Day 11

I love mornings!  And not always in a chipper-I'm alive-and now everyone-wants to- shoot-me kind of way.  Sometimes, but not always.  Mostly I just love mornings, because they're quiet, new, it's like a blank page, anything is possible.

But I also love being awake before everyone else. I like dwelling in the unhurried black. When the whole earth is still quiet.  Life feels slower.  I'm waiting on yeast to rise this morning. It's my roomate's birthday and sometimes you just need to be woken up with coffee and fresh cinnanamon buns! So I'm waiting, waiting for something to happen that only takes time.

I recently have been reading a book interpreting the different parables by Thomas Keating.  I love that man, I wish I could study under him and his contemplative, Benedictine ways.  Anyway, he interpreted the parable of the yeast at least three different ways. The common theme, however, had to do with the yeast being viewed as a dirty or unclean. Essentially saying that the kingdom of God is going to break in where we least expect it, in the dark, in the dirty, in the unclean. Here's a couple of quotes:

"Look for it [the kingdom of God] in the most unexpected places.  According to the parables, the kingdom of God is free to appear anywhere, any time, and under any guise.  It does not fit into our presuppositions or expectations, and still less, our demands.  In fact, id deliberately removes, prop by prop, everything holding up our ideas of the nature of the kingdom and where it is to be found" (43).

"The kingdom consists of finding God in our disappointments, failures, problems, and even in our inability to rid ourselves of our vices"(55)

"It [the kingdom of God] becomes present to us and in us by our consent and by the dispositions that the Holy Spirit instills within us, the chief of which is faith that God is truly and secretly intervening to heal us despite any or all appearances to the contrary" (56).

Christ,
Rise in us this advent, like yeast in dough.
Let your kingdom come in the least expected, most marginalized areas of our lives.
We invite your coming kingdom, we invite your reigning kingdom.
Move in our hearts, move in our lives, move in us even when we've lost all faith, all hope.
We love you Lord, Jesus, live loud in our hearts!