Bromance: Romantic Theology Today

Apple Podcast on "Romantic Theology: Bromance Inklings Style" 

with Dr. John Bash, host of ChurchHurts

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/romantic-theology-today-with-dr-michael-j-christensen/id1517919664?i=1000524708711

Background story: 

“My happiest hours are spent with three or four friends,” C.S. Lewis said about JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and other practicing poets in Oxford in the 1930-40’s.  They met together twice weekly—on Tuesdays at the Eagle and Child pub, and on Thursday nights in Lewis’ Magdalen College rooms to read and discuss each other works into the wee hours “taking nonsense, poetry, theology, metaphysics over beer, tea and pipes.  There’s no sound I like better than adult male laughter.”  

Together, the Inklings produced a body of fiction and fantasy worthy of the name “Romantic Theology.” 

After reading my book, C.S. Lewis on Scripture, and hearing that I had designed a doctoral program of study on Romantic Theology for  NorthwindSeminary.org , Dr. John Bash (a former Presbyterian pastor and current radio talk show host, contacted me about being on his weekly show, ChurchHurts.org  “Romantic Theology Today” was our topic, and he took me to places I had not expected to go.   

I had assumed we would focus on the power of myth, poetry, and story to transport us to the field of dreams’, the place ‘where the streets have no name’, and other spaces of in romantic imagination.  Knowing that Lewis wrote the book on the four Greek words for Love (Eros, Storge, Philia, Agape), John went straight to Eros (romantic love) and led with a story about being a 13-year-old boy who was told by church leaders not to hold hands with girls lest it lead to sex and hickeys!  

"Yes, John," I said with a blush, "Romantic Theology has something to do with sex.  Our sexual instincts, adolescent explorations, romantic relationships, erotic and romantic love, sexual energy (libido)—all that.  After repenting of the ways that our behaviors have hurt others and ourselves, we can look back to our sexual experiences, our natural impulses, and all earthly pleasures, through what Lewis calls a “baptized imagination” and see them as yet another spiritual path to the love of God—who transforms our longings not by negation but by fulfillment." 

Here’s the link to our lively, half-hour, discussion on Romantic Theology Today: how youthful lust can lead to holy longing (sehnsucht, Lewis called it).  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/romantic-theology-today-with-dr-michael-j-christensen/id1517919664?i=1000524708711

After the interview, we kept the mics on for the AFTERSHOW and continued talking about sex, and the church.  

The Romantic Theology of C.S. Lewis and the Inklings provide much to chew on, including what Charles Williams called the "Way of Negation and the Way of Affirmation" of the senses.  C.S. LEWIS in letters to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves (a gay man) compared notes about the difference between love and lust, the path of sexual addiction and holy desire, spiritual embodiment and sensual fulfillment, the feeling-intellect and romantic experiences in love and nature, the proper role of the passions in the baptized imagination, and the paradoxical expressions of the mysteries of life. 

For example, Lewis writes to his best friend Arthur Greeves about their own adolescent sexual trespasse soon after Lewis's conversion to Christianity: “The delights of those days were given to lure us into the world of the Spirit.” (Letter to Arthur Greeves, 1 Oct. 1931).  What Lewis came to believe is that our romantic experiences, sexual longings, and earthly pleasures, are yet another path to the love of God—who desires us from another realm.  

In another letter to Greeves, Lewis writes: “God not only understands but shares the desire which is at the root of all my evil—the desire for complete and ecstatic happiness.  He made me for no other purpose than to enjoy it…”  If “God has made us for himself,” as the theologians have declared; and if “our chief aim is to love God and enjoy God forever,” then it makes sacred sense that God is a jealous Lover who desires us, woes us, and embraces us as the Lover of our souls. (Letter to Arthur Greeves, 12 Sept. 1933). 

“In looking back on my past sexual sins,” Lewis again writes to Greeves, “in the very heart of my evil passion there was something that God approves and wants me to feel not less but more. Take the sin of Lust. The overwhelming thirst for rapture was good and even divine…” It need not be recanted, but it will never be quenched. “If I refrain—if I submit to the collar and come round to the right side of the lamp-post—God will be guiding me as quickly as He can to where I shall get what I really wanted all the time. It will not be very like what I now think I want: but it will be more like it than some suppose. In any case it will be the real thing, not a consolation prize or substitute.” (Letter to Arthur Greeves, 12 Sept. 1933).

