Angels: Advent Week Two
Please enjoy the blog version of Taylor & Whitney’s first collaboration, an Advent email series written by Taylor in 2020.
Image of the angels wings of a figurine by Whitney Leigh Carlson from her Advent Print Calendar that can be on Etsy.
Take a deep breath and settle in.
Light a candle if you'd like.
Advent is arrival.
We wait in silence.
We wait in stillness.
We wait in darkness.
For our Light to come.
Scripture for reflection
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 favored! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor 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 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; 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[b] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
-Luke 1: 26-38
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
-Isaiah 11: 6-9
Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.
-Hebrews 13:2
Image: "The Virgin Mary of Peace" by Shim Soon-hwa Catherine of South Korea who "created this masterful painting as a gift for Pope Francis' visit to South Korea in 2014. It depicts the Virgin Mary dressed in traditional Korean Hanbok attire, including the traditional binyeo hairpin, as she holds the little baby Jesus, surrounded by cherubs and flowers. The painting includes children of the world sitting at the Virgin Mary's feet, representing Africa, South America, the Middle East, and the Koreas."
Meditation: On the Angels
As a young girl, my play was almost exclusively centered around Bible stories. This is not surprising after all being a pastor’s daughter, where church, and home, and family were all synonymous. I dressed up in angels' wings on Halloween, adding holy glitter to an otherwise sinister holiday. I pretended to be Mary with my bright pink blanket as a makeshift veil, delegating my Mom to the obvious role of Joseph; baby Jesus lying soundly in his milk crate manger. I was three when I first sang a duet in front of the congregation, and my Mom coaxed my tiny trembling heart up onstage saying that Jesus would be very happy to hear me sing. Afterward, I rushed right up to her and asked, “Is Jesus happy?” and she responded, "Yes, Jesus is very happy." And even more earnestly I queried, “Is Noah happy?”
I was fascinated by the miracles and mysteries, the whale at sea who swallowed Jonah, Daniel surviving the lion’s den, David defeating a giant, Joseph’s coat of many colors. Faith came so easily, so simply; I believed everything without questioning or doubting. Now that I’m grown, having shed some skin of naivete and childlike faith, I have a slightly more complicated relationship to the Biblical text, and all the ways it’s been used to oppress. Thus, studying Scripture through the lens of angels was welcome respite.
Angels make appearance throughout both Old and New Testaments as fierce protectors, eager messengers, holy disrupters, and even as gentle caretakers. Angels comforted Jesus in the days of his fasting, unlocked the prison doors that held Peter in captivity, guided Lot out of Sodom, wrestled Jacob in the wilderness, shut the mouths of lions from devouring Daniel. An angel told Joseph to marry instead of depart Mary secretly, to cross borders seeking safety in Egypt, to return home to Galilee. Angels announced the birth of John and then Jesus, on a humble hillside in Bethlehem; angels safeguarded the tomb after his resurrection.
If we're being honest, angels are often relegated to the fanciful world of children, to games of make-believe, to the saccharine stuff of fairy tales. But perhaps the spirit of Christmas is to recapture our childlike imagination. Children are more attuned to the supernatural, the liminal threshold between the temporal and eternal, earthly and ethereal, what the Irish call “thin places.” Children catch glimpses of angels because they are paying attention.
I experienced this in a therapy session with one of my sweet 4 year-olds recently. I was reading her a story called Maybe Days which helps foster children better understand their experiences, the maybes that are inherent in a system of reunification, multiple transitions of foster families, and adoption. After The End, when I asked her what stuck out, what she thought the book was about, she intuitively said, “a little girl, and God.” This book was not explicitly about God, but God was there, unbidden, hidden in pages that only she could see. Her foster mother held her and said, “You’re right. There are no maybes about God. God and the angels are with you always.”
As Madeline L’Engle writes in her beautiful book Walking on Water, “As for Mary, she was little more than a child when the angel came to her; she had not lost her child’s creative acceptance of the realities moving on the other side of the everyday world. We lose our ability to see angels as we grow older, and that is a tragic loss.” Children dwell always in the realm of possibility, not yet encumbered by grown-up sensibilities, their hearts open and wild and hungry to be enchanted. Children teach us to entertain angels, with whimsy and moxie and infectious hospitality. They pull up a chair to the miraculous right in front of us, magic transcending logic, that we perhaps were too busy to see. But the invitation is always ours to receive.
Child of God, you like the angels, are being sent into the world as ambassadors of truth & goodness, justice & holy rabble-rousing.
Do not be afraid.
Let the world stand still, the church bells ring
Silent night as the angels sing
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Let the magic warm the moonlit air
Hear the choirs join in singing everywhere
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Ooh, let there be peace on earth
Let the lonely join together, let them know their worth
Ooh, let the children know
There's a brighter day ahead, let's hold on to hope
Minnesota Children's Museum, St. Paul, MN
Play as spiritual practice
Eight years ago now, I experienced some of the darkest hours of my entire life, where grief was acute and ocean deep, and tears were my food day and night, like the Psalmist writes. My theology professor at the time encouraged me to go to Target and pick out something I loved to do as a child, thinking play might assuage the pain in some way. I will shamelessly admit that I bought a coloring book of Disney princesses (I know, I know) complete with shimmery glitter and a new watercolor set. And I sat in my dorm room in the evenings, making art of the impossible.
What did you love to do as a child? Paint rainbows, make music, go sledding, play basketball, read fanciful stories, dawdle, doodle, dance? Think of a play-list. We are invited to give ourselves the gifts of delight, ease, rest, amusement, amazement, to lose ourselves in time, stretching out like taffy. So go ahead, and make some time to play today, however that might look, by yourself, with a partner, your children, or a socially-distanced friend. May you give yourself permission to make good messes, do it imperfect, and be refreshed, if only for a moment.
Prayer of petition
God of ancient wonder, captivate us anew. We confess we are too often tired, distracted, frantic, and wanting that we miss the plain places You hide, waiting to be found. Hold our hearts still that we might seek Your face right where we are, in this sacred pause, in these Your children, the family of God. May we dare to live wild and wide-eyed, catching glimpses of magnificence surrounding and surprising us still. May we not be so bound to our apathies and certainties that we miss the Divine mystery dwelling in the dark. Let us hold tight, especially in grief, to rhythms of play and rest, for in them we find connection and grounding, miracles moving, unfurling. Thank you for teaching us to extend hospitality to strangers, and in so doing eavesdrop on the holy laughter of angels. You, our most audacious hope, our bright wonder, Emmanuel, God-with-us, everlasting and incarnate.
Amen
*These closing prayers are written with similar structure and syntax as Black Liturgies, which would make a beautiful addition to your Insta feed.
