advent Archives – James D. Hogan

While He May Be Found

On December 9, 2023

Dall-e made an image for me of someone lost in the wilderness.

God is not Time and Temperature

Episcopalians who are familiar with the Morning Prayer liturgy may remember in its Rite II form a canticle that comes from the second of Isaiah’s four servant songs.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.
ISaiah 55:6-7

Isaiah is a regular stop on the Advent cycle. During this season, in fact, the Morning Prayer liturgy opens with two different pieces of scripture from this book. They offer two ideas: that we are in the wilderness, and that God will soon reveal himself to us.

You might remember the prophet Isaiah from the token verse of his calling. God asked who he should send, and Isaiah answered, “Here am I! Send me!” I admit that as a child, whatever I assigned to Isaiah in my brain was dramatically reduced to lines like that–but it’s worth remembering that this prophet lived and wrote some 800 years before the birth of Christ. The book’s narrative essence follows a time of captivity, a time of punishing Babylonian captivity and exile, and afterward, a time of restoration.

I receive a daily Advent meditation by email, and this morning’s scripture was Isaiah 55:6-13, which begins with the passage quoted above. For some reason, the first sentence landed differently: Seek the Lord while he may be found.

Waiting for Grief

By James D. Hogan

On December 13, 2021

In writing

I find myself staring at a bag of dog food.

We buy it in thirty pound sacks, this median-grade kibble, a nutritional blend made especially for senior pups. It’s cheaper to buy on Amazon, and following some unknown interval, the hockey puck wizard device in the kitchen will light up, and I will ask it what’s wrong, and it will reply nothing, nothing serious–just maybe it’s time that you bought another thirty-pound bag of dog food? Shouldn’t we do that?

And more often than not I agree, and soon the gray, boxy van stops in front of the house, and someone schleps a thirty-pound box to our front porch. I break down the boxes and slide them under the Wagoneer to catch little drips of oil.

The most recent bag sits in the basement about two-thirds full. Around the corner, draped across two memory foam dog beds, our oldest pooch, Taylor, quietly naps, her breath slow and measured, the kind that comes with precious, deep sleep. There are pregnant pauses between exhale and inhale.

All Quiet on the Christmas Front

By James D. Hogan

On December 26, 2020

In writing

There was a time for everything.

It needs no further explanation to say this was our first Christmas in the midst of a pandemic, and it was certainly different. Surprisingly, it might have been better.

Christmas days of years past were often filled with family merry-go-rounds, sprints between relatives’ roosts, packing up a car with presents, then unpacking them, wishing folks well, eating, unwrapping, repacking, driving, and repeating ad infinitum. Coming back home at the end of a multi-family quest was a gift in itself.

The Christmas Day race course had grown shorter in recent years. Family trees thin at the top and grow at the bottom. The trips to grandparents’ houses are now memories; with kids of our own to tow around, we move around less and less.

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