In The Great Divorce, Lewis describes how a tormented man had a little red lizard on his shoulders, always whispering things in his ear and leading him further into his addiction.  Until the man submitted to the Spirit who offered to kill it. Once it was killed, the lizard thing was transformed into a beautiful white stallion who carried him all the way to the mountains.

The Spirit of Christ considers the Church his beloved Body and Bride, and seeks to be in spiritual union with our hearts, our deepest selves, as the Scriptures teach, and all the best poets have beautifully said:

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp'd town to another due,

Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,

But am betroth'd unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.—John Donne

Now when we reflect on the energy of romantic love, the holy longing to be enraptured, the intimacy of human relationships, and the purpose of sexual expression; the path of addiction, sacrament of marriage or the gift of celibacy; the proper role of the passions, and the baptized imagination (and even the tensions of unfulfilled sexual longing) …. we are doing Romantic Theology, as Lewis and Charles Williams (his fellow Inkling) describes it: 

“A romantic theologian does not mean one who is romantic about theology, but one who is theological about romance, one who considers the theological implications of those experiences which are called romantic.”—C. S. Lewis in Essays Presented to Charles Williams—the Inkling who coined the term and wrote Outlines of Romantic Theology.

For more on this topic, enroll in one of my courses on C.S. Lewis on Romantic Theology and Charles Williams on Theology of Romantic Love at   https://www.northwindseminary.org/romantic-theology-degree

The ‘Romantic’ Theology of the Inklings

Pure “Northernness” engulfed me: a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer …and almost at the same moment, I knew that I had met this before, long, long ago….” --C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy

North is the first of the four Cardinal points of the compass to which all others are related. Symbolically, northernness is an orientation in life, a quality of character in literature, an image and metaphor in mythology and poetry, and one of the quadrants of the wheel of life. For C.S. Lewis and the Inklings, the way to God lies to the North, embedded in the images and stories that point to the “regions of the summer stars.”

The name of the seminary in which I teach Romantic Theology is Northwind Seminary--pointing to the breath of God and dynamic movement of the Spirit to orient the compass of our lives to true North. The Northwind Doctoral Program in Romantic Theology seeks to capture this twilight notion found in Norse mythology and Celtic spirituality, and embodied in the imaginative writings of the Oxford Inklings. 

Romantic Theology is a term coined by Charles Williams and carried out collaboratively by C. S. Lewis and “our little literary club” known as the Oxford Inklings. In their shared vision and love of Greek and Norse mythology, Arthurian legends, Celtic sagas, and romantic poetry, they produced an enduring treasure of theological fantasies and spiritual writings reflecting the romantic spirit in theology. Through the portal of what Lewis called the “baptized imagination” Romantic Theology was born.  The Inklings, through their writings, have inspired generations of Christians and people of goodwill to read and write with the “feeling intellect” of the heart, and not just analyze and abstract propositional truths with the discursive reasoning of the mind.

As a literary scholar and orthodox Christian, C. S. Lewis felt that “if the real theologians were doing their job” there would be no need for lay theologians like him.  Lewis and his fellow Inklings championed the creative conjunction of Logos and Mythos (Reason and Story) to produce compelling works of theological fiction.  JRR Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams and others, joined Lewis in employing mythopoetics–the language of myth, metaphor, poetry and narrative–to point to religious experience and theological truths in aesthetic and concrete ways. 

The Inklings met regularly in Oxford pubs and University rooms to converse and read aloud to each other their works in progress in the 1930-40’s. Williams referred to this chivalrous and fantastical enterprise as the “theology of romantic love” and tried to express its main elements in his posthumously published Outlines of Romantic Theology.  Owen Barfield’s autobiographical attempt to capture the romantic vision of the Inklings is published as Romanticism Comes of Age. And C.S. Lewis in his Essays Presented to Charles Williams gave the notion a tentative definition: 

“A romantic theologian does not mean one who is romantic about theology, but one who is theological about romance, one who considers the theological implications of those experiences which are called romantic.”—C.S. Lewis

For the most part, however, the Inklings were content to perform romantic theology without the need to over-define the term or systematically develop the field. “What we have instead is a cross-current of Theology and Literature focused on creative imagination, romantic religious themes, and the collaboration of the Inklings to produce a body of work worthy of the name,” according to Dr. Michael Christensen who directs the program. 

