” These are words of profound wisdom from an 11-year-old boy. This Advent as we await the inbreaking of the divine in the person of Jesus, the Christ, let us remember that Jesus came to teach us how to live in relationship.; relationship with all of creation, the trees, the birds, the animals, and most importantly with each other. Our indigenous sisters and brothers have always known the importance of living in relationship with the earth, the animals, and the plants. I pray we can learn from them to how to honor this fragile earth, our island home.
Perhaps one way we can honor the plants is to thank the precious evergreens that fill our homes this time of year with the fragrance of the forest and shine with twinkling lights to make our hearts glad. Make sure that beautiful tree is recycled to provide mulch for the garden or a habitat for the fish. Honor the life of the fir tree sitting in your living room.
I want to end with this beautiful Cherokee prayer blessing.
May the Warm Winds of Heaven
Blow softly upon your house.
May the Great Spirit
Bless all who enter there.
May your Moccasins
Make happy tracks
in many snows,
and may the Rainbow
Always touch your shoulder.
 
- The Rev. Dn. Kristi Neal

Meditations During Advent: Becoming The Monastery

As a social worker, one of my mentors, was a Buddhist man. He sometimes spoke of his meditation practice. I asked him once: What is it like, meditating? He said: It’s very noisy.
When I can peel back from the loud, insanity of the Christmas season as it is marketed to us, I appreciate the quiet, contemplative heart of Advent the church offers. Advent is meant to be a contemplative season in which we find ourselves called to awaken. The soul that has fallen asleep is roused. The lectionary on Sunday implored the listener to wake up: Romans: You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. The Gospel of Matthew: Keep awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. It is curious that our religion chooses the darkest, sleepiest time of the year to call us to awaken—surely the spring make more sense, when the earth is waking up from the winter and the days are growing longer, except that the awakening we are called to is within the inner regions of us. The short days turns us inside. Advent is set apart as an opportunity to make contact with the inner world.
Recently in our Bible+ study, someone recalled the story of Persephone—Hades, in love with Persephone, doesn’t believe she would follow him into the underworld, so he steals her and forces her into a deep crack in the earth. Persephone wanted to stay on the surface. Zeus eventually intervenes and insists that Persephone be allowed to return to the world, which she does—and upon her arrival the world burst forth in fruit and flowers. She does not have to remain in the underworld forever, but the very interesting thing about Persephone’s experience of that interior space in the earth is that, of her own will and volition, she returns to it. She is awake to something important in the inner regions. She needs something that exists for her in that region. It's fascinating that our pupils know to open wider in low light—the dark spaces actually force a capacity in us to see more. The dark, inner regions in most traditions are not associated with fear or evil – but with fertility. The underworld not as a hell but a womb. The inner regions of the season of Advent are forming something holy in us and we are invited in.
 
Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield says when we take the seat on our cushion for meditation, we become our own monastery. This is the time it is: time to sit, to close our eyes, to stay awake, in spite of the noise.
 
- The Rev. Judith Whelchel

Meditations During Advent: The Extraordinary Thing That Is About To Happen

We are sitting in the dusk and the silence of Advent. The breezy chill, the muffled and rustling sounds of the darkening woods surround us.
The theater’s house lights dim and the stage’s footlights come on. The noise and the chattering fade into quiet. We wait in the darkness for the curtain to rise. In the orchestra pit, the conductor raises her baton.
In the stillness of Advent, there is far off in the deep distance, a sound so faint “that it may be only the sound of the silence itself.” I hold my breath to listen. I am aware of the beating of my heart.
This extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. The curtain rises.
This is the true story that is the basis for the gift that is the musical “Come From Away.”
The action takes place on the Canadian island of Newfoundland — thousands of miles away from New York City’s World Trade Center, Washington D.C.’s Pentagon, and Pennsylvania’s Somerset County.
With the Federal Aviation Agency immediately closing the United States’ airspace in the hours following the deadliest terrorist attack in U.S. history, Canadian air traffic control stepped in to help. They landed 38 jumbo jets and four military flights bound for the United States at Newfoundland’s Gander International Airport — the nearest sizable airport on the continent - 6,759 passengers and airline crew members arrived in Gander, descending on the small northeastern town and nearly doubling its population of 9,651.
Unable to see footage of the chaos that was unfolding in the U.S., the passengers were not allowed to leave their planes for the first 24 hours or so until customs and security could be put in place to assure no terrorists were on board.
They simply had to wait. They became known as “the plane people.”
Taking only their carry-on luggage with them, “the plane people” were quickly absorbed into the Gander community. Perfect strangers were invited into people’s homes – where meals, beds, and new clothes awaited them. Schools were converted into makeshift shelters. Restaurants and bakeries donated food, while pharmacies provided everything from diapers to medication.
The people of Gander had cooked all night long. The 6,759 passengers and crew members that showed up within a three-hour period, were fed three hot meals a day, every day they were there.
When the travel ban was lifted on Sept. 14, all of “the plane people” slowly returned to their aircrafts and flew back to their original destinations. But Gander surely never left them.
Advent is the true story that is the basis for the gift that is Christmas.
This extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment. The curtain rises.
For an instant, you can feel the beating of your heart. For all its lostness, not to mention your own, you can hear the world itself holding its breath. We will return to our lives, but in this moment, in the waiting and the darkness, hope surely never leaves us.
 
-The Rev. Dr. Bruce Grob

Meditations During Advent - Listening in the Stillness of Advent Season

I love this season. There is a centering, a settling about the way the light shines just so, where the earth’s tilt filters the brightness of the sun just a bit. The trees are bare and all that was hidden because of the green and growth we can now see, if we look about us. There is space open where there once was none.
 
