These are the days for believing impossible things, like good news

A Christmas Eve service and a blessing for you

Hi friends,

Over at Evolving Faith, the new leadership has put together a beautiful Christmas Eve service. They graciously invited me to participate in the offering so you’ll spot me in the mix there with a Christmas blessing, but there is also stunning music, timely messages from Jonathan Bow and

Jeff Chu 朱天慧

and offerings from other folks as well. Whether you are in the centre of joy this year or very decidedly not, I think you’ll find something resetting, good, and holy here.

The service is available to watch and share on their Facebook page, shiny new YouTube channel, and of course within the free Online Evolving Faith Community (if you want to interact with some like-minded folks or even set up a watch-party together, I’d recommend that option) or even here, through this email/newsletter.

And so for Field Notes this week, as we begin to wrap up this year and to catch our breath for the in-between liminal days, I thought I’d share the blessing that I wrote for that service with you all here as we head into Christmas. Disclaimer: this is just the text from my notes and so may differ from the actual video (I tend to black out a bit when a camera is on and forget everything that is coming out of my mouth so cannot be held responsible for differences in the text and the video) but it’s the general idea, for sure.

The picture Jeff took while we were filming the Christmas Eve service for you all. Please enjoy the Canadian in her socks for filming because she took off her shoes at the front door.

A Christmas Blessing

It turns out that these are the days for believing 
impossible things, like good news.
Thankfully I have a lot of practice at believing in unlikely things.
Ordinary things, miraculous things, beautiful things. 

I choose to believe a lot of things actually,
Especially right now. I feel weirdly stubborn about it.
Our friend Kate Bowler always says that we shouldn’t be shy about just blessing the crap out of each other and so let’s bless choosing to believe things together.

Let’s bless in O Holy Night’s third verse and
A weary world rejoicing again someday. 
Bless that He taught us to love one another; His law is Love and His gospel is Peace"
That’s a nice thing to believe, 
It’s even better to act like it.

We bless those who are peacemakers, never settling for less
than everything healed, everything flourishing, vision 
of shalom that you carry in your heart, I believe in that.
I believe in making a home in your hopes,
And a sanctuary of belonging for the misfits.

I bless your next beautiful breath and in your unseen uncelebrated good work 
and in your doubts and your heartbreak and your reasons.
I believe you when you say this isn’t working for you,
you deserve love and you deserve a place where you aren’t just “welcomed” on a sign but actually wanted and honoured, even if you haven’t found it yet.
I bless your free mom hugs and apologies that are long overdue,
I bless singing together when the darkness presses in close.

I bless your terrible poetry and tending gardens and proclamations. 
I bless making out until you’re breathless and
dance parties in the kitchen and adding an extra quilt to the bed on a cold night.

Bless our makeshift candlelight vigils and the restorative powers of baking
 and signing petitions and hanging baby pictures on the walls.

Bless speaking our truth out loud,
bless your affirmations scrawled on index cards and 
your grandmother’s highlighted Bible and 
the grief that is masquerading as anger.

Bless Christmas disruption because it crashes together
Everything, everyone, it doesn’t leave even one of us out.
Lament and joy, waiting and fulfillment,
Justice and peace, real constraints and unexpected capacity,
Ordinary peasants and kings, astrologers and strangers,
And it’s all summed up on a glorious moment on a hillside with 
Shepherds and great joy, and in a humble home in a Bethlehem home
With midwives swaddling the baby King and hospitality that has been hidden. 

Bless the very thing many folks want to avoid discussing in this season - 
the presence of oppression and grief, weariness and sorrow and fear,
the moment to which we are being asked to rise - 
is the altar of invitation
where we encounter and embody the law of love and the gospel of peace.

Drew Jackson wrote, “Divine favour is placed 
on what we have disgraced.” 
And so we bless your disgrace, real or perceived, as beloved by God, even precious.

Christmas reminds me that when we are feeling lonely or forgotten, 
misunderstood and misrepresented, vulnerable and unsure,
then 
always
God is with us. 

Bless all of us praying prayers that won’t be answered.
Bless nurses and teachers and 
all good honest work that matters to people.
I believe in quiet and, when you don’t know what to do, well
It never hurts to get in the kitchen to feed some people.

Bless everyone hosting Christmas supper and those bringing ice to the party,
Bless the online church and church basements and cathedrals and living rooms.
Bless that turkey dinner and take-out and 
bless the bare trees in the winter,
reminding you that everyone needs to rest in order to be well rooted, to grow.

