3 But you, O Lord, are a shield around me,
    my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.
4 I cry aloud to the Lord,
    and he answers me from his holy hill.Selah

5 I lie down and sleep;
    I wake again, for the Lord sustains me.
6 I am not afraid of ten thousands of people
    who have set themselves against me all around.

7 Rise up, O Lord!
    Deliver me, O my God!
For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
    you break the teeth of the wicked.

8 Deliverance belongs to the Lord;
    may your blessing be on your people!Selah

I don’t know about you but I really can’t shake this feeling of heaviness after Friday’s attacks and earthquakes and humans killing other humans.  The world feels so heavy to me. I have to intentionally not spend all of my time on my phone reading article after article about ISIS. These articles are so fascinating and terrifying and sorrowful that I am needing to find some balance in my life between despair and hope.

Yesterday in my sermon I read part of a facebook post from Anne Lamott that she posted on Friday full of her amazing irreverent and wonderful wisdom. She reflected that things never are ok right away. She wrote that “Grace does always bat last, and the light always overcomes the darkness-always, historically. But not necessarily later the same day, or tomorrow, after lunch. Wendell Berry told me, 25 years ago, in Advent, the darkest shortest days of winter, ‘It gets darker and darker and darker, and then Jesus is born.’ But it is only November 13! It gets even darker.”

How appropriate that we have started Advent earlier together because the waiting has just begun in a dark spot and we are going to need each other as it gets darker and darker and darker.  Grace will show up as it does and light will overcome but in the meantime, when we feel hopeless and in despair we have to to hold on to each other. We have to! Otherwise we get too involved in the darkness.

I love that the psalmist writes that he will go to sleep because he knows that when he awakes God will sustain.  Sometimes it is hard to see the morning when it gets dark so early and so often but God will sustain us.

So what do we do? Anne Lamott says that the best thing to do is talking and sticking together.  We need to be gentler and more patient and more kind with one another. It means something.  Grace is made more visible if we take on the smaller kinder gentler ways towards our neighbor. Go ahead, smile at someone today and see how that sparks a little light or check in with your loved ones a little more. I know that I text more to people when I am in this space and the world feels heavy. Maybe pick up an extra pack of socks for homeless folks or have that dinner party that you have been meaning to have. Or perhaps serve in a different way.  More will be revealed to us and God will show up.  But in this time, blessed sacrament is reaching out to each other and holding on.

Love to you all!
C