For more on the rational and romantic roads to truth, see my essay on “Lewis: The Rational Romantic” in the Appendix to my C.S. Lewis on Scripture, and in the book Gaining A Face: The Romanticism of C.S. Lewis by Donald T. Williams, and Romantic Religion by R. J. Reilly.  

For information on taking academic courses on the Romantic Theology of the Inklings, or applying to a degree program in Romantic Theology, visit www.NorthwindSeminary.org 

Direct Link to Romantic Theology Program:  https://www.northwindinstitute.org/copy-of-romantic-theology-degree 

The Brokenness of Jean Vanier—In his own Words

After the terrible, shocking news sank in of Jean Vanier's sexual abuse of six women at L'arche, I re-read his book-- The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness (1988)--to understand something more about his confessed brokenness, and about his charismatic mentor Pierre Thomas Phillippe, and their faulty doctrine that clearly led them over the edge into the dark side of erotic mysticism.

https://www.larcheusa.org/findings-of-larche-internationals-inquiry-into-jean-vanier/

A Faulty Doctrine of Jesus and Mary as the new Adam and Eve?
From The Broken Body: Journey to Wholeness (1988)

“Adam loved Eve; Eve loved Adam.

They were one body, one love, one spirit

Each one could give to the other,

Gentle communion,

gentle passion flowing one from another.

And this communion rose up as incense to God.” (p. 19)

At a particular moment

Adam and Eve said ‘no’ to God.

They turned away,

Blocking off the energy of love…

And then they discovered they were empty,

Naked, alone, and in despair.

It is this severing act which is the source

of all our experience of inner conflict.” (p. 20)

The yearning for, the memory of,

the original wholeness and communion

may at times come alive, in all of us. (p. 21)

Yet brokenness is pervasive,

it takes on a life of its own

and becomes an opportunity for the Evil One

to exercise his powers. (p. 22)

Yet God had a marvelous plan

to reveal the love that burns within the Trinity,

and to bring men and women

to an even fuller unity and glory. (p. 30)

At the center of that plan

is God’s desire to become flesh,

to take on our human condition,

to put on human nature,

so that our Creator would be touched and heard and loved,

so that our brokenness could be healed into a new wholeness,

so that we could become again one perfect body.

And the fulfilling of this plan

involved a woman

who would mother the Word made flesh…

He would become the new Adam

rejoicing in the new Eve—

Jesus, rejoicing in the woman Mary.

And they would lead a multitude

into the knowledge of the Father,

into the heart of the Trinity aflame in ecstasy,

into the wedding feast

God would repair the brutal damage

of the first Adam and the first Eve

as they turned away from communion…

Even within our brokenness

lie the seed that will lead us back to wholeness.

The plan of God is to heal and repair the damaged body,

to bring it to a new and fuller beauty,

to a new and deeper fecundity. pp. 30-31

The Dark Side of Mysticism?

The danger in Romantic Theology is the dark side of  mysticism. 

In 1946, the Dominican priest, Fr. Thomas Philippe, created l'Eau Vive as an unauthorized "Wisdom School" and a program of [sexual?] initiation into contemplative life.  The young Jean Vanier arrived there in 1950 and, it seems, quickly fell under Philippe's spell and became his “spiritual son,” according to L'Arche's report.

