We are now in the season of Advent, a time of 4 Sundays leading up to Christmas. It's a time of preparation for the celebration of birth, and to reflect on our need for God to do a new thing in the world. So in this final episode for 2021, I want to give a reflection meant to be a help you the listener in your own preparation leading up to this special time.

Luke 2:1-20

John 1:1-14

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Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

Most people associate coffee with the morning, but coffee can be for the late hours of the day as well. For many who drink it this time, it may be when coffee’s practical uses truly come to the forefront.  But again, there can be another dimension to enjoying coffee after hours. Its spiritual potential is just as strong as earlier in the day.

Episode 23: Coffee Meditation #1

Episode 24: Coffee Meditation #2

Genesis 32:24-29

Barbara Brown Taylor, Learning to Walk in the Dark

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

Coffee has a reputation of speeding things up, but I think it can also have an opposite effect.  It can help slow us down and take stock of our surroundings. Coffee may be able to alter and enhance our awareness at the chemical level, but it can also alter our awareness at the mental and spiritual level by helping us take stock of what’s around us and within us.

Episode 23: Coffee Meditation #1

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

Rob Walker, The Art of Noticing

Coffeehouse Contemplative: Spiritual Direction for the Everyday

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

For some, coffee is essential to waking up. For others, it's a common cause and catalyst for socialization. It can aid in our ability to reflect and observe. This episode and the ones that will follow will be a series of meditations less about coffee itself and more about the larger experiences that it helps us enjoy.

How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson

Broken Horses by Brandi Carlile

Coffeehouse Contemplative: Spiritual Direction for the Everyday

Prayer in Motion: Connecting with God in Fidgety Times

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

“Forgive and forget” is one of those terms that people sometimes trot out in times of trauma, especially when one person has inflicted it on another. But forgiveness isn’t that simple, in part because forgetting isn’t that simple. When we experience that level of injury, it lives in our bodies, minds, and spirits. How might forgetting play a role in our healing? Or can it?

Episode 21: It Never Truly Leaves

Matthew 18: 21-35

Exclusion and Embrace by Miroslav Volf

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

We may tend to frame our need for healing from trauma or loss in terms of "letting go" or even forgetting what happened, as if we won't truly experience wholeness again until this past event is erased from our heart and mind. But rather than erase it from our lives (which isn't really possible), we may instead acknowledge that it is part of us, and incorporate it into our new and emerging sense of self.

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

As we consider the habits and decisions that have brought us to where we are, that will especially include how this pandemic season has forced us to rethink and redirect parts of our lives. We’ve been presented with so many different changed circumstances that we can’t avoid taking into consideration that the question “what are you building” can’t be answered in the same way now.

Episode 18: What Are You Building?

Episode 19: Church Building

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

The question "What are you building?" pertains to every aspect of our lives, but let's apply it to one thing: the church. Through this example, non-churchgoers may still be able to see how this may be applied in other ways.

Episode 18: What Are You Building?

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

Many events in our lives or in the world happen because they’ve been building for a while, set in motion days, weeks, years ago by a series of decisions and factors. We may or may not know it at the time, but they helped contribute to where things are today. Are we able to analyze how certain things in our lives built to where they did? Can we pause to look behind and see what we’ve been building now?

Matthew 7:24-27

Episode 4: Practice Makes Proficient

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder

After admitting you can no longer do something and entering the bare season after, you may begin to get anxious about how long that season is taking. Maybe the answer involves a slow discovery or comes as a sudden epiphany. Either way, there are certain ways in which we may take active and intentional steps to figure it out.

Episode 15: Sometimes You Can't

Episode 16: A Bare Season

Brian Cook, The Story 2021: As You Can See, I Can't Pay You

Music: "Reflections" by Wild Wonder