Oblate Christmas Gathering

The Lewiston Oblate Group met for our Christmas celebration at Lisa's lovely decorated home.  She's served on the Winter Sprit Board and her yard looked like a miniature Locomotive Park.  She's welcomed us for years to her home where we share a meal and Advent reflection.  I'm always in awe of her creative ability to decorate her home for Christmas.

I begged her years ago to teach some of us how to create Winter Pots after we pulled out the last of our summer and fall flowers.

 Lisa, Charlene and Marcia

Arlene, Betty, Kathy, and Pat

Regina, Mary Lou, Alyse, and Joan

Elsie, Cindy, and Margaret

Charlene, Marcia and Karen

Marcia led us in the "Nest Reflection" written by Joyce Rupp.  Joyce writes, "I believe that the Word comes ever so quietly and in ever so ordinary a way.  The twigs of our trials and tension, the soft down of our love and fidelity, the pebbles of our patience and pain, the straw of our struggles and strivings, the mud of our humanness and growing, the dry grass of our surrender and our daily dyings.  These are the content of our nests where God asks us to hollow out a welcoming place.  Jesus comes to us in the midst of everyday fragments and asks us to create space for him where He has never been before, or places where He is no longer welcome.  All the bits and pieces of our lives, like those bits and pieces that form bird's nests, are where He awaits a birthing.  All of us are meant to know and to deeply appreciate the joy and privilege of this nesting, of this homing of the God who waits for us to openly receive the life offer to us.  That is why it is so important to reflect during Advent, to ponder the redemption, to not let the hurried pace of Christmas take us from our nesting time."

We were also presented with Paperwhite bulbs to remind us that Isaiah wrote:  "A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.  Henri Nouwen writes, "Our salvation comes from something small, tender, and vulnerable, something hardly noticeable.  God, who is the Creator of the Universe, comes to us in smallness, weakness, and hiddenness.  I find this a hopeful message. Somehow, I keep expecting loud and impressive events to convince me and others of God's saving power; but over and over again, I am reminded that spectacles, power plays, and big events are the ways of the world.  Our temptation is to be distracted by them and made blind to the "shoot that shall sprout from the stump." Being a member of this Oblate Group prepares me for this Holy Season.