Twenty Years of Phyllis Tickle's "The Divine Hours"

As I've been making my way through the first week of Advent devotional time, it occurred to me that I've now been using Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours for 20 years.  Back in 2005, having returned from my second trip to Mepkin Abbey, I wanted a prayer manual that was more like I experienced at Mepkin.  I'm not sure how I found The Divine Hours, but it's probably because some of the theological writers I admired were using it, or maybe I read other work of Tickle's and thought The Divine Hours was worth the price.

And I do mean price, as in the cost of the book:  a 3 volume set, each volume $35 before the Amazon discount.  But it's been worth it.

I have been most constant in my use of the books in the mornings.  It's hard for me to remember to return to the practice through the day, but when I do, I notice a difference.  I'm not sure why that difference isn't enough to make me do it consistently.

In late March of 2020, I started using the books as I did an online morning devotional for my church, which I've written about in other blog posts (most notably here at the 7 month mark and here at the 5 year mark).

I was not blogging back in 2005 when I first started using the books, but I remember loving the variety of readings, something that I didn't have in other books that were much briefer devotionals.  Other devotionals had one or two verses, if that.  I also loved the feeling of participating in an ancient ritual.

There have been times when the physical structure of the books weighed on me--literally, in some ways.  The books are fairly big, especially if one is travelling by plane and wants to bring other books too.  And the print is tiny.  But the physical book is reliable, unlike online sites.

I think back to 2005, when I envisioned a new life of some sort:  maybe a different teaching job (always I've been dreaming of a small, liberal arts college) or maybe a different degree (an MFA or an MDiv).  But I felt trapped in place and would only go on to feel increasingly trapped.

I'm grateful to be in this part of my life for many reasons, but not feeling trapped anymore is one of the reasons that makes me feel most grateful.  And I'm grateful to books like The Divine Hours that have been with me along the way.

Jan Richardson's Prayer/Hope for Peace

During a Monday morning prayer group, our leader shared the following prayer by Jan Richardson with us.  Jan Richardson has written many prayers, so I couldn't track the prayer to the original posting of it.  I loved the imagery and language, and it seems appropriate for our moment in history.

That peace will rise like bread we can always hope.
That justice will flow like wine we can always hope.
That the table will make strangers kin we can always hope.
That our hope will rise like bread we can always pray.


By Jan Richardson

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, December 7, 2025:

First Reading: Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm: Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Second Reading: Romans 15:4-13

Gospel: Matthew 3:1-12


Today's Gospel continues with the Advent theme of watching, waiting, and listening for the call. Today it's John the Baptist who tells us of what's to come.

Many of John's listeners in today's Gospel probably thought that John was talking about himself; after all, first century Palestine was full of self-proclaimed Messiahs, and I expect many of them spoke of themselves in the third person telling (or warning) of the deeds they would do. Many of John's listeners probably had no idea what he was talking about; humans seem incapable of thinking in terms of metaphor and symbol for very long. Many of them probably expected a Messiah that would come in a form they'd recognize: a warrior to save them from the Romans, a temple reformer to get rid of corrupt priests, or maybe someone who would lead them into the wilderness to set up a new community.

Are we not the same way? How many of us read the Bible literally, expecting specific answers to social or political issues that would have been unheard of thousands of years ago when the Scriptures were written? How many of us would welcome salvation when it comes? We go to church, we sit in our pews, we wait for God to appear. We wonder why we don’t feel the presence of God, as we go home to take a nap and gear up for our secular week ahead. We scurry through the rat race of our lives, substituting other things for God. We worship at the churches of Capitalism, buying things at the mall or on the Internet, which means we have to work overtime to pay for those things. We wonder why we feel unfulfilled. To try to fill that emptiness, we do more of the activities that leave us with gaping holes in our Spirit. We hear that voice, the voice of the Spirit--maybe it cries or maybe it whispers. It scares us, so we continue scrolling through our phone,  we eat some more, we keep looking for the perfect show to stream, or we go to bed early--because we can't deal with the implications.

John warns what happens to those of us who don't listen: "His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (verse 12). Some of us don't like this vision of a God with a winnowing fork in hand. How does this mesh with a God of grace and love?

I think of parents who warn their children of the danger of bad choices. I think of all the ways we make bad choices, both as children and as adults.

I return to John's fiery language and the idea of winnowing. I visualize God as a loving parent, wishing we would do what's good for us. God doesn't have to do much winnowing. Our lifestyles are already punishing us. Many of us are already feeling that unquenchable fire.

The good news is that there is time to change our ways. There is still time to "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." (verse 3). Advent, traditionally a time for getting ready, is a good time to think ahead. How could we make the next year to be our best spiritual year ever?

Choose just one simple action, whether it be keeping a prayer journal or making gratitude lists or learning to play or sing sacred music. Choose just one action and attend to it faithfully.

In this way, you will be in a much stronger spiritual place a year from now. You will be bearing fruit. God will call, and you will hear. God won't have to go to such great lengths to get your attention. Your deepest yearnings, the ones you didn't even know you had, will be filled, as you move towards God--and God moves towards you.