I believe in the ministry of slow walks in long corridors at the hospital,
In the “good luck, buddy” nods of comradeship between patients passing in the hall,
And the love that keeps us holding on,
And I believe in the way my mother gently held onto my father’s bony ankle,
As he slept in the hospital bed and she sat beside him for hours.
I believe in my daughter’s freckles and my son’s laughter and
Chappell Roan’s ability to get everyone dancing.

Bless being honest about where it hurts and how,
We bless family recipes and found families and starlight.
I believe Jesus called us friends and we can begin there, 
in the audacity of friendship with God.

Bless all of us who are keeping watch by night and humble beginnings,
There comes a time when you decide that 
being earnest and sincere is better than being defeated.
I still believe in that abundant fruit of the spirit and the gift of faith,
I believe in abundant life and upside-down kingdoms and 
God with us. 

Bless anyone staying up late to pray, and
Bless those who say what needs to be said just in case.
Bless the food banks and women's shelters and protests,
We bless your donations and bundles of socks and sparsely attended Advent services,
And we bless visiting a grave on a green hillside because around here, 
we believe in remembering.

I still choose to believe God is with us, all of us, in every disgraceful and ignored 
And forgotten and empty place. 
I believe love wins even if she has some bruises and needs a minute.
So let’s bless the candlelight and the porch lights and open doors and planting trees.
Bless all of you who are trying to love your place and your people, like it matters,
because it does.

I believe you don’t have to be gentle with God: 
you can rage and cry and curse and collapse and still be held fast. 
God isn’t fragile, you cannot break God’s love 
with questions, doubt, anger, uncertainty.

If you still believe God loves us, well, we bless the heck out of that.
Bless you for giving a damn 
even when it breaks your heart.
I believe faithfulness is just another word for stubborn,
And forgiveness is releasing what you were never meant to carry anyway.

Bless you for the ministry of just showing up,
We’ll bless Mary’s Magnificat and angels,
the Charlie Brown Christmas special and kids wearing tinsel halos.
Bless the dancing and singing, 
old stories and kisses under the mistletoe.

Bless you for doing the work that is yours to do.
And I believe hope is a choice, an informed choice, that 
plants gardens in places of exile and tends the place where you are.

I believe that it matters that God chose to show up in the time of Herod
and so we bless every fool expecting God to show up with us 
and alongside us now, in our current apocalypse

I believe no one is required to believe as I do
but I do choose to believe God With Us, Emmanuel. 
That God isn’t reserved for heroes and leaders, 
worship songs and spectacular displays of power, no. 
That God is just as present in hospital rooms and hillsides, 
in our sleep and sorrow, in the deep hysterical belly laugh of a baby 
and the messy supper table covered with crumbs and conversation.

I believe God is here, now, and Love has always been your home. 
I believe the centre of God’s kin-dom is actually all along the edges 
and the margins and the corners and the back rows, too.

I’ve known God’s love best in humble churches and warm kitchens, 
in banks and funeral homes, in the wilderness and the MRI machine, 
in ordinary love and quiet faithfulness.
God draws near, over and over and over.
There are so many ways we begin to properly notice that.
I hope we remain open to them all this Christmas season. 

I still believe in great joy, because
God crashed in and marched into the wilderness
 set up a household of faith
And threw open the doors to every joker here, too.

I believe God is even better than we can imagine: 
more true, more beautiful, more at-work, more loving, more generous. 
I believe it almost never looks like how we were taught to expect it. 
And I believe God is always hiding in plain sight in your right-now life 
and it turns out that you didn’t have to jump through the hoops or 
contort yourself into a jigsaw puzzle of performance or
hide your truest self or pretend to be fine, 
you certainly don’t need to be afraid.
God never was yours to earn anyway.

As tempting as it is to self-protect ourselves and 
our hearts as a guard against inevitable disappointments, 
I believe it’s always better to care,
to keep giving a damn, to risk love, to keep trying.

When I don’t/can’t believe anything, 
I can actively choose love and grace, justice and peace, 
candlelight and the prayers of others, 
setting an extra spot at the table and old stories
of God with us that have shaped our lives.
So I’ll stay on that road until I eventually 
cross paths with belief again. 
(I believe that choosing to believe is just as holy, 
just as sacred, just as important
as someone else’s uncomplicated belief.)

Maybe it’s just for tonight, maybe it will be forever,
But choosing to believe or letting yourself want to believe
Is just as beautiful, just as miraculous, just as holy.
And we bless every scrap of belief, every longing to believe,
Every hope of believing again and every truth-telling that you just don’t and can’t.

We bless you for loving the world this Christmas,
Because there are tidings of great joy, for all of humanity. 
God so loved the world. God so loved the world.

Happy Christmas Eve, friends.

May love and light, however small or unexpected, find you in these days.

Love S.

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