 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Wednesday, December 15, 2021  Looking ahead to Sunday4 Advent Canticle 15 – Luke 1:46-55  In place of the Psalm Canticle 15: Luke 46-55My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant. From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.  “The song of Mary is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even day the most revolutionary advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamt Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings…This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead, a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankind.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Advent 1933) And this – if you haven’t considered Mary’s prophetic role, or Hannah’s, who sang this song before her: “A prophet’s task is to reveal the fault lines hidden beneath the comfortable surface of the worlds we invents for ourselves, the national myths and well as the little lies and delusions of control and security that get is through the Day.” from The Cloister Walk, by Kathleen Norris  As you pray today, remember Paula Shepard who is having foot surgery. And continue to pray for all those affected by the tornadoes of last week, and for everyone who is volunteering at Share Your Christmas today and tomorrow, and for everyone who will receive gifts. And some young one is missing a mask! It has been washed and is ready for you to pick up on Sunday.  This Sunday after Church We will decorate for Christmas. We need to haul the tree downstairs and set it up – put lots of lights on it – and the ornaments we preserved after the Big Clean. We will need to bring down the life-size manger from the attic and set it up in front of the altar – filling it with hay. We have wreaths to hang that require a ladder. While all that is going on, we will have “uncrustables” and juice for the kids, who don’t eat much anyway!    AND we have several adorable crafts for the little ones. Olivia Cox and Mari Woosley will coordinate that. Here they are – so you can see how cool this will be – and how easy: a Christmas tree – with glitter…and two different kinds of stars. All ornaments for your tree. For older children and interested adults – we also will do something beautiful: Swedish, but not-very-hard straw stars.(We will have extra straw and directions for those who are decorating, so that you can take them home to make the ornaments later.)The Share Your Christmas bags are filled to overflowing – Thanks to Debra Beal, Janet Wray and Rachel Grainger for taking them all over to the AG church and setting up our shelves and tables – Distribution begins at 8 AM today!  |
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