This devotional was adapted from a service that Mari wrote in 2023, created to honor the thrum of sorrow and loss that undulates beneath the largely cheerful Christmas songs sung throughout November and December.
Guest Post: “Seeing Creation as Ongoing Revelation” by Trey Harris
Trey Harris is a pastor in North Carolina, and a student together with me in Portland Seminary's Doctor of Ministry program in Semiotics. In our program, we read lots of deep and heady books, then comment on them to each other in a weekly forum. In the following post, Trey offers wisdom and poetry inspired by Paul Mariani's "God and the Imagination."
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Guest Post: “Still Singing” by Matt Divens
A few months ago, a member of our church told us something of his God story. Though his story and mine are not the same, what he talked about touched a chord within me. I could hear its thrum as I listened intently not just to his words, but his heart, and his meaning. Our stories move and shape each other as we become ever more deeply a part of the one Body Jesus has drawn us into. I hope his story moves you as well
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“Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart,” by Russ Ramsey
The discussion of pain, that sharing is a precondition for dignity and hope, that we mistake suffering as failure rather than a means of grace, and that our sorrows are hallowed by God, “who enters fully into the painful stories of our own lives,” is so richly realized in the lives of the artists highlighted here (x, xi, xii).
