Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
-Mary Oliver, Evidence:Poems
The "Critical Yeast"
Some wisdom for our time from John Lederach on the Importance of the Few, the "Critical Yeast".
John Paul Lederach is a senior fellow at Humanity United and professor emeritus of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame. He is also the co-founder and first director of the Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding. In 2019 he won the Niwano Peace Foundation Peace Prize.
Header Image: Karyna Panchenko/Unsplash
A NEW ADVENT RITUAL
SISTERS CREATE AND CELEBRATE COSMIC ADVENT RITUAL
Image: Laura Nyhuis/Unsplash
In Christian tradition, the four weeks before Christmas is called Advent, a season of anticipation celebrating the birth of Jesus at Christmas. In a larger sense, Advent celebrates the coming of the fullness of God when all of creation including humans has reached its mature completion and God is all in all. This larger view implies that all things evolve and reach a unified Oneness. It is this evolutionary awareness that has led to a more current expression of the traditional Advent ritual.
In 2019 the School Sisters of Notre Dame created an adaptation to the traditional Christmas wreath ritual that includes evolutionary science, biblical hope and brings to life Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si.
The Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland led by Sister Elizabeth Davis implemented this new Advent ritual in their Advent celebrations called Cosmic Advent Wreath. Briefly, the first candle of the display represents The Birth of the Universe. The second candle represents The Birth of the Solar System. The third candle represents The Birth of Jesus the Christ and the fourth My Birth into the Whole Body of the Universe.
The following two resources, shared below, give the background to the Sisters’ creation and implementation of the Cosmic Advent Ritual.
https://ecospiritualityresources.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/adventinthenewuniversestory.2020.pdf
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It seems to me that this ritual adaptation is a good example of how to go beyond the traditional ritual and also include it into a larger and more expansive celebration for our time.
-Sister Mary Vandersteen, csj
AUTUMN
One by one
the leaves let go
Image: Joey Genovese/Unsplash
falling
to the waiting earth below.
The tree stands
naked
in its bereavement
tall and strong
it weather winter snows
knowing that when spring arrives
her beauty will return
clad in leaves of glorious green
a sheltering for the birds
a shade for summer’s sun.
Until October’s brush
paints her anew
with fiery reds and shimmering golds
and once again she stands
in full magnificence
yet knowing that
as the seasons change
she must again let go
and wait upon the spring.
-Sister Kathleen Lyons, csj
