Creating a Manger

"Be Still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10),

Stillness, a word that evokes so many wonderful things for me.
Quietness, peace, acceptance, a listening ear, a raising of the eyes, the planting of the feet.

When I become still, really still, I realise that I am in fact simply waiting. But waiting with a sense of peace, instead of a longing. Advent is the time for waiting isn't it.

But sometimes it's not easy to yield to my heart when my mind is racing with so many things...
So I must try to remember that when I feel myself begin to get caught up in the whir of the wheels of wrapping, organising, making, baking. Crushed under the cogs of last minute preparations, the arrival of sudden guests, the unexpected, unplanned happening that can turn my plans head over heels...
When I find my heart hardened by the length of my lists, falling headfirst into the lie that, Christmas has to look, or be, or sound, or smell, or taste a certain way. Lord,
Please remind me to be still. To sit for a while with you. Take moment by moment. Receive your simplicity and peace so that Christmas can become what it should be. Something far from my own plans and ideals. Something far more simple. Let me let You bring Christmas to me. The way it should be. Cast from your mould, Your form.

It is so easy for me to place more importance upon my actions, (What I do) Instead of on my heart, my prayer, (What I am)

It can be hard to still.

With our doing their is a visible measuring stick. Goals can be set and accomplished for all to see. Results are tangible. The tree, the cookies, the mince pies, the shopping, the nativity, the carol service, the helping here, the volunteering there, the wrapping, the cards, the......
Prayer, (being still) is planting a seed in dark earth.
Results are slow at times, sometimes they remain unknown by the one who prays.
But for all the doing we do, the Child cannot be born in a carved manger or shop front stable, or a perfectly prepared dinner and a beautifully laid table, he does not come wrapped up or signed at the bottom of a card.
He is born through the heart. The heart of each person. In some way in some form.
Our heart is the manger.

And at the busiest times. Advent in particular, isn't prayer (stillness) the prerequisite I must remember. To do all I do prayerfully. Prayer is surely the hinge upon which all my doings should turn.

When it is hard to slow and still as demands press down I must remember that it is at these times I need to still the most.

The stillness that comes from waiting prayerfully changes things from the inside out, from within, preparing our work, preparing the grounds, giving strength and wisdom and grace so we may do our work well.

I was thinking as I wrote this that work without prayer is a little like sacrifice without love as Saint Paul puts it: "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, enough to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and hand over my body to be burnt but do not have love, I gain nothing."

In sculpture their is a term often used called "negative spaces" which describes the area around and within the sculpture as a form in it's own right. The form created by the artist is held in tension with the negative spaces of emptiness surrounding it and within it. It is these spaces of emptiness that create the very definition of the solid form.

"A Vessel is useful only through it's emptiness. "
Leo Tse

Sometimes I think that prayer works as a these negative spaces do. Almost unnoticed, yet opening windows of space and light along life's paths.

So... I pray that I will find the still places, the negative spaces, dwell for a while, So that the form of my own sculpture begins to fit His mould, His form, a little more.

Carve out a space, a warm place, within my own heart for the Christ's Child to be born.