Advent Longing for the Redemption of All Creation
OpenSpirit Sunday Evening; December 6, 2009; 7 – 8pm
Performing Arts Center of MetroWest, Framingham; Pearl St., Red Door, 3rd Floor
Advent Longing. OpenSpirit continues exploring our deepest desire for God’s presence, our yearning for God-with-us. Last Sunday, at our retreat, we prayed with Isaiah, that God would tear open the heavens and come down.
Longing. This week, we pray with people of faith around the world in preparation for the international conference on climate in Copenhagen. We focus on our yearning for the redemption of all of creation, all life, all around us. 
Together, we shall explore both the challenges creation faces, and the vision required to move forward as sisters and brothers, in new ways.
Theologian Sallie McFague says the world itself is God’s body. What, then, does it mean to speak of Incarnation? As we prepare to celebrate the embodiment of the holy in a baby’s vulnerable flesh, can our ‘Christology,’ our understanding of Jesus, include all of created life?
This Advent, praying for Copenhagen, can we see the divine embodied in all created life, and commit ourselves to participate in redeeming it?
In poetry and song, with today’s newspapers and ancient scriptures, let us come together in prayer. This Advent, our prayer is not just for ourselves, although we need God’s presence in our own lives more than ever. This Advent, we pray for the redemption of all of creation. Join us at OpenSpirit: come in longing, to be met in the presence of God; bring your hunger, to be filled at a table of hope.
Longing calls us as the theme for our evening gatherings during the coming four Sundays of Advent. It is the deep wellspring of creativity, and yet remains an all too neglected impulse in the busy weeks that precede Christmas.
During the coming four weeks of Advent, our OpenSpirit gatherings will explore the depth and shape of longing, and how desire draws us ever more profoundly into the mystery of life.
Children do it naturally, reminding us how good it feels. Scientists tell us that laughter reduces the levels of our stress hormones, increasing health-enhancing hormones like endorphins; they remind us that it enhances our immune system and reduces the physical effects of stress.
Now, whatever happened to laughter in church? Come find out this Sunday evening, as we celebrate laughter as a measure of grace among us.





