|
ADVENT Excerpts from Cameron Trimble
These days are so exhausting. We are caught between a nightmare of our recent past and hope for a better future. I suppose that is what Advent is about, after all. Waiting for hope to breakthrough. Waiting on love to guide us back together. Waiting for a healing balm for our weary souls. "Please God, get us through this and on to better days," has become my heartfelt prayer.
I recently saw a poem written in 2018 by Minister Elizabeth Stevens. She speaks beautifully of the hard work of hope in the face of resistance and the long walk of transformation. It felt like it could have been written today.
Oh, my dear ones.
I know you were hoping
For a once-and-done.
For an earthquake,
A tidal wave.
Hoping that if we gave it our all,
A single push would be enough.
That after this, we could
Sink
Back into complacency,
Back into the comfort of our privilege.
I confess, in the secret corners of my heart,
I wanted to believe it could be that easy
That justice would emerge as from an egg
Fully grown
Not with wet down and weak wings...
But beloveds,
We are chipping away at a mountain,
Not a boulder.
Calcified structures,
Created to oppress,
Control,
Kill.
Thousands of years with this stupid idea
That some are more worthy,
Some deserve power by virtue of who they are
What they look like
Which tribe they claim.
Erosion is slow work, sweethearts. Celebrate the progress
The triumphs.
Celebrate also the heartbreaking almosts.
Breathe.
Rest for a time.
Then get up and turn again toward kindness,
Toward your neighbor in need, Toward those who are still trapped in the stone.
Tell them, "I won't give up."
Tell them, "I am with you."
Tell them, "For you, I will learn to eat rocks."
"For you, I will keep chewing, keep grinding,
Until the mountain crumbles to dust."
"Be kind to yourselves in these days of waiting and wonder. We are learning to eat rocks. We can't give up because we are in this together, and we can't leave any of us behind.
Thank you, friend, for who you are and all you do to make this world more just and kind."
From Cameron Trimble, echoed by Pastor Dale
| 
