Quote for the Day - The Weight of a Snowflake

The Weight of a Snowflake (from Megan McKenna's Mary, Shadow of Grace)

Once upon a time there were two birds sitting on a branch of a tree. One was a dove and one was a titmouse (a small gray bird, sort of like a sparrow). They were sitting and talking about all the things that were going on in the world. They had heard stories from all over as they migrated and visited with other birds, and they were exchanging the news. Then, as was there habit, they begun to discuss philosophy and theology and politics. But after a while they became bored with that. 

Then it began to snow. It was the kind of snow that brought fat, fluffy flakes. The dove looked at the titmouse and asked; "Do you know how much a snowflake weighs?" 

The titmouse thought about it a while and said, "No, I never thought about it." 

"Well", said the dove, "I think it weighs nothing more than nothing. I mean, look at the snow floating down, these fat, soft, fluffy flakes." 

The titmouse thought about it some more and said, "If you think a snowflake weighs nothing more than nothing, I have a little story to tell you. Once when I was sitting on a branch, just like this one, I didn't have anything to do. It started to snow, so I began counting snow flakes, fat and fluffy ones just like these. I counted a lot, a couple of hundred, a couple of thousand. I got up to one million, eight hundred and forty-six thousand, six hundred and twenty-two snowflakes and then, one snow flake-which you say weighs nothing more than nothing - floated down, landed on my branch, and cracked it straight through. The branch went falling to the ground, and I had to fly off."

With that, the titmouse flew off and left the dove sitting alone on the branch.

The dove, who was always been associated with peace, sat there trying to figure out the story. Suddenly it dawned on her.

Of course. One snowflake, one person, when added to all the others, may be the one that makes all the difference in the world.

McKenna comments, 'What if we, who are nothing alone, are the difference between the way world is now and the coming of peace on earth? What if we are the difference between darkness pervading the world or light coming into the world?'

My Quote for the Day

from Lord, teach us to pray : sermons on prayer

"instead of it being a difficulty, and a hardship, and an offence that the love of Christ passeth knowledge,—that is the crowning glory of Christ's love : that is our crowning blessedness. The love of Christ has no border: it has no shore: it has no bottom. The love of Christ is boundless : it is bottomless : it is infinite : it is divine. That it passeth knowledge is the greatest thing that ever was said, or could be said about it, and Paul was raised up of all men to see that and to say it. We shall come to the shore, we shall strike the bottom, of every other love: but never of the love of Christ."

Lord, teach us to pray : sermons on prayer By Alexander Whyte

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Martin Harris

Team Rector St Paul's and St Mary's Harlow

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Quote for the Day

In the process of moving and reorganizing some bookshelves in the middle of October, I recovered something long out of place. A small Nativity scene carved out of olive wood had been inadvertently left behind from the previous year's Christmas. Holding it in my hand, I cowered at the thought of digging through boxes in the garage long buried by post-Christmas storage. At this point, it seemed better to be two months early in setting it up than ten months late in packing it away. I decided to keep the carving out.

Strangely enough, my decision then coincided with a friend's mentioning of a good Christmas quote. Advent was suddenly all around me. In a Christmas sermon given December 2, 1928, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, "The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manger. God comes. The Lord Jesus comes. Christmas comes.  Christians rejoice!" To be early with my Nativity scene suddenly seemed a wise, but convicting thought. I had kept it around for the sake of convenience, what about the sake of remembering?

Jill Carattini, managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia - from A Slice of Infinity emailing, 28th November 2012

Sunday Sermon 25th November 2012

In El Salvador refugees flee the government troops, hiding in the jungle only a couple of thousand yards away from the troops. The group stops long enough for a woman to give birth. The silence and pain are devastating. The woman around hold her, willing her to make no sound. The child, once born, is passed from hand to hand, prayed over. Will this be the child that will free the people and bring peace to the land. Then they move on, with new life to be celebrated at the first place it is safe to sing, rejoice and eat.

(- adapted from Mary, Shadow of Grace by Megan McKenna, 59)

We are approaching Advent. We begin to think of Mary pregnant with the Christ-child, bearing him in an area where war and conflict still make no child safe.

She bears the child, full of hope. Christians have long called her the God-bearer.

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, 'Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.'

29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words... 30 But the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favour with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33...; his kingdom will never end.'

34 'How will this be,' Mary asked the angel, 'since I am a virgin?'

35 The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

To her child, so weak and totally helpless, she brings the gifts of a mother.

Caring, compassion, gentleness, tenderness, patience, listening, pain, suffering, tireless love, sacrifice.

