The Work of Christmas: A Season of Darkness and Light

December 26, 2024

At our exquisite Christmas Eve service, a service of dark and light, love and grace, concern and care, Reverend Pam recalled the words of Howard Thurman, minister of, and to, the disinherited:  “When the song of the angel is still, when the star in the sky is gone, when kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their sheep, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among people, to make music in the heart.”

Thurman was one of several religious intellectuals who firmly believed in ecumenism and care for the vulnerable. With other preachers, teachers, and mentors at Howard and other universities (among them Benjamin Mays and Mordechai Johnson), Thurman focused on creating a church of the future that embodied non-violence as an active force against oppression. His vision was to “create the first real community of black scholars”.

Thurman also reflected upon Advent and Christmas themes of darkness and light. In The Luminous Darkness: A Personal Interpretation of the Anatomy of Segregation and the Ground of Hope (1965), he finds hope and light in coming to terms with the racial issues of his time, knowing that God is also God in the dark. Bishop Julia Whitworth also called upon Thurman in a coda in her Christmas message this year. His poem entitled “I will light candles for Christmas…” is all-encompassing, opening us up to joy despite sadness, hope amid despair, courage in the face of fear, citing “… Candles of love to inspire all my living, Candles that will burn all the year long.”

May we embrace the Work of Christmas as prompted by Presiding Bishop Sean’s missive: “…[committing] our lives to creating a world that is more just and more loving, in which the grace and truth that came down to us at Christmas is kindled all year long.”

 We wish you a blessed New Year,

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church December 26, 2024

 

 

Happy holidays!

I’m keeping it short and sweet this week, as this will be my last week with common cathedral until the New Year.  It also happens to be common art’s premier of Richard Berman’s play, “Fix the Damn Sidewalk!” I cannot wait to see these performers give it their all. I have learned a great deal as an intern this semester, but what keeps inspiring me is the creativity and passion I witness in this community.

My experience here has only strengthened my conviction that everyone is a creative soul at heart and that creativity truly holds the power to heal. I know there is so much more to come and so much more for me to learn and witness. Until then, I plan to use my time off to rest, reflect, and eat a whole bunch of cookies.

—Mary Swabenland

Nikki Giovanni, Poet of Joy

December 16, 2024

With poet Nikki Giovanni’s passing, the tributes continue to flow. Kevin Young, poet, essayist, and Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture paid tribute in a recent New Yorker article, “Nikki Giovanni’s Legacy of Black Love.”

Young observes that often contrarian Giovanni wrote “across the decades” about ecopoetics, family, and justice. She also “preferred to remind readers that ‘Black love is Black wealth,’” and her love spread throughout the Black Arts Movement and beyond.

The Guardian’s article emphasizes her accessible poetry about liberation, gender, love, and the small pleasures of daily life.

We send greetings for the season with a perhaps lesser-known poem, “Christmas Laughter,” a glimpse of her family’s enjoyment of the varied “senses” of the holiday.

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church December 16, 2024

Haiku

As we approach the end of the year and the end of my first semester with common cathedral, I am feeling reflective on my experience with this community and everything they have taught me. I decided for this week’s post I would challenge myself to write a collection of haikus about my experience thus far. Haiku is not my go-to poetry format, but I find it helpful when I want to condense a lot of feelings and ideas into a succinct space.

Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving!

I just got back from visiting my family for the holiday and am preparing myself to step back into my “intern” role at common cathedral tomorrow. It’s about to be what I would call “crunch time” in regard to preparation for our upcoming holiday play. This is the first time I have been in the role of director/producer for something like this, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t stress me out a little. The problem is not a lack of belief in the talent and capabilities of the community members involved;  in that I have no doubts.  I worry about my ability to provide the needed structure and containment to allow these talented artists to be seen and for their work to reach its potential. I have to remind myself that it’s not about the product but the process and the experience. Allowing people the space to enjoy and express themselves authentically is most important. I should also enjoy and express myself authentically, which means I should probably chill out a little and turn the stress down a notch. I will take this mindset of authentic presence and enjoyment into our rehearsal tomorrow. Continue reading

Thanksgiving Revisited

December 2, 2024

On Thanksgiving Day, people gathered on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth for the annual Day of Mourning. This tradition was established in 1970, spearheaded by Wamsutta (Frank) James, a Wampanoag and activist. James’s son, Moonanum James, now organizes the event.

Prayers for this day often include remembering the losses of Indigenous communities, and praying for healing, truth-telling, and the capacity to be instruments of justice during our lives.

More recently scholars in religious studies have advocated for the study of “living religion” or religion as practiced. The practice of praying for Indigenous peoples was often the first step in a journey of contact with Christianity. Conversion narratives by John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew illustrate the co-existence of traditional and Christian thought and practice as they engaged with missionaries.

In this vein, we recommend David Silverman’s This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019). Silverman notes that in early times, Wampanoags “turned the missionaries religion into a new way to express indigenous truths by melding Wampanoag religious concepts and truths with their rough Christian equivalents…some Wampanoags found Christianity to be a means of reinvigorating old religious ideas to meet the stresses of a new era.” (p. 243) There were other practical reasons, of course, to engage with missionaries, and over time, relationships between the two cultures became increasingly strained. By 1677, 10 of the 14 praying towns in Massachusetts were disbanded.

–Mary Beth Clack, Mary Blocher, Cindy Coldren, Pat Krol, Liz Levin
–Published in This Week @Emmanuel Church, December 5, 2024.