Walks in the woods and hikes in the wintertime bring gifts of their own this time of year. There’s something about the clarity that comes when the cold fills my lungs; my mind feels clearer, my heart feels less weighted down. There are fewer people on the trails, the mountains feel more still and quiet.
 
Advent is a time when we are invited towards stillness, quiet, and the clarity that can come when we allow ourselves to make space for all that can come our way when we strip away some of the bright lights, the busy-ness that surrounds us--and make way for stillness, for quiet.
 
This clearing away is not always easy; the first cold mornings are a shock to the system and because of the lack of bright sunlight, and my body has a tendency to move a little slower. Maybe that’s the wisdom of the body. The gift of the cycle of God’s good creation of which we are surely not separate.
 
May in this Advent season, we listen to the rhythms of the creation all around us and within us. May we lean into the slowness, the stillness, the quiet. May we trust these rhythms even as they stand in direct contrast to what the culture offers to us in these days.
 
A prayer from John Philip Newell for this day:
 
 
 
Light within all light
Soul behind all souls
At the breaking of dawn
At the coming of day
We wait and watch.
Your Light within the morning light
Your Soul within the human soul
Your Presence beckoning to us from the heart of life.
In the dawning of this day
let us know fresh shinings in our soul.
In the growing colours of new beginning all around us
Let us know the first lights of our heart.
Great Star of the morning
Inner Flame of the universe
Let us be a colour in this new dawning.
Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace
 
- The Rev. Mary Catherine Cole

SERMON | November 27: We Need A Bigger Advent

Maybe Bill Coffin said it best, "Hope arouses as nothing else can arouse, a passion for the possible."
- The Rev. Dr. Bruce Grob
Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44
Psalm 122

Meditations During Advent - A New Day

When I was a little girl, I eagerly awaited the time when the Advent calendar appeared. This is a photograph of that calendar. Advent calendars originated in the early 20th Century in Germany where this calendar was made. My calendar is over 65 years old; some of the doors are missing showing that it has been well loved and used. I hope you can zoom in on your computer to see the details. This calendar has a Hansel and Gretel theme with all sorts of trolls and cherubim and animals outside the candy house that Hansel and Gretel are preparing to enter. The calendar is detailed and glittery, with 24 numbered doors, one to open each day of December leading to Christmas Eve. Behind each door is a picture; many are toys. Finally on Christmas Eve we opened the double doors to the house and reveal the Holy Family. Even though we knew what was behind the final door, it was always exciting to open those doors. The anticipation and excitement of the Advent season was enhanced by our Advent calendar.
Advent is a time of opening doors and lighting candles to mark the time until Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation of the divine in the form of Jesus. The word “advent” is derived from the Latin word for “coming.” It is the beginning of the liturgical year.
As I was musing about the Advent calendar, I wondered what it would be like if we were as excited everyday as we are during the days of Advent to open the door on a new day. What if every day when we awakened, we approached the day as a surprise to be opened with wonder, and joy, and a sense of anticipation? What if we could fully live in the present?
We human beings tend to live our lives either rehashing the past or planning the future so that sometimes we forget to live and savor the day, the hour, the moment that is right in front of us. Advent is a season of anticipation, but Advent also calls us to silence, to being fully present in the now. It is a time at the beginning of the church year to pause, to find a quiet spot and breathe deeply and be present to the Divine. Advent is a time to open the door to each new day as a gift from God and to put aside worry and be fully present in the joy of a new day. This Advent during your daily quiet time, you may wish to meditate on these words found in Matthew 6: 30-34 from Eugene Peterson’s translation “TheMessage.”
“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.”
I want to end with a poem from A Book of Blessings by the Irish poet, author, philosopher, and priest John O’Donohue. The poem is titled “A Morning Offering” and speaks to being present to each new day.
 
I bless the night that nourished my heartTo set the ghosts of longing freeInto the flow and figure of dreamThat went to harvest from the darkBread for the hunger no one sees.
All that is eternal in meWelcomes the wonder of this day,The field of brightness it createsOffering time for each thingTo arise and illuminate.
I place on the altar of dawn:The quiet loyalty of breath,The tent of thought where I shelter,Waves of desire I am shore toAnd all beauty drawn to the eye.
May my mind come alive todayTo the invisible geographyThat invites me to new frontiers,To break the dead shell of yesterdays,To risk being disturbed and changed.
May I have the courage todayTo live the life that I would love,To postpone my dream no longerBut do at last what I came here forAnd waste my heart on fear no more.
- The Rev. Kristi Neal, Deacon
 

SERMON | November 20: The Feast of the Beloved

"I wonder what new image and language the church can offer to the world that we so desperately need?"
- The Rev. Mary Catherine Cole
 
Jeremiah 23:1-6Psalm 46Colossians 1:11-20Luke 23:33-43

SERMON | November 13: Isaiah 65:17-25

"Hope is the Hardest Love we Carry." Isaiah 65:17-25
The Right Rev. G. Porter Taylor
 
Malachi 4:1-2aPsalm 982 Thessalonians 3:6-13Luke 21:5-19

SERMON | November 6: I sing a song of the Saints of God

"Each one of us has a part to play and a job to do as we move forward in love."
- The Rev. Dn. Kristi Neal
 
Track 2
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11-23
Luke 6:20-31

SERMON | October 30: On a Christian Faith that Never Left the Earth

"This is a gospel about where the Divine resides which is in the dwelling of you."
- The Rev. Judith Whelchel
 
Track 2
Isaiah 1:10-18
Psalm 32:1-8
2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12
Luke 19:1-10