Wonderful virtues, on which we all depend.

In a male governed world, qualities that are easily forgotten, seen as  weak.

Women know they are not weak

And Mary bears the Christ Child

God.

Straight away as we read the Bible (though in reality months if not years may have intervened) power, violence announce themselves.

Herod wants to kill this child.

Mary flees Bethlehem to Egypt,

As Herod's troops sweep in, to kill the God-child she has born. He massacres the children of Bethlehem

Three weak people flee, God cares for them

Joseph too cares

For he has something of God's ways

And trusts.

The weakness of motherhood triumphs

And of course, I speak as a fool

For as my very story tells

It is not weakness but strength

But male power

Thinks the opposite

In swoops Herod. He massacres the innocent. He thinks power wins.

But years later, another Herod will swoop in with Pilate

And catch up with that child

Hang him on a cross

And power will pat itself on the back

Think it has triumphed.

And Mary will be at the cross, crying in anguish. Watching over her son

As only a mother knows how.

From the moment of his birth to tragically

that of his death

And a mother's love triumphs again.

For there is another power

A power so powerful that those of this world do not recognise it

This world thinks it is foolishness

In the Narnia stories, the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

The White Witch has killed the Christ figure, the Lion Aslan

She has overcome his powers by her Powerful magic.

But Aslan rises from the grave

Aslan says, "though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know: Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitors stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards..."

And so it will always be for those who love power

Who ignore the ways of God

Who do not know the ways of God.

Mary, the God-bearer.

Sharing in the suffering of motherhood

Through the bearing of children, women, and all of us, are saved.

For Mary bore Christ.

A woman, the God-bearer

The first one to proclaim Christ's coming

Another Mary the first one to announce the resurrection.

Women still suffering as we still do not yet listen to St Paul's who tells us that in Christ there is no male, no female. Still treated unequally in church leadership.

But God's ways will triumph.

Women, who are so vital for the health and well-being of our families

Still so often made to take second place in marriages

Men thinking of themselves as having authority over a woman, their head. But in the ancient world the heart and soul were in the heart not in the head; head rarely means authority.

It probably here means source. Woman came from Adam. Paul is speaking of interdependence, not authority.

Men, love and honour your wives. raise them up to the same authority you have. Do not rule over them. Submit to one another in the Lord.

Women, who bear the brunt of family life, bearing and bringing up children

With men still not listening to the injunction of Paul in Ephesians 5.21 that men should submit to women; indeed, that they make the greater sacrifice. 

Ephesians 5.22 - women should submit; but this is balanced by male submission; indeed, a harder submission is spoken of for the man in v 25, that of agape love, men should submit and lay down their lives.

There I guess - and I am guessing - will be men here who use computers for inappropriate images.

This does not encourage submission to one another.

You know what you have to do in Christ

There will be men here tempted to leave their wives

But learn from Joseph, who was faithful

Mary, the God-bearer

We are all God-bearers

We are together a Temple of God's Holy Spirit

"let yourselves be used in building the spiritual temple" 1 Peter 2:5

As you walk from hear bearing God, bearing the Spirit of Christ, in your life

What will you bring to birth today, this week?

What will you do to safeguard the Christ within your life.

For you too are Mary - God-bearer

You too are Joseph - called to be faithful

Go and be God's people in the world. Be a Transforming Presence. Be temples of God's Spirit.

Prayer Spaces in Harlow

This evening at the Heart4Harlow prayer meeting we heard about Prayer Spaces. This is now underway in Primary Schools. The vision is for this to be in every Harlow school.
Prayer Spaces is open to all faiths and none.
Prayer Spaces begin by speaking to children (Key Stage 2) about prayer. Then half the children visit a prayer space, the others do craft related activities eg painting, drawing etc. on paper plates in a prayerful way.
In the Prayer Spaces are various stations eg Sorry, Fizzy Forgiveness, the Plasma Ball etc. The children are encouraged to make the best use of each space.
After 15/20" the children swap over.
Feedback has included:
"Prayer is a powerful thing, and it works"
"When I need help I only have to prayer"
So far, Prayer Spaces is underway in 2 schools. The aim is to be underway in 4 more school this coming year.
Please pray for more to be involved.

Today's Poverty

Part of my retreat is about preparing for Advent and Christmas.

Today I read some of Luke 1 and 2, followed by a portion of Mary, Shadow of Grace, by Megan McKenna. I have been pondering how I / the church should respond to the anticipated financial hardship of further welfare changes next financial year. Sadly I anticipate an increase in use of the foodbank.