Both Phillippe and Vanier used allusions to Marian theology, erotic poetry in the Song of Songs, and other Scriptures to justify their sexual initiation/abuse of women (nuns and community assistants):  "This is not us, this is Mary and Jesus. You are chosen, you are special, this is secret" [a special grace]. Apparently, they thought or pretended to believe that the spiritual intimacy and erotic behavior they enacted was a symbolic, even sacramental, "manifestation" of the pure love between the New Adam and the New Eve (Jesus and Mary).  This, I think, was a rationalization of self-deception, unhealthy sexual repression, unintegrated shadow side, and a sign of human brokenness.  This is a dark side of erotic mysticism... which finally was exposed to the Light:
https://www.larcheusa.org/findings-of-larche-internationals-inquiry-into-jean-vanier/ 

https://www.larche.org/en/web/guest/news/-/asset_publisher/mQsRZspJMdBy/content/inquiry-statement-test    

Also, I know that we all have shadows of unintegrated wounds and weaknesses, and as Henri Nouwen and others say: "Nothing human is alien to me."  Beyond naming the consequences--that Jean Vanier did harm... to six women and maybe more--I am not his judge. 

Friends of Jean cannot quite believe it:

“This is not the Jean I knew and I believe it vital to remember that … his brokenness was the wellspring for enormous good, and that the message and indeed the miracle of L’Arche is precisely the fruitfulness of brokenness. As Mother Teresa always used to say, the extraordinary achievements of ordinary, imperfect human instruments is evidence of the involvement of God.” (Kathryn Spink)

"Jean may have been close to this eccentric priest, but he had left that behind...and maybe someday the full truth will come out..."

"Hard to put together the man we knew and the man who abused the women.  It’s something I can only ‘carry’ in my heart, since my head simply cannot reconcile the two things at all.  I love the prayer of St. Teresa of Avila:

Let nothing disturb you,
Nothing frighten you,
All things are passing,
It is love that never changes, etc…

Truth Before Reconciliation

According to the L'Arche Report and Historical Timeline, leaders reviewed a credible testimony from a woman who accused Jean of abusive conduct in May, 2016. Jean acknowledged the relationship, which he had believed to be ‘reciprocal’ and initiated a request for forgiveness...  Inquiries and investigations continued. The following year, 2017, Jean seems to have made a written, general confession (but note the lack of specificity required for a full confession, absolution and amends):


"During my entire existence, I also had to struggle with myself, I have lived a large part of my life with injured people, but also with my own weaknesses and mistakes. I have my own sensitivity and needs to love and be loved. I am a person like any other, who can experience empathy for some... and who can also rule over others. I was able to hurt some people. At the end of this book and at the end of my life, I want to ask them for forgiveness from the deepest of my heart. In Calcutta, at the last General Assembly of the Ark where I went, in front of so much beauty from the Ark, beauty that amazed me so much, I felt the need to ask forgiveness for all my weaknesses and mistakes [2008] Again, at the big night of my life, I ask forgiveness.[2017]. Sometimes I was humbled by my own weaknesses. Yes, I feel pride in myself when I look at my life, struggling to fully accept my mistakes, my mistakes. I believe in the mercy of God who has led so many events in the history of the Ark, through my own weaknesses. I give thanks to God for his faithfulness, for my poverty have not stopped his work from being accomplished. I realize more and more that the Ark, with its development and the deepening of its spirituality, springs from the mercy of God who chooses the weak and the fools for the realization of his plan. " (Jean Vanier, "A scream is being heard", 2017. Computer-generated rough translation from French)

Reconciliation Beyond Death's Door?

“What happens to us after we die?” a reporter in England asked Jean Vanier. Without hesitation, and with bold confidence, here's what he said:



“When you die, you fall asleep. And you wake up, and there’s a very gentle peace. You feel well. And then you discover the face of God coming through that ‘wellness’. Of course, we are outside of time, so it’s not sequential. Seeing Jesus’s face we suddenly have a feeling of having hurt him—we realize we could have done much better, we’ve done wrong. We are not being judged; we judge ourselves. But then comes the realization that we are loved just as we are, in our darkness. So, there’s a meeting with God, who loves us in our poverty—and this we can hardly believe. That meeting brings an immense desire to be closer. That desire becomes a place of desire—I think of Purgatory as “the place of desire”—and its painful. When you have desire and not the object of desire, it’s very painful. But then the desire augments, and there is a moment of explosion, and then we are in communion with God.”


“But what about Hell?” asked the reporter.


