Fear not, the angels would text me. Hallelujah, I’d write back.

The Magnificat is a courageous and subversive song of praise; a call to social justice.

Love this world, she whispers.

Advent encourages us to be present in each moment of waiting.

Grief is welcome, a sacred part of the mourning.

May we continue to find ways to connect while keeping safe this holiday season.

For me, “surrendering everything tenderly” brings an awareness of grace.

Each Advent, my empathy for Mary’s situation returns.

The stories remind us there is still and always joy in this world, but it usually comes right alongside the struggle.

This is a "love saves" story.

This year, the Advent season seems particularly seized by a spirit of the expected, the longing.

Advent is about the new story being written in our lives.

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.

Everything is about to change. And it already has. It will be. It was. It is. The dawn you eagerly await to end the long, cold darkness is already full sun far off in the east. Yet even after light’s return spring is months away. Thirty long years pass after His birth before the Messiah comes.

In real life, sometimes grief looms largest in December. Sometimes there's one too many dress-ups and the gold tulle makes your legs itch. “I just needed it to stop for a minute. Next time I will take calm breaths.”

Advent is about expectation—radical expectations that undo the status quo—and anticipation: a skillful search for the places where liberation rises from the ashes.

It’s been said that it’s easier to untangle a string of lights if you plug them in; it’s no different for people. Humans, just like strings of lights, are wired for connection.

An adequate Christmas would have you calm and open, taking it in, accepting whatever is. Slow it all down like you might be, in some way, attuned to the pace of the Eternal. If you need, you can fake it at first.

I was talking to someone recently about the story of her church-going life, and she told me about a time in her life that she stopped coming to church. Many people who have a story about their church-going life also have a story about taking a break from church—when they stopped going, sometimes...

As December opens up before us, we welcome in the gift of reflection.