Blessed Advent.
On December 8th we welcomed the newest member of the Life Together Community, Sofia Isabella Long, who was born into the family of Jason Long and Daniella Morella. Please read Jason’s letter regarding his transition into fatherhood.
This Advent marks the beginning of a new church year. Thank you for all the prayer, community and action that your support has enabled through Life Together’s 26 Fellows, 23 Sites, and five Intentional Communities. We are deeply grateful for your kind words, volunteer hours, financial donations, prayers and encouragement.
In Advent 2010, these words (read below) of Christopher Fry first came to my attention, when my friend, Stephanie Spellers, asked me to read an article that she was finishing for the Anglican Theological Review called “The Church Awake: Becoming the Missional People of God."
The human heart can go to the lengths of God.
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now.
The frozen misery.
Of centuries, cracks, begins to move,
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take.
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake?
-- Christopher Fry, A Sleep of Prisoners (1951)
They sing urgently of the coming of Christ and they capture an advent plea, like no other, for these times.
On December 4th, 2014, many of the Life Together Community gathered on the Boston Common under the banners, “Enough is Enough!” “Black Lives Matter” and “I Can’t Breathe” to do something active, and worship-ful in response to two grand juries’ failures to indict white police officers who murdered two African American men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner (at least 14 more teens have since been killed by police: Tamir Rice, Cameron Tillman, VonDerrit Myers Jr, Laquan McDonald, Carey Smith-Viramontes, Jeffrey Holden, Qusean Whitten, Miguel Benton, Dillon McGee, Levi Weaver, Roshad McIntosh, Karen Cifuentes, Diana Showman. Sergio Ramos. One half of those killed have been African American. Overall, young African Americans are 4.5 more likely to be killed by than people of different races or ages). We went to walk, chant, and channel grief, confusion, and outrage into witness and movement with others, and particularly our brown and black brothers and sisters, who have been/are/and will continue to face death at the hands of oppressive relationships and systems unless we join one another and speak out.
On this freezing cold December 4th Advent night as we walked from the Common, to the State House and Government Center, I began to sense a small but growing hopefulness peeking out of the cracks and brokenness of the cause of our community’s protest. Thousands of young and old people showed up in Boston and 30 other cities across the country and expressed outrage in the wake of both the Ferguson and Staten Island verdicts. And I saw members of our church and other faith and spiritual communities joining young people across the country who are leading movements for justice and change and the sign of God’s realm in our cities throughout eastern Massachusetts.
For many of us, particularly those of us who are white, the past weeks and months have pushed us out of our comfort zones and challenged us in new ways. As we have joined our first protest, spoken our first chant, or expressed our palpable anger, sadness, we have made more space for love, God’s transforming love, to break through the fear, numbness, self-importance, isolation or hopelessness.
As we have allowed the love to embolden action in new ways, we have found the courage to feel and see how deeply different some of our life experiences are from one another. We have seen how entrenched we are in us/them thinking and living. And we have realized how awkward first steps are necessary before we can walk upright and in stride.
As we walked on that night, in my mind protest chants joined Advent chants, the words of Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” And my submerged and frozen hopes of seeing a faith-based movement for love and justice began to thaw just a little bit.
The frozen misery
Of centuries, cracks, begins to move,
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong.
Comes up to face us everywhere
With Life Together Fellows, current and former Site Partners, Prayer Partners and other clergy and lay leaders and so many young people, I began to feel quite awake once again and not just from the cold. I glimpsed the possibilities born out of God’s unimaginable love coursing through us thawing so that the thunder of the floes could move more easily again. The loving flow in fuller flow that gives us the next step to hope beyond disbelief…and love beyond fear….and life beyond death.
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise
Is exploration into God.
Where are you making for?
It takes So many thousand years to wake,
But will you wake for pity’s sake?
“The affairs are indeed now soul size, the enterprise is the exploration of God”.
Will you please join your pray and action with ours throughout this season and beyond?
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come
among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins,
let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver
us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and
the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.
Blessed and Holy Advent,
The Reverend Arrington Chambliss
Executive Director, Life Together Community