Jan Richardson, in her book "Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas", talks about the week after Christmas being about birthing. She writes:
The festival of Christmas offers a winter thaw, an opportunity to ponder new birth when the landscape around us, and perhaps within us, seems lifeless. The celebration of Christ’s birth beckons us to consider what has lain dormant in our own lives, and what new life lies waiting beneath the surface. As women and as men, during this season we share with Mary and Joseph in giving birth to the holy. Bringing forth the sacred depends not solely on the physical ability to give birth. Although that is one way to share in creating with God, we give birth, too, when we create with our hands, offer hospitality, work for justice, or teach a child. We share in giving birth whenever we freely offer ourselves for healing, for delight, for transformation, for peace. And we become, as German mystic Meister Eckhart wrote in the Middle Ages, “mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born.”
This week I invite you to reflect upon what it is in your life that wants to be born.
Through Advent, hope has built up in our hearts. That hope created, at least within me, dreams to manifest in this world; dreams that, if manifested, will create healing, work toward justice, and more.
As Peace became our focus, I invited Peace to settle deep in my being. I invited my body mind spirit soul to integrate peace deep - all the way to my DNA - so that Peace is a muscle memory of my body. That Peace holds space for me to believe that what Hope gifted me can actually become reality.
As Joy arrived, I allowed myself moments to feel into life where my Hopes and dreams become manifest, become reality. Joy created the desire to give birth to what is hoping to be born in me.
Love reminded me that this work, this dream, this Hope is a Call from the Sacred. God noticed my gifts and instilled in my heart a dream for using those gifts in service and ministry to God’s Realm.
Now, it is time to open to the birthing.
I invite you to pray this week with images. This is an ancient form of prayer where we recognize that the images, the artwork, the beauty in our lives speak God’s Revelation to us. They can be Word in our midst.
Each day, allow yourself to be drawn to an image.
[Note: The image above is one of Jan Richardson’s images from, Night Vision. It is the image that begins her reflection on birthing. You may chose to begin with this image and notice what it ignites in you.]
Sit with that sacred image for 10-15 minutes.
Notice what you are drawn to. Notice the movements, the colors, the feelings it invokes in your heart and soul.
Invite the Holy to speak to you through the image.
After about 10 minutes, you may chose to automatically write with the sacred image still before you. Write and allow the Holy to bring forth insights, awareness, healing, challenges, questions, hopes…
These images of birthing will guide you to begin the process of allowing what God desires to have born through you this year to begin its movement out into the world. Clarity will come.
What is it that God has invited you to begin to birth this Christmas season? What is being born in you this night? When we sit with this question, our minds tend to go to something physical being born in our lives: a new business, a new mission, doing something, giving something, taking on some leadership role. Yet, what is being born in you might not be a thing, a mission, an action.
Open yourself to receive the birthing of new qualities in your life. Maybe God desires you to birth Joy, Peace, Compassion, Empathy, Forgiveness, Health.
Thank God. Thank Jesus. Thank the Holy Spirit for their Presence with you as you listen deeply to their desires for you this coming year, 2023.
