Session #6 Epilogue—The Re-birth of Her Life
Book: The Advent of God through Mary
Week 5: Divine Mysteries
Thursday "Giving Without Strings"
Friday "Return to Egypt"
Saturday "Our Real Home"
Sunday "Living Water"
Epilogue-The Re-Birth of Her Life
#1 "Confessor"
#2 "Wounded Love"
#3: "Voice of Truth"
#4 "Held in the Arms of Love"
#5 "The Hymn"
Note: Our Bible Study is on Thursdays, so we covering the balance of the current Devotional
To See All of the Advent Season Devotionals, Videos, Lessons & Other Stuff:
Link: to My Wix Blog: Advent Page
Link: Our Place in the Cosmos—A Long Side, Mary
Prime Timers..
Today was our wrap up of "The Advent of God through Mary".. 🎉🎊🍭☕️🥤
Part #1 Mary's Presence Among Us
Pages: Whole Book
Q: opened up 1st part to share, discuss any of the following;
A) Your Favorite Story or Teaching
with the page #? Why or How did that
Story speak to you?
B) A significant thought or insight or
Moment when you sensed 'a light
turning on' or perhaps a 'new insight'
or 'assurance'?
C) Is there a lingering question or concern
or idea from the study?
Responses: General discussion was strong, lasting about 30 minutes, randomly touching upon:
1) The surprise to some of Mary's active and honored role given by the church.
2) Appreciation for Mary as a saint; a humble and strong woman ...and feeling thereby comforted by her presence in and around God's and our story.
3) Appreciation for Mary as a feminine mystique. One of the primary Names for God is LORD God (Yahweh) Almighty (literally meaning; The breasted One). She in Christendom does for men and women. In perhaps differing ways, complete in us the nurturing Presence that we as humans need and seek, in her co-labor with The Trinity of God.
4) Focused a bit on her willingness to suffer for her Son and Lord; our Savior and Lord.
5) General appreciation for the book as engaging and offering reflection.
Part 2 Return to Egypt
Pages #113-114
“When Israel was a child,
I loved him, and out of Egypt I called Israel,
But the more I called Israel,
the further they went from me”
(Hosea 11:1,2).
Egypt plays an iconic, transformative (good and bad) space in Israel's Story.
Have Read: Matthew 5:1-13
“The Yoke of Sin… (In the Beatitudes) despair is not permitted to the meek, the humble, the afflicted, the ones famished for justice, the merciful, the clean of heart and the peacemakers. All the beatitudes “hope against hope,” “bear everything, believe everything, hope for everything, endure everything” (I Corinthians 13:7).
My Reflection on Merton
[There is for individuals and communities that place of full trust in the God who is patiently seeking for, honoring and protecting the life of every human being/community who lives in communion with God and all life; in humility, at peace, aware of her or the community's strengths and weaknesses, always hopeful that justice prevails in the earth and in our human heart.
It is the spirit of 'eternal hope' transforming every place and person, giving nothing up; waiting for the promised day when God's will will be done in the earth as it is in heaven.]
Have Read: Hebrews 12:1-6
"…The beatitudes…refuse to despair of the world and abandon it to a supposedly evil fate which it has brought upon itself. Instead, like Christ himself, the Christian takes upon his own shoulders the yoke of the Savior, meek and humble of heart. This yoke is the burden of the world’s sin with all its confusions and all its problems. These sins, confusions and problems are our very own. We do not disown them."
Thomas Merton, re-quoted in “Advent and Christmas” from “Passion For Peace”, page #69
Merton (above) discloses two places of hope.
1st: The radical trust in God's goodness.
2nd: The radical trust in God's coming good world.
1st: The radical trust in God's goodness.
Jesus sermon on the Mount opens with an upside/down take on just how good The Father is and for whom God is applauding, being in their corner. It was counter intuitive then and certainly not celebrated today. God's heart is with and for:
The Poor—Those keenly aware of their vulnerabilities to addiction, financial dislocation, loneliness of heart, and;
The Meek—Those who give room to others needs, ideas and pleasures, and;
Those Living with Loss-God hears, shares in the emotional sense of empty longing, and;
The Just—who hunger for, desire deeply to be like God, living in integrity, diminishing injustice whereever found, and;
The Merciful—who extend cash, forgiveness, acceptance, tolerance without condition, other than being loved by The Creator, and;
The Merciful—who extend cash, forgiveness, acceptance, tolerance without condition, other than being loved by The Creator, and;
The Tender of Heart—toward God and humans, seeking ever and only the good in all, and;
The Peace Maker—who pursue reconciliation to ward God, other persons and within the heart, minimizing chaos, and;
Those Who Suffer—because they are living against the flow of God's heart in a corrupted world.
2nd: The radical trust in God's coming good world.
Our role, like leaven working its way into the dough mix, is not service, so much as presence.
The Return to Egypt centers the Jesus Story of this Good God, redeeming the whole world through Israel in three ways.
It is not a side story, but the point of the whole story. God is concerned with the whole world, Egypt being the nurturing cradle of the ancient near East. As the empires of Mesopotamia (Babylong, Persia, Assyria) and later Macedonia (Greece, Rome), then Europe (Rome, Roman Catholic, France, Spain, Britian) rise and fall, Egypt is the eternal nation of whom God says, "
1) As an iconic sign of Israel's slavery Egypt always remained an inner struggle; a desire to escape Egypt's lure for freedom and an ever present longing to return to its seductive allure.
"Even when we come to a place of maturity, our heart finally free of old longings, it seems our mind and body remembers our Egypt’s. We stumble, while avoiding the fall, and move forward keenly aware of wounded, longing spaces gnawing within us." (From "Retirn to Egypt", page #113)
2) God's chosen place of refuge from the ravages of an uncertain futures in the stories of Joseph, Jeremiah and now Mary and Joseph; not to mention its refuge to many of Jesus followers in the centuries to come.
3) "Mary and Joseph’s exile to Egypt, like Jesus’ own baptism some thirty one years later, is the Trinity of God putting on the skin of Israel. (From "Retirn to Egypt", page #114)
It is God saying. I will study anew these ancient peoples whom I have always longed for.
Q: What were Israel's sins as they came out of Egyptian slavery and over 40 years moved toward the Promised land?
Q: Who or what is your Egypt? How so?
Q: How far out of Egypt have you traveled so far?
Part 3 Epilogue—The Rebirth of Her Life
Epilogue #1: The Confessor
Pages #123-128
"Facing our wounds, fears, addictions and self-preserving nature is the gift inside our call to holiness. It often does not feel like a gift, as it did not for Peter. Still, without this timely process of facing the worst 'in us' we will never know the 'best in us' from reation, as reealed inside our story, lived before the Creator" (From: "The Confessor", page #128).
Q: Have you allowed jesus the room to face 'the worst' in you? ...Describe that journey.
Link: Visual of Teaching based on "My Thoughts 16—Held in the Arms of Love", page 139-141 & Reading of "The Confessor", page #123-128
Link: Devotional & Reading: "The Confessor"
Epilogue #6: Story 24—The Hymn
Closing Reading: "The Hymn", Pages #142-143
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