Recording of Sunday's Sermon for Advent 1

Before we get too far away from last Sunday, the firs Sunday in Advent, let me link to the recording of my sermon for November 30.  You can read the manuscript here.

Despite the forecast of ice in the mountains and that it was the Sunday of Thanksgiving week-end, we had a fairly easy trip to Bristol, Tennessee and back.  And the church strikes me as particularly beautiful during the season of Advent, as most churches do.  It is my third Advent season with this church, and I'm glad to still be here with this community.

World AIDS Day 2025

Here we are, World AIDS Day, in yet another year of our no-longer-new pandemic (COVID 19), a disease that's much easier to contract than AIDS, a disease that like AIDS preys on the more vulnerable in our society.

Maybe all diseases target the more vulnerable.  And our epidemiologist friends would remind us that diseases don't have emotions or calculations.  Diseases infect where they can, and in vulnerable populations, diseases have more opportunity.

AIDS is still a fairly fierce disease, even though we have medications that can keep people alive for decades--that's still a lot of disease management, which isn't a cure.  According to a UN Fact Sheet, 1.3 million people worldwide contracted AIDS in 2024 alone--that's just one year.  Since the beginning of this epidemic, 91.4 million people have been infected, and 44.1 million have died of the disease.

At this moment in time, COVID-19 isn't killing as many of us.  But it is still a disease to be reckoned with, a disease that leaves lots of wreckage in its wake.  Like AIDS, many of us assume that COVID-19 has been tamed or disappeared.  But like AIDS, some of us are more protected than others.

Dec. 1 is also the anniversary of the day in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger. This act is often given credit for launching the Civil Rights Movement, but what many forget is that various communities had begun planning for the launch, even before they could see or know what it would look like.

In fact, for generations, people had prepared for just such a moment. They had gotten training in nonviolent resistance. They had come together in community in a variety of ways. They were prepared.

Someone asked me once how I had come to be such an optimist. I've always had an optimistic streak, but frankly, my whole world view shifted when I watched Nelson Mandela walk out of prison. I fully expected him to be killed, but again, my worldview shifted when I watched South Africans stand in line for days (days!) to elect him president. And he was ready to be president because he had spent those decades in prison thinking about how he would run the country and making plans.

I have seen enormous social change happen in my lifetime--in the face of such evidence, I must agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, who said the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.  

Some years, that arc seems so long and the bending so difficult to discern.  Diseases show us where we need to bend that arc towards justice, where there's still opportunity for progress.

Those of us who work towards social justice and human dignity for all know how long the struggle might be. We are similar to those medieval builders of cathedrals: we may not be around to see the magnificent completion of our vision, but it's important to play our part. In the words of that old Gospel song, we keep our eyes on the prize, our hands on the plow, and hold on.

Sermon for Sunday, November 30, 2025

November 30, 2025

By Kristin Berkey-Abbott




Matthew 24: 36-44



When I arrived at church this morning, I felt my shoulders release, going from a usual “hunched to my ears” kind of position to a more relaxed state. I felt my brain relax too, as I looked at the Advent wreath and the Chrismon tree with its beautiful lights. Christmas at last! My favorite time of year!

And then we get to the Gospel, which says, “Not yet.” How does the Gospel say this? The way the Gospel always does for the first Sunday of Advent, by reminding us of the impending doom that is always around the corner. Some of us are probably saying, “Gee, thanks. I live in a constant state of anxiety already.” My shoulders just hunched back up.


At first I thought that we had one of those fluky years where Advent 1 is Apocalypse Sunday. Then I looked through my file of written sermons and realized Advent 1 is ALWAYS Apocalypse Sunday, which means every Gospel includes this kind of apocalyptic teaching from Jesus (two years ago it was from Mark, last year from Luke). And when I read today’s Gospel, I thought, I feel like I’ve been preaching on end times a lot lately. Since I’ve been following the lectionary and not using the news shows as my starting point for the sermon, that must mean that it’s more than just a stray Gospel text that circles back to apocalypse.


Some non-Christian folks have told me that they assume that Christians are always focused on the end times, except for when we’re trying to ruin everyone’s good time in the here and now. Indeed, the ideas in this text have helped shape what many modern people, Christian and non-Christian, assume the end times will be, the left behind story, that somehow those who have managed to stay faithful will be rescued while everyone else perishes.


In today’s text, Jesus invokes the God that rescues Noah, a depiction of God that is my least favorite, God the destroyer. I prefer the God of the first chapters of Genesis, God who creates and creates and creates and delights in every aspect of that creation. The God in the time of Noah is the one who crumples up the rough draft and tosses it all in the trash can.

I imagine Jesus here, listening to this sermon, Jesus who would say, “Not every rough draft. Noah and his family are saved, along with two of every animal.” That’s a lot of rough drafts saved from the garbage, saved from judgment. Or maybe not saved from judgment, but evaluated and found worthy.


Of course, that idea of a God of judgment isn’t one that I warm to. The world is full of judgment, so why do we need to bring judgment to our Sunday, particularly an Advent Sunday?


