Dear Group Leaders and Friends in Christian Meditation,
Our delayed Merry Christmas greeting!
Advent is a time of preparation. I cherish the four weeks of this season. It is a gentle reminder to slow down amidst the frenetic activity of our American culture. It is a simple time of waiting. In my home state of Michigan, it is dark during my morning meditation as well as my evening time of silence, stillness and simplicity. There is something beautifully simple about Advent like the simplicity of our meditation. At the same time, simple doesn’t mean easy. When we sit down to meditate, so often we have commercials, advertisements, regrets and hopes for the future that impede on our desire to be in the present moment Likewise in Advent when we honor the three comings of the Christ. We are now awaiting the coming of the Christ Child, yet we recognize the coming of Christ at the end of time and we also open our hearts to Christ coming every day; yet we struggle with being present enough to pay attention. We need great preparation. In a way, we are always in the midst of Advent.
At this time of the year, I often think of one of the first Christmas homilies I gave in my life as a priest. I was presiding at a late evening Mass. The homily I delivered wasn’t my best. It reflected my growing edges. I attempted to be clever and theologically astute. In reality, I missed the point in trying to make my point. The theme of my homily was that Christmas pointed to Calvary; that the wood of the manger prefigured the wood of the cross. As I looked out into the congregation, I saw my Uncle Bobby. He lived two hours away and was an incredibly inactive Catholic. Uncle Bobby was my dad’s only brother. Uncle Bobby was my Godfather. After the Mass, I greeted Uncle Bobby and invited him to stay the night. He declined, deciding rather to tread the slow roads. Uncle Bobby was a direct man who didn’t mince words. He described my attempt at theological sophistication as, well let’s just say, “not good”.
Uncle Bobby knew what I didn’t. He intuitively understood Christmas, the coming of the Christ, as the beginning of something that God was doing with humanity and all of creation. The problem is I missed comprehending that it was life that came to us in that manger, Jesus. A life that led to death at the hands of the Roman Empire. God’s response was the Resurrection. The baby born in the manger was the man who was God. Jesus was born an outcast and soon a refugee. In Christ’s ministry he preached compassion and love, healing those forgotten by their own religion and he chose to be one with the poor on the cross. Christ’s life began in a manger and our new life began with the birth of Jesus. My Uncle Bobby saw what I could not see, what God was doing 2000 years ago.
Advent continually prepares us for what God is doing, how God is breaking into our world and into our lives in the unlikeliest of places.
When we sit down to meditate, as we continually say our mantra, or begin again when our attention is stolen, we echo maranatha, ancient prayer, come, Lord Jesus. It is our Advent prayer as well as our daily dive into the present moment. Our times of meditation prepare us to pay attention to our world and God’s work in our midst and our call to participate in God’s saving Presence.
In his Christmas letter that was shared this week, Father Laurence Freeman announced the following:
“The John Main Seminar next year will be hosted by the US community and led by Tim Shriver. He is well known as Chairman of the Special Olympics Committee, as a member of the Kennedy family but especially for his inspirational work in confronting the culture of polarization and contempt which undermines us all today. He is a meditator and leads a WCCM group in Washington, DC.”
More information will be coming soon as we prepare to host this important gathering. Tim Shriver has been working on a process named The Dignity Index https://www.dignity.us/ The upcoming JMS and The Dignity Index will offer a gift to our meditation community and our world-in-need as we relearn the gift of treating others with dignity. The dignity of each one of us and our human family was made manifest when God became human in Jesus.
We hope yours was a Merry Christmas!
Warmly,
Kevin Maksym
