Category: Advent

A friend said she’d like to read the Lincoln blog posts that she’d missed, but was struggling to find the page.  So, I’ve asked permission to post them here as well. There’s a bit of catching up to do (13 days worth), and then I’ll post daily, after they’ve gone up on the diocesan web page.

A bit of context:  This Advent, the bishop of Lincoln wanted something to help the whole diocese pray together through Advent.  The communications team began to put together a booklet, which brought to the fore some of the interesting community projects that are happening around the diocese.  Then I got involved, adding scriptural quotations (for the booklet) and writing daily posts (for the diocesan web page).  These go out in the name of the diocese, rather than my own, and it is most generous of them to let me double post here.

The whole thing has been a great opportunity for me– coming from Scotland, I’m still learning the ways of the Church of England, and getting a glimpse of 24 diverse responses to community engagement was fascinating.   It also gave me the excuse to go to Lincoln and say morning prayer as the light streamed through the most amazing glass.  And — best of all — I got to catch up with an old friend who had been too long absent from my life.

Hurrah for Advent blogs.

Thanks too to the facebook friends who commented on the drafts.  At one point, my editorial team stretched form Washington D.C. to Sri Lanka.

I returned to the Cathedral today, after a long season of wandering the parishes.
It was such a relief.

The sermon offered the Sign of Stop-lights (and was both funny and substantive).
The sung creed was like a homecoming.
The angels arrived for communion with Bairstow’s Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence, and kindly brought stories with them.

Here’s the Bairstow, sung by a very different sort of choir:

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks writing a full set of Advent blogs for the diocese of Lincoln.  Just a few more to go, and then I will re-emerge here.

You can find the Lincoln set on the diocesan webpage (daily) or on the news archive page, listed as ‘Advent Prayers’ (they slip into the archive at the end of each day). It’s a set of meditations on the theme Christ Yesterday – Today- Tomorrow, to accompany prayers for (and a celebration of) some of the social justice & community projects around the diocese.  These have been fun to work on, even with the crazy deadlines. I’m grateful to the friend who called me into the project, and the team who waited for me to return from the States.

And of course, this is the day we begin Love Blooms Bright 2012.  It is, as always, produced by a fabulous group of people.   I can’t wait to see what appears.

It’s the strangers who convince me… People I’ve never met, and know nothing about who write to ask if Love Blooms Bright will continue this year.  The truth is, I’ve been dithering.  Should I gather a group of people?  Should I do it myself (inferior product, but good discipline)?  Should I accept that life has moved on and Love Blooms Bright has completed its life span?

Dither dither.  But then people get in touch asking:  will you?  please?

So, here is my last minute bid for contributors.  Would you be willing to help produce Love Blooms Bright this year?  We’ve had such wonderful creativity and thoughtfulness from people over the years.  But most of us started not really sure if we had anything to offer.  So if you are even faintly interested, please get in touch.  We can support each other through it. Words, photos, art, quotations, poems… anything is possible.

And, since I have been so lamentably absent from the blogging world lately, would you please pass word on if you can? I’m going to try to gather a group of people by next Monday, 21 November.

Thank you.

This is the irrational season
when love blooms bright and wild
had Mary been full of reason
there’d have been no room for the child.

Madeline L’Engle