Waiting
Guest post by Waverly FitzgeraldI said to my soul, be still, and wait without hopeFor hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without loveFor love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faithBut the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought.So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.T S Eliot, “East Coker,” Four QuartetsI’ve been thinking a lot about waiting, since that is the activity of Advent, a time of waiting for the Sun to be reborn at Winter Solstice, or the Son to be...
Read MoreThree Gifts
Guest Post by Carolyn Lee BoydThe weeks leading up to the Solstice are a time of grace, of sacred bounty given and gratefully received – the beauty and abundance of snow and rime, the warmth of hearthfires and seasonal celebrations, the deep potential of the dark and the joyful promise of the light. During this time of year, I love to walk about a mile in utter darkness from my work to the train station on my way home each evening. The road is without streetlights, so for long stretches I am completely surrounded by absolute blackness. Tonight as I walked, I received three gifts.The first...
Read MoreEnlightened
Dear Readers, due to the incompetence of British Telecom, I have been without internet broadband for a number of days, and thus our Viriditas Advent Blog was on hiatus. I needed to get a viable laptop and hotspot to work with and download Google Chrome before I could resume posting. But here, at long last,is Christy K. Robinson’s poignant guest post about Mary Barrett Dyer, an early American who died defending religious freedom. Guest Post by Christy K RobinsonIf you know of Mary Barrett Dyer, perhaps it’s the memorial statue at the Massachusetts State House; or that she was the...
Read MoreLight as a Choice
Guest post by Christy English“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.”His Holiness, the Dalai LamaWe get to choose whether or not to be light bringers. In every moment, whatever actions we take, we can bring light or darkness. Of course, it is often easier to focus on ourselves, our petty problems, our losses, our defeats.The shadows are distracting to the point that we think they’re all there is. But light makes shadow, even if the Source is unseen.The Light that came into...
Read MoreThoughts after the first Sunday in Advent
Great Milton Parish Church, OxfordshireGuest post by Stephanie Cowell, continuing our Viriditas Interfaith Advent seriesAdvent reminds me why I first began to haunt churches. It all comes back again.I am a church mouse, unable to pass one without pushing open doors and finding myself in a deeply moving place. I particularly love small stone churches dimly lit, full of candlelight and old incense. Our lives change so fast; you go to sleep and find the world changed in the morning. And so I go through England and Europe pushing open the wood doors of churches with faded...
Read MoreHildegard’s House of Light
Elizabeth Erickson’s 2008 painting “Hildegard’s House of Light.” Today marks the First Sunday of Advent and the first post of our Viriditas Interfaith Advent Calendar, “Journey into Light.”Here in Northern England, I find myself plunging into the depths of midwinter darkness. It is in this womb of night and stillness that the Light is reborn. Through the ages and across cultures, world faith traditions have marked this sacred passage through the darkness, as our guest bloggers shall explore in the coming days of Advent.In Christian tradition, Advent is a period of expectant waiting, of...
Read MoreAbout Mary Sharratt
An American author living on the Silver Coast of Portugal, Mary Sharratt is on a mission to write women back into history. She is the author of Revelations and seven previous critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the Witching Hill, the Nautilus Award–winning Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, The Dark Lady’s Mask: A Novel of Shakespeare’s Muse, and Ecstasy, about the life, loves, and music of Alma Mahler. When she is not writing, you can find her riding her beautiful Welsh mare.
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