Community Advent Project Wrap-Up

Hello Friends!

Apologies for the lateness of this post--this season is always full of activity and movement. But I thought Christmas Day would be a good time to slip in the beautiful reading that Kim Lilley shared last Sunday. If I hear back from some of our previous readers (Raine, I'm looking at you!), I'll post them in the coming weeks.

Without further ado, here is Kim's piece:

The Rhythms of Life and Death

 by Kim Lilley

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot.

-Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Winter is upon us. The fallen leaves crunch beneath my feet. The sun hangs low and slides golden rays across the tips of tree that look like they are on fire against the blue gray December skies. This is the rhythm of our earth. This is the rhythm of our lives.

Winter gives us the sacred gift of rest. We are forced into our homes early as the sun sets sooner. We are forced into darkness and quiet as the birds stop their chirping and the moon climbs higher. The earth grows quiet and dim. The trees do not bud, the flowers do not bloom, but they are getting ready to. Gentle, expectant, hopeful- winter whispers of longings fulfilled. A longing fulfilled is a tree of life. We long, we groan, we wait through the winter and a green, swaying, glorious, limbs-reaching-to-heaven tree is delivered. Winter bequeaths our earth life in it’s death.

And in the same way there was a man who bequeathed us life in his death. A baby born to be sacrificed. Birth and death intermingling before a single human could perceive this great mystery coming to us. This story that would become life for us. This death that would mean salvation. And in the same way when we choose life in this man, we choose death to ourselves.

This is the rhythm of our earth. This is the rhythm of our lives- until one day the second advent interrupts us from our sleep, our quiet, our waiting, our winter and brings us home forever.

Community Advent Project - Week Two

This week we had a contribution from some of our dcf kids, which was very exciting.

This reflection was written by Isaac:

Transcript: 

HOPE - The hope they may have a new savior.

JOY - The joy his mother must have shared when he was born.

PEACE and LOVE - The peace and love he gave in his miracles to the people. These words are so alike but so different.

HOPE JOY PEACE and LOVE.

And this reflection was written by Luke:

Transcript: I am thankful that God brought hope into the world when...he...died...on the cross. And he took our sins away and brought peace to us. 

Thanks for sharing, Luke and Isaac!

Community Advent Project - Week One

Think Smaller
By Emily Boyter

It seems no use to talk of
small things sometimes,
and yet we have to
if we want to understand.
Deep truths with which
we are familiar are filled
with the infinitesimal:
mustard seeds that
burst into profusion;
gates as narrow as eyes of needles
and pearls of great price and
lamp wicks and ants that labor
and numbered hairs
and those little bright-eyed
sparrows that never
learned to worry about
tax season.
And children.
Especially children.
So we think, when we're
pondering incarnation,
of Jesus as a child,
as a tiny squalling
baby, and we think,
how could God have been
so little?
But God was smaller once.
At one time, God was
no bigger than a bean,
and his mother had
the promise of Him
but could not yet feel Him
stirring.
You have to wonder,
when Jesus told the parable
of the mustard seed,
did he remember, smiling,
the time when
He was no bigger than
a mustard seed Himself?
Think of every
tiny thing waiting to
burgeon into abundance.
There is great hope in that,
I think.

Applying the Brakes

*Ahem*

Hello.

The first post of any blog always feels a little strange to me, like when you're at a party and someone says, "Tell me about yourself." Suddenly, you can't think of a single thing about yourself except that you eat food and that sometimes you sleep and that you like sitting on soft things and that you are basically like every other human. So the plan is just to steamroll through this like you do when you're writing an online dating profile or the first letter to a pen pal or a 250-word bio for a school project or your workplace's website.

I'm Emily. I'm a deacon at a wonderful church in Seneca, South Carolina, downtown community fellowship. I'm a writer and a teacher and a researcher.

This is a blog about our church's engagement with liturgy throughout the year. It is addressed to the members of our body, but it's not exclusively intended for us. If you're not a dcf-er you will still hopefully find something valuable here. The dcf family has observed many of the more prominent features of the liturgical calendar (Lent, Easter, Advent) for a long time, and this blog is a way for us both to continue with and deepen these practices as well as to expand our experience of celebrations and practices we might be less familiar with.

At times that will come in the form of reflections and writings of mine, but often I'll be linking to some wonderful sources (books, blogs, poems, essays, etc.) that can give us more to reflect on. Sometimes there will be reflection on the value of liturgical practices. Other times, like during this Advent season, we make an extra effort to encourage members of our church family to participate in written reflection and sharing (of course, contributions are welcome any time of the year). Anything that gets shared during our Sunday Gathering will also be posted (with the permission of the author, of course), on this blog. If anyone wants to participate, please email me at boyteremily@gmail.com.

A note on the blog's name:

I considered a lot of different words, especially some that get used at dcf a lot: rhythm, practice, season, etc. I settled on cadence because it is related to these words, but it has some additional connotations that I found particularly significant for this blog.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "cadence" can refer to the flow of musical or poetic verses, rhythmical construction, and "the measure or beat of music, dancing, or any rhythmical movement." These cadences come about by design and for the purpose of beauty and expression. Another definition refers to the "equal measure or proportion which a horse observes in all his motions when he is thoroughly managed," bringing to mind the idea of cadence as discipline.

On the other hand, cadence can refer to less measured things like the rise and fall of the human voice or the rise and fall of "elemental sounds, as of a storm, the sea, etc."

Fascinatingly enough, the term "cadence braking" refers to "repeated rhythmic application of the brake pedal in order to slow a skidding vehicle" (I knew the technique but not the name). At first I passed over this definition as irrelevant to the topic at hand, but then it occurred to me that the rhythms of spiritual life can serve just such a purpose: to slow down the skidding vehicle of our hectic lives and give us space to breathe and reflect and be still. That's my hope for this blog, and I'm eager for what's to come.