The year is almost a month old, and we greet you from the first ‘record’ of the year. It won’t be long before we are back in a rhythm of our days, and the months will swing by. The question I wonder about as we engage this year, is how we can honour our experience of life, with all its highs and lows, and discover God within it… and how we can do that authentically, without compromising our connection to the Christian Story. This question presupposes that we experience God, rather than talk about God. Our experience is our primary way of connecting with God and the language we use to describe that is a secondary thing, rather than the focus. And I suspect that this is a risky business, perhaps even dangerous in terms of our preservation of the tradition. That is, ensuring we are authentic to our Gospel story and our experience of God is important.

Risk elicits lots of possible responses – fear and retreat, anger and attack, abandonment, excitement… but primarily I’d like to think that risk invites a response of trust. Trust in a Spirit of God who will always enliven, always draw toward truth. In the cry of the Psalmist, the present experience is being enlivened by the dynamic of the Spirit of God. And in the cry we have to God, we open ourselves to the larger experience of our being in God. And, yes, if there is no reference to Scripture or tradition, then there may be even greater risk. But experience itself is not contained by doctrine but enriching of it. We must take the risks if we are to live. And risk acknowledges our vulnerability and our frailty and people, and calls us to life anyway.

I wonder how the year will unfold, what creative adventure will be before us! I look forward to sharing the journey with you, and as a community exploring the way forward. I hope you can put February 21 in your diary, for our first community conversation of 2010, where we can explore the creative journey before us.

This third Sunday of Advent we are greeted in our gallery with a simple nativity scene. Above the stable you’ll notice an installation of stars, each is a Bible carefully folded, to represent the meeting
place between heaven and earth. This story of the birth of Jesus is located in both time and place and transcends our experience of God toward the heavens. The story as told in our biblical narrative and embodied in the birth of this child, the Word of Life, prompts us to wonder at the experience of living lives that bear fruit in keeping with our call. The call of John the Baptizer to repent and follow a Godly way illustrated in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ. We are now called to be the living expressions of that hope, peace and love expressed in the Christmas story. Let us join together with our children in celebration and praise of Jesus our King.

Art Exhibition: Rhythms and Forms of Existence: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. Until 9 December.

Evening of Music and Reflection- TONIGHT (Friday 4 December) 7.30pm

Come and experience the beautiful music of Variegations.

$10/ $8 Concession,   Supper included.

God’s steadfast love invites us to enter Advent by trusting and living out the realm Jesus proclaims. Prophets declare earth and heaven are astir with signs of a new day to come. The signs of God’s nearness and here-ness summon us to balance our longing for God’s coming day with faithful action in this day and to trust that God provides the way forward. The power of God breaks open the present to a future gifted with hope.

This amazing sculpture weaving of Mariette’s offers us another image – of threads woven together to form a beautiful bird soaring high, or perhaps a harp offering a melody. Each thread is part of the whole. Take one away and the weaving is diminished. Together they are beautiful, a creative flow that offers an picture of beauty and harmony.

That is what we look like when we work together. We have a common call to work together as the body of Christ. That means, sharing a gospel, a good news of serving, speaking, shouting a message of justice and love to the ends of the earth. And it means us doing that as loudly, creatively, excitingly, authentically as we can here in Box Hill for as long as we are called to do so!

Over this next couple of weeks, you are being asked about where you might consider putting your creative energy within the context of this community. Over the years, we have danced a balancing jig around releasing people from the burden or obligation to ‘do things’. We do not expect any body to ‘have’ to do anything. And, on the other hand, we recognize that engagement and involvement, the invitation to participate and being involved, is actually a really important part of belonging – freely, without obligation. That is to respond to the call of being who we are fully in this place. So, in this little dance that we do here, I hope that you can find the space to participate, freely, playfully, seriously, intentionally, with integrity. I hope you find the space to be involved as you are able.

The image of Ruth and Naomi invites us to consider the tender relationships where we find safety and nourishment to face the journey ahead. What a blessing when such relationships come our way. Let us give thanks :

God, who is tenderly present to us, We come as those who, in Jesus Christ, are open to you in this time and place.
We are the people who heal each other,
Who grow strong together,
Who name the truth as we perceive it,
Who know what it means to grow as we journey together.
We are a community who move towards a common dream
recognizing new moments of faith experience
in each other gathered here, and in others who journey along with us.
Go as the loved children of God into the world.
Live in love with one another
that the world may believe
the Christ has come.
Amen

Community relies upon people seeing… Attending to the world as it is around us. And in the seeing we discover a resonance with who we are… and from that we can respond, as the call of God upon us.

One of the methods of discerning ‘call’ that I have found really helpful is what we call the Daily Examen. It comes out of the Jesuit tradition, and it is a way of reflecting upon our experience of each day, and discerning the resonances between ourselves and what we see around us…of placing what we see in a God context, and so responding to call. The Examen is an ancient practice in the Church that can help us see God’s hand at work in our whole experience.

This is a version of the five-step Daily Examen that St. Ignatius practiced:

1. Become aware of God’s presence.
2. Review the day with gratitude.
3. Pay attention to your emotions – being open to being aware of your response to the experiences of the day as life-giving or life-diminishing.
4. Choose one feature of the day and pray from it.
5. Look toward tomorrow.

And then watch the patterns. Everyone has ups and downs, good and bad days. But as we follow a rhythm of prayer like this, we begin to discern the patterns that tell us about the resonance of God in our lives, the things we are called to or from. We begin to discern that which we are called to be and how that is to outwork. We begin to recognize the balances and imbalances, and we can then make decisions about this.

Try it between October and Christmas, and see what happens.

“To feel the Rhythm of Life,
To feel the powerful beat!
to feel the tingle in your fingers,
to feel the tingle in your feet”

This familiar tune celebrates the rhythm of life in its vibrant energetic beat. But it’s celebration is more than just a catchy jingle. The song is more than a toe-tapping rhythm. We actually catch the tune, and tap to the beat because it finds a resonance in our heart beat… The concept of the song is about catching the stuff of life that keeps us moving, acting, engaging. It is the rhythm of creation, the cycle of the seasons, the ebb and flow, the character of life in all its complexity.

This week as we reflect specifically on the rhythm of life, we are not sitting in the glib happiness, but the significant movements of our days that take seriously the rhythms of reflection and action, of youth and age, of good and bad. The art in our gallery embraces celebration. And it also calls us to remember the larger movements of struggle and pain – the movement from -to. Indeed, are these not the movements of the psalms that acknowledge both the threat of any given circumstance alongside the constancy and closeness of God. Nathan Nettleton puts the psalm in these words :

Those who put their trust in you, O LORD,
……..are like Mount Dandenong:
…………….solid, calm and dependable.

Like the mountain watching over the city,
……..so you, LORD, watch over your people,
…………….offering protection, now and forever.

I encourage you to take the time over this next couple of weeks to listen to the stories of the artists, and sit with the art, and feel the rhythm of life in the heart beat of a God who loves you always!

PSALM 84 NRSV

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!

My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.

Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah

Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.

They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.

O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer; give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah

Behold our shield, O God; look on the face of your anointed.

For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield; he bestows favour and honour. No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly.

O Lord of hosts, happy is everyone who trusts in you