“I can’t speak about hell, but wasn’t it John Paul II who said that, even it hell exists, it may be empty… When we die, it’s not a question of what we’ve done, but how we’ve loved.”


(Interview with John Vanier by Maggie Fergusson, pp. 6-7, The Tablet, 26 August 2017)

John Vanier (1928-2019)—May he find, even in Purgatory, the true Object of his intense desire...

Sermon for First Sunday in Advent: "The Mystery of Kairos" (Luke 24)

The Mystery of Kairos: 

In the Fullness of Time Christ Comes (Luke 24)

By Michael J. Christensen

 Water's Edge Faith Community in Ocean Beach, San Diego 

Today is the first day of Advent.  Let me add to the ancient scriptures a contemporary reflection on today's Gospel reading from Henri Nouwen's Daily Meditation: 

When Jesus speaks about the end of time, he speaks precisely about the importance of waiting. He says that nations will fight against nations and that there will be wars and earthquakes and misery. People will be in agony, and they will say, “The Christ is there! No, he is here!” Many will be confused and many will be deceived. But Jesus says, you must stand ready, stand awake, stay tuned to the word of God, so that you will survive all that is going to happen and be able to stand confidently (con-fide, with trust) in the presence of God together in community (see Matthew 24). That is the attitude of waiting that allows us to be people who can live in a very chaotic world and survive spiritually.

Henri J. M. Nouwen

The spiritual attitude of Waiting allows us to prepare for the Comings of Christ at the appointed time. Notice I said the Coming (s) of Christ, plural. Scripture speaks of at least 3 ways that Christ comes to us. There are prophesies about the coming of the Messiah, and the second coming of Messiah, and how to seize the present time and prepare the way of the Lord here and now. These scripture texts are complex and require a little sorting out…

Before I try to sort them out, let me introduce you to two Greek words which we translate into English as TIME.  Chronos and Kairos--are two kinds of time used in the language of Jesus’ day.

Chronos –clock time, calendar time, chronological time, ordinary time.

·      We define ourselves by how much work we get done in the shortest amount of time.

·      We fill up our time with things to do, places to go, people to see…

·      We live by clocks and calendars telling us our allotted hour, week, month, year or life is almost up.

Kairos is quite different than Chronos.  Kairos is better translated as “full time”, “right time” ,“opportune time”, “appointed time” or “God’s time.” 

Being too focused on Chronos can cause us to miss out on Kairos—God’s time for every purpose under heaven. 

Hey Boomers:  Remember the old song the The Byrds sang with the words from Ecclesiastes 3--  “There’s a time for every purpose under heaven…” (Ecc. 3:1).? 

A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time reap, … a time to laugh and time to weep, a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together.”   

Sing it with me:  “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven… (The Byrds, 1965)

What this means is that the purposes of God are fulfilled in their proper time.

God’s time not always our time. The Mystery of Kairos is that Christ comes at the right time, the appointed time, in the fullness of time, which is not always the expected time or Chronos time. 

Three 3 Comings of Christ or 3 Ways Christ comes to us….

With this distinction in mind, how to sort out the three comings of Christ in the fullness of time?  

First Coming:  Incarnation “…when the time had fully come (Kairos), God sent his son, born of a woman, born under law…” (Gal. 4:4).

 

There are a whole lot of Scripture texts in the Bible that prophesy the coming of the Jewish Messiah at just the right time…. One of the most familiar is Isaiah 9:6

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"For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

We now know that times were dark in Israel when God so loved the world that he sent his only son. And the time was right, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  The people of God had been longing and waiting and were ready for the Messiah to come to bring justice to an unjust world.  The incarnation of the Christ marked history, which divided our calendar into BC and AD.  We celebrate his birthday every December 25.    And we prepare for Christmas during the 4 weeks of Advent.

Our family went to Liberty Station on Friday to see the giant Christmas tree.  Rock Church sponsored the event and Pastor Miles and the children choir reminded us of the ‘reason for the season’ before they lit up the Christmas Tree.