McKenna tells a story of the birth of a child to El Salvador refugees. Suddenly I realise that the story of Mary in her hour of need is also the story of so many around us.

Strange things occur around the birth of Christ, things that become good news. But all focuses on the child. Mary stores these things in her heart. She is a 'believer, not a knower. She believes in her child.... She treasures words, events, moments in her life...Simple, ordinary occurrences are her path to knowledge. She experiences conversion, insight and ever-deepening awareness and love of God by the way God deals with her, in her present reality.' (McKenna, 63).

I must yet learn yet more of contemplation. This is what Luke puts here at the beginning of his gospel, where interestingly he is also paralleling Pentecost. We learn of each from the other, I believe. Contemplation is not something I have immediately associated with Acts 2. It is however strong in Acts 1, as the disciples 'waited'. Which brings me to my reflections on waiting on God here.

Contemplation and Mission

The story of Christmas is in part the story of Mary, who treasured and pondered things in her heart.

These words from the Archbishop of Canterbury are perhaps relevant:

Evangelization, old or new, must be rooted in a profound confidence that we have a distinctive human destiny to show and share with the world. There are many ways of spelling this out, but in these brief remarks I want to concentrate on one aspect in particular.

To be fully human is to be recreated in the image of Christ’s humanity;  and that humanity is the perfect human ‘translation’ of the relationship of the eternal Son to the eternal Father, a relationship of loving and adoring self-giving, a pouring out of life towards the Other.  Thus the humanity we are growing into in the Spirit, the humanity that we seek to share with the world as the fruit of Christ’s redeeming work, is a contemplative humanity...

To be contemplative as Christ is contemplative is to be open to all the fullness that the Father wishes to pour into our hearts.  With our minds made still and ready to receive, with our self-generated fantasies about God and ourselves reduced to silence, we are at last at the point where we may begin to grow...

And we seek this not because we are in search of some private ‘religious experience’ that will make us feel secure or holy.  We seek it because in this self-forgetting gazing towards the light of God in Christ we learn how to look at one another and at the whole of God’s creation...

[C]]ontemplation is very far from being just one kind of thing that Christians do: it is the key to prayer, liturgy, art and ethics, the key to the essence of a renewed humanity that is capable of seeing the world and other subjects in the world with freedom – freedom from self-oriented, acquisitive habits and the distorted understanding that comes from them...

Jacob Needleman, in a controversial and challenging book called Lost Christianity: the words of the Gospel, he says, are addressed to human beings who ‘do not yet exist’.  That is to say, responding in a life-giving way to what the Gospel requires of us means a transforming of our whole self, our feelings and thoughts and imaginings.  To be converted to the faith does not mean simply acquiring a new set of beliefs, but becoming a new person, a person in communion with God and others through Jesus Christ...

Invoking the Holy Spirit is a matter of asking the third person of the Trinity to enter my spirit and bring the clarity I need to see where I am in slavery to cravings and fantasies and to give me patience and stillness as God’s light and love penetrate my inner life...

In a very important sense, a true enterprise of evangelisation will always be a re-evangelisation of ourselves as Christians also, a rediscovery of why our faith is different, transfiguring – a recovery of our own new humanity.

And of course it happens most effectively when we are not planning or struggling for it.  To turn to de Lubac once again, ‘He who will best answer the needs of his time will be someone who will not have first sought to answer them’ (op. cit. pp.111-2); and ‘The man who seeks sincerity, instead of seeking truth in self-forgetfulness, is like the man who seeks to be detached instead of laying himself open in love’ (p.114).  The enemy of all proclamation of the Gospel is self-consciousness, and, by definition, we cannot overcome this by being more self-conscious.  We have to return to St Paul and ask, ‘Where are we looking?’  Do we look anxiously to the problems of our day, the varieties of unfaithfulness or of threat to faith and morals, the weakness of the institution?  Or are we seeking to look to Jesus, to the unveiled face of God’s image in the light of which we see the image further reflected in ourselves and our neighbours?

That simply reminds us that evangelisation is always an overflow of something else – the disciple’s journey to maturity in Christ, a journey not organised by the ambitious ego but the result of the prompting and drawing of the Spirit in us.  In our considerations of how we are once again to make the Gospel of Christ compellingly attractive to men and women of our age, I hope we never lose sight of what makes it compelling to ourselves, to each one of us in our diverse ministries.

Rowan William, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the Synod of Bishops in Rome, 10 October 2012

Full address here