{"id":4282,"date":"2005-12-01T09:21:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-01T08:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/2005\/12\/01\/an-advent-calendar-for-my-friends-december-1"},"modified":"2005-12-01T09:21:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-01T08:21:00","slug":"an-advent-calendar-for-my-friends-december-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/2005\/12\/01\/an-advent-calendar-for-my-friends-december-1","title":{"rendered":"An Advent Calendar for my Friends: December 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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LOTTO, Lorenzo: Angel Annunciating, 1527;
Oil on wood, 75 x 55 cm; Church of Sts Vincent and Alexander, Ponteranica<\/small><\/center><\/p>\n

The Angel of Leaving<\/b><\/p>\n

by Anselm Grün<\/p>\n

There is a deeply rooted longing in men to make themselves comfortably at home and stay forever where they have once felt safe and snug. Where a person is happy, there she wants to settle down and remain forever. But at the same time she knows that she cannot settle down in this world forever. She has to leave again and again. She has to make a new start again and again. She has to break camp, a camp she built and made cosy, and continue on her way. Leaving demands severance. Old ties have to be severed.<\/i> Things cannot continue the way they are. I cannot stay forever where I am at the moment.<\/p>\n

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While we are on our way, we need to break camp again and again to depart for new destinations. Every departure is frightening at first. Because what has grown old in our lives, what is familiar, has to be left behind. And when all this is left behind, I don’t know what to expect yet. The unknown provokes a sense of fear. But at the same time departure holds a promise<\/i>, the promise of something new that has never been there before, that has never been seen<\/i> before. If you don’t move on, your life will grow stale. What cannot change, grows old and stuffy. New ways of life want to open up inside us. But they can do that only, if we relinquish old patterns.<\/p>\n

We want to settle down where something reaches out to us and touches our hearts. The disciples would have liked best to build three huts on mount Tabor and remain there forever in the joyful experience of transfiguration<\/a>. But Jesus is not responsive to that desire. For already in the next moment the light of Tabor is extinguished by a dark cloud. They cannot hold on to that experience, they have to move on, they have to take the path down into the valley. There they will miss the clarity found on the mountain. Every deep religious experience wants to seduce us into settling down with it, into clinging to something we cannot hold on to. God cannot be kept like that. Most of all, He is the God of Exodus, of departure, the God Who always exhorts us to move on. To Moses He says: “Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.”<\/i> (Ex 14, 15). The Israelites are afraid of moving on. They feel oppressed and unfree in Egypt. But they have come to terms with foreign rule. At least their stew pots are full. They want<\/i> to move on, but at the same time they are afraid of departure. This is the ambivalence we experience ourselves again and again. We are not content with the lives we lead. But at the same time we are afraid of moving on, of leaving the familiar behind and of daring to make a change, inside and outside. But we will experience life only if we are ready to move on, again and again. For this, we need – like the Israelites – an Angel<\/b> who gives us courage for our leaving, who extends his staff to ward off the Red Sea of our fears, so we can walk full of confidence through the tides of life.<\/p>\n

Especially today the Angel of Leaving <\/b>faces many difficulties. The prevailing mood of our time is not marked by courage for new beginnings like the 1960ies, when first the Council in the Catholic church, and then the student movements for all of society, brought about a mood of change and movement. Today the prevailing mood is one of resignation, of self-pity, of depression. One tends to feel sorry for oneself, because everything is so difficult nowadays and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n

Therefore we need the Angel of Leaving<\/b> very much today, to give us hope for our time, to allow us to move on to new shores, to help us take the chance of a new beginning so that new possibilities of cooperation, a new way of treating Creation and a new way of thinking in politics and economy may blossom.<\/p>\n

And this also means that you<\/i> have to depart from fixed perceptions and rigid ideas. To burst open inner blockades, to open up closeness, to depart from old habits and entrenched structures: all of this enables us to move on to new ways of life and new periods of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

You will hesitate often, because you don’t know where your way may lead you. Then the Angel of Leaving<\/b> may be at your side and may provide you with guidance for your journey:<\/p>\n

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“For Angels rent the House next ours, <\/i>
       Wherever we remove–"<\/i><\/p>\n

(Emily Dickinson)<\/small><\/p>\n

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© by Anselm Grün, 50 Engel für das Jahr, 1997;
translation by JunoMagic<\/small>
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Song for December 1:<\/b><\/p>\n

(Click pic!)<\/small><\/p>\n

"Mein Geschenk für Dich"
("My Gift for You"<\/i>)
by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen,
album "Gold, Weihrauch und Flöte" ("Gold, Incense and Flute")<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 LOTTO, Lorenzo: Angel Annunciating, 1527; Oil on wood, 75 x 55 cm; Church of Sts Vincent and Alexander, Ponteranica The Angel of Leaving by Anselm Grün There is a deeply rooted longing in men to make themselves comfortably at home … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[87,220],"class_list":["post-4282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-junomagic","tag-advent-calendar","tag-advent-calendar-2005"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/juno-magic.fancrone.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}