Second Coming:  At the appointed time (Kairos) Christ will come again… (Acts 1:6)

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So Christ was born, lived 33 years, was crucified/executed by the Romans, and rose again from the dead—is our Christian faith.  The first disciples of Jesus also believed that Christ would come again.  Even after 2000+ years, the Church continues to confess that Christ will return to finish the work that has begun.   To establish justice and teach the nations how to love each other and not make war anymore… (Isa. 2:1-5—read today)

But here’s the thing… Christ came to us over 2000 years to show us how, and we still we have not learned to walk in his path, lay down our swords, beat our guns into garden tools….  There is still so much too for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven… 

Which is why Church looks forward to a Second Coming of Christ.  We believe that as we when Christ comes again, this time in final victory… so that the scriptures can be fulfilled:

2:4 He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.      

No one knows the time of the Second Coming.  

24:36 "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  -- Matthew 24:36-44

Maranatha!  (Lord, quickly come) 

Third Coming:  In moments of refreshing and transformation (Rom. 13:11)

In the meantime, as we celebrate the first coming and wait for the second coming, Christ comes to us in new in personal ways, into our hearts by faith, in special times of great need, with transforming power and presence, at just the right time. 

Present Time...Kairos time.  Carpe diem time.

Spirituality is learning to be present to Christ's Presence, how to discern the many ways he comes to us… And when he comes to us in special moments, we are called to wake up, stay woke, pay attention, recognize the Kairos, seize the day in the sacrament of the present moment….

We all have experienced kairotic moments…

• ·      Birth of a baby, sunrise or sunset, beauty and majesty of stars and planets in the night sky…
• ·      A moment of prayer, in joy or pain, where you sense God saying: “All is well”, “Be not afraid.” Or “Well done good and faithful servant.”
• ·      A needed call from a family member, or visit from a friend at just the right time.  Christ often comes to us in the people who come to us, who show up in our lives at a crucial time.

A Kairos moment is a divine appointment…A portal (access point) through which we enter into the spiritual dimension of God’s perfect time…. Kairos can make Chronos seem to stand still…so that we can be present to the Presence.

Three Short Kairos Stories:  How Christ comes to us at just the right time…

Today is World AIDS Day:  Remembering the 37 million people around the globe who are living with HIV/AIDS.  Women like Lillian, whose husband infected her before he died of AIDS. Back in 2005, she did not have access to ARV drugs that could keep her alive…Very few in Africa did.  In her hour of need, I’m happy to say, Christ came to her and gave her strength and HOPE.    Christ came to Lillian in the form of affordable and available ARV drugs in 2007 that kept her alive and helped her to live positively with HIV.  And she became a leader in our AIDS training project sponsored by WorldHope Corps, chairwoman of the HIV Education Committee in Malawi, a powerful advocate and proud survivor…

December 1 is D-Day in our family:  Our daughter was diagnosed with leukemia on December 1, 1996;  Methotrexate chemotherapy kept her alive… We had access to miracle drugs in the West.  80% survival rate if you have access to drugs.  Her story of survival is a Story of Hope and how Christ came at just the right time.  So, on Dec 1, our family toasts-- Harry Potter style—"To the Girl who lived…”

Date with Jesus story:  To be quite personal,  my mother at 92 knows her time is near.  She spends many hours a day gazing at the clouds, wind and rain, imagining herself going to heaven.  She’s had dreams that her father is waiting for her there.  She has told the kids and grandkids “I have a date with Jesus...  She wants to see her family gathered for Christmas one more time. She’s hoping for a moment of Kairos when Christ comes again to take her home.

I too need a moment of Kairos in this season of Advent. Not to go to heaven early, but to sense his presence here and now. I’m preparing, praying, hoping and waiting for a new Kairos moment this Christmas time.  I long for Christ to come again for a season of refreshing, a moment of felt presence. 

I suspect that you, too, need such a moment of Kairos in your Christian life.

It’s the first Sunday in Advent:  Pray and prepare, hope and wait…for the coming of Christ in the fulness of time.  AMEN.

Closing Prayer:   The Lord be with you… Let us pray…

In the fullness of time, O Lord, you came as a babe in Bethlehem

At the right time, we know you will come again.

In the meantime, come afresh to us in times of refreshing. 

May be recognize and seize the Kairos.

“Let every heart prepare him from….and Heaven and nature sing”… AMEN.