Good morning! 

Today’s Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7, Matthew 11:2-11

For new readers, because it is Sunday there is a shorter but poignant devotional.  Today I will be preaching on embracing dark: hoplessness.  This has been an interesting sermon to write and I hope that perhaps you will listen to the podcast later.  Just go to www.mac-coop.org and you will see the link.  But as I prepared this morning, thinking through the scripture yet again, one of my favorite poems came to mind.  Mary Oliver is a brilliant poet and I have used this particular poem many many times.  You may have been in meetings with me and have used this…or probably saw it last year…but to me, it speaks on so many levels.  You just have to be you…in your hopelessness, in your community, in who you are. Let it be your prayer this morning as we enter into the second week of Advent.

Wild Geese

by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good. 
You do not have to walk on your knees 
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. 
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves. 
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 
Meanwhile the world goes on. 
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 
are moving across the landscapes, 
over the prairies and the deep trees, 
the mountains and the rivers. 
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 
are heading home again. 
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 
the world offers itself to your imagination, 
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place 
in the family of things.

Peace,

C