I have been wrestling with God, and losing. God attacks me when I am at my lowest, and doesn't fight fair. And unlike Jacob, I don't think I have prevailed. In fact, the fight is still going on, and I don't know if I can hold on. The issues of right and wrong, good and evil, Jesus and faith, salvation and redemption swirl around me.
Suppose God makes mistakes on purpose in order to teach us to learn from ours. Suppose the Holy One labels our knowledge and our certainty a mistake so that we will rediscover the importance of learning. Suppose the Sacred makes the mistake of allowing Christmas to become the year’s largest commercial season so that we learn that life is not about the accumulation of things. Suppose the Divine makes the mistake of using the most important birth of all to teach us dying is to death as birth is to living.
Three themes: The altar, empty bowl and night sky, as a reminder of inbreaking newness; The Gospel lesson, the political scene now and a possibility for growing our souls; "Just enough," and two Sabbath experiences.
If you are grounded in the love of Jesus you have no reason to fear full and honest conversation with other religions. It is only if you think that Christianity is a big argument, or if your faith is based on reasoning about things you can't know, that you can become confused by Buddhism, or Hinduism, or Hopi.
The Advent theme this year is "Just enough." I have struggled to understand why the Celebration Circle has chosen this as a theme for Advent. The messages from the Hebrew Scriptures for today are not about finding or receiving "just enough."