Advent Reading -- Another Guest Blog

Three Little Girls with Bangs (Karen, Kate, Bev), 1959 by Rosemary Karlek

(Bangs also by Rosemary Karlek.)

From Watch for the Light/Readings for Advent and Christmas, "To Believe," by Karl Barth:

There are so many gates and doors that must finally be lifted high and opened wide, and there are still many prisoners who must finally be set free. For truly we are among the prisoners, and among the gates that should be opeped, I include our closed ears and lips. Our lips! Because we are actually quite similar to poor Zechariah (Luke 1:11-22). After all, something burns in our hearts that would gladly come out...

That's what I was talking about in yesterday's post!

Something often flames up in our soul that we would like to call out to all people -- a question, a complaint, a word of defiance, a rejoicing, a stark truth -- something of the sort that a person simply cannot keep to himself, once it is there...

Like the blossoms that cannot be contained in one heart, but must take root and spread on contact!

It saddens us to be so alone, to be unable to share with anyone what moves us. It also saddens us to see other people coming and going, all in their own way, all in so much error and dullness when we have something to tell them that would help them. For we sense that their concern is at root our own concern. Above all it saddens us that we are so cut off from each other, that there are always such different worlds -- you in your house and me in my house, you with your thoughts and me with mine. This is simply not the way life is meant to be, this separate life we all lead...

That's exactly what I was trying to say -- I think!

But with one single change we could have infinitely more joy and good fortune and righteousness among us, if we could open our hearts and talk with each other...

Amen!

And then we experience the fact that we are mute. Yes, we certainly talk with each other, we find words all right, but never the right words; never the words that would really do justice to what actually moves us, what actually lives in us; never the words that would really lead us out of our loneliness into community. Our talk is always such an imperfect, wooden, dead talk. Fire will not break out in it, but can only smolder in our words.

Ah -- so often I have complained about my words being inadequate conveyors of what is really inside of me. I can only trust God to be the translator...

***

Note: I do not mean to be presumptuous by placing myself in the company of Karl Barth (Swiss theologian, 1886-1968), but when I read his essay this morning -- so soon after having posted my "family" blog last night --I felt that perhaps it was God suggesting that I allow him to blog for me this morning!