Some theologians would say, “You’re focusing on the wrong part of the story. It’s not about the judgment. It’s about the confidence that God is at work in the world, the world that looks flooded with bad news and bad decisions, the world that looks like it is going in a disastrous direction.” The story of Noah could remind us of when God acted as judge and destroyer. But it should also remind us of God who is making all things new, taking the wreckage and building a new creation. The resurrection of Jesus is one of the most stunning examples of the power of God to put to right all the ways that humans destroy things. As scholar David J. Bartlett says, “We wait in hope because we wait in memory.” We wait in hope for a new creation.


Today’s Gospel tells us that it’s not enough to wait, however, even though Advent is traditionally a season of waiting, at least in the Church, if not in larger culture. We go about our regular lives, but we must also stay alert. In the time of Advent, it’s easy to stay alert. In some ways, it’s unlike the time that Jesus discusses, where we don’t know the day or the hour. In Advent, we’re surrounded by reminders that Christmas is coming. It’s one of the few times that the larger culture joins us in our waiting for the big day—December 25 is still for most of us the culmination of the Christmas season.


But what if we try a different approach this year? What if we borrow from the season of Lent, or the traditions of the new year? What if we set an intention to be more faithful people in the coming year? What if we adopted an Advent discipline instead of a Lenten discipline—but this year, what if we kept that discipline going for the whole year instead of just a season.


I’m not suggesting anything particularly radical, but I am suggesting that we think about a daily discipline, not a seasonal one. As we move through Advent, I plan to think about what is giving me life. Is it the lighting of the candles on the Advent wreath? As we leave Advent behind, I could continue to light candles, a new candle for each week of the year. Is it the devotional time that can come with the candle lighting? Let me add a 5 minute devotion at a time of day that’s not usual for me. If it’s the special music we like, there’s nothing that says that we can’t use the music of Christmas to enrich other times of the year.


I know that for many of us, it’s the mood of good cheer that we love about this time of year, more than the external aspects like decorations or food. But hear the good news: by taking our Advent disciplines with us throughout the year, we can keep the mood of good cheer going. Sure, everyone else might descend into grumpiness—but maybe if we keep our Christmas calm, with our shoulders not bunched up around our ears, maybe that calm will spread.


Jesus tells us again and again that we can’t know the day or the hour that the day of rescue will come. But Jesus assures us that we don’t need to worry about it (shoulders down), and yet, we don’t get a free pass to sit back and enjoy the destruction of others. David J. Bartlett says, “One day Jesus may appear in the clouds, suddenly, like a thief in the night. But before that—as Matthew reminds us—Jesus will appear just around the corner, suddenly, like a hungry person, or a neighbor ill-clothed, or someone sick or imprisoned.”


Our Advent disciplines will help us to be ready for whatever comes. Maybe it will be that day long foretold when the final judgment happens. But in the mean time, as we wait for whatever comes, we find ourselves uniquely prepared to repair our society and ourselves, to reweave all the shredded fabric of our lives into a new and vibrant cloth.


The Chrismon tree and the Advent wreath declare that Christ is coming. The Gospel texts ask if we are ready. Our Advent disciplines, taken with us through the year, will help us declare that yes, we are ready. Come Lord Jesus!

Thanksgiving History in Fabric Scraps

Here I sit, at the kitchen table of the big, ramshackle house at Lutheridge, the church camp where my family has always had our holiday festivities (well, since 1992 or so), the house where we’ve assembled for at least 20 years.  It was at this table, on the Saturday of Thanksgiving week-end in 2022, where I first assembled the log cabin patch out of scraps, and I’ve been doing it ever since, and may just continue to do it until my fingers won’t let me.

It has been a great Thanksgiving this year, although zooming by too fast, and I know I likely say that every year.  This year, all the members of the next generation are teenagers now, which brings a certain sadness about all the books we’re not reading about giving a mouse a cookie or llamas in pajamas.

 Happily, there are other joys.  We spent much of the week-end helping the oldest teenager in the house with a project she envisioned:  letters made of fabric scraps, sewed on a sweatshirt.  When my cousin wrote me in advance and told me what she had in mind, I brought all my fabric scraps with me.

 

 

The project became a bit bigger than we first thought it would be.  She chose small squares, and we made them into larger squares of four patches; then we made took the template she’d made of paper letters and cut out the fabric.  We used the Steam-a-seam product to make sure the letters didn’t move around.

 

 

And what do you know—it worked!  It looked very much like the picture that had provided the inspiration, and she was very happy with it.  The whole family had a great spirit going in, and they assured my spouse and me (mostly me) that whatever happened would be fine.  I was worried about a ruined sweatshirt and the crushing of creative dreams—I’m so happy that didn’t happen.  The oldest teenager was so happy with her creation that she wore it on the long car trip home.  I wish we had had more time to sew the letters to the sweatshirt, but she knows how to do it, and her mom knows some folks who will help, and in the meantime, they won’t wash the sweatshirt.

In a way, that’s a metaphor for the whole holiday time together—the worry that the experience won’t live up to expectations, the happiness of time together, the realization that it’s all going to be O.K., even if not exactly perfect.