We wish you all a truly blessed, happy and peaceful Christmas. And we thank you for supporting the practice of whole-school meditation with the children in your school. It will bear fruit in their lives, not just for now, but it brings fruits that can last a lifetime. And the practice is one that children can return to anywhere, anytime. Teachers too! Remember, you can join in on our online poetry meditations any Thursday and Sunday evening at 7:30 p.m. See the links at the end of the newsletter.
The Advent journey, culminating in Christmas, is very like our meditation journey. The aim of both is the birth of Christ in our hearts. We are not merely recalling an event that occurred over 2,000 years ago but we pray that Christ may be born anew in our hearts.
That is why we meditate. Meditation is a prayer of the heart, where we let go of all thinking and all doing and we simply choose to be with God in complete stillness and silence. Remember the words of 12-year-old Alex who said that when she hears the bells ring at the start of meditation, she imagines God is ringing her doorbell and she opens her heart to let God in.
Why not do that today or soon with your class? And as you sit down to meditate together for Christmas, invite them to open their hearts to let God in.
I Gave this Day to God by Luci Shaw
I gave this day to God when I got up, and look,
look what it birthed! There, up the hill, stood
the apple tree, bronze leaves, its fallen apples
spilling richly down the slope, the way God spilled
his seed into Mary, into us. In her the holy promise
came to rest in generous soil after a long
fall. How often it ends in gravel, or dry dust.
Blackberry patches thorny with distraction. Oh,
I pray my soul will welcome always that small
seed. That I will hail it when it enters me.
I don’t mind being grit, soil, dirt, mud-brown,
laced with the rot of old leaves, if only the seed
can find me, find a home and bear a fruit
sweet, flushed, full-fleshed a glory apple.
from Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
Reflection on the Poem:
Luci Shaw once said: ‘ I’ve sometimes drawn a parallel between poets and prophets because both speak into a culture that finds it hard to listen. Both bear the burden of calling some aspect of reality to our attention.’
She observes that ‘The season of Advent celebrates the extraordinary moment in time when Jesus, God’s holy seed, entered our planet through a human birth canal.’ For so many people Christmas is primarily seen as family time, a time for giving and receiving gifts. And while that is important, as Christians we give primacy to celebrating and welcoming the rebirth Christ, again and again, into our hearts.
Christmas is a time when, with our personal ‘Yes’, we strive to echo the generosity of Mary, who consented to carry the Christ-child within her from conception to birth. Likewise, every time we sit in meditation, we aim to be as welcoming as Mary, whose response to the Angel Gabriel was ”Be it unto me according to your word.’ We have faith that our commitment to our twice-daily practice awakens us to our true nature as children of God and transfigures us so that we become kinder persons, more aware to the needs of our world and more responsive in our actions.
Every time we meditate, may we be whole-heartedly aware that God has spilled his seed into us and may we welcome it again and again into our hearts, into the grit, soil, and dirt – mud-brown, laced with the rot of old leaves – of our psyche and may it find a home and bear a fruit sweet, flushed, full-fleshed, a glory apple that provides nourishment for those in need where we live out our lives. May we be able to say every evening that I gave this day to God when I got up, and look, look what it birthed! Not as a matter of pride but in pure humility and astonishment..
Click the image to download the poster
