The Yankee Marks the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Shortly after I moved down here I received a small package from my friend Rachel. It contained a card and two small items: a magnet that reads "General Manager of the Whole Universe", which graces the door of my freezer, and a rubber stamp of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I used the stamp to make my Christmas cards this year. I colored each card individually using crayons, colored pencils and watercolor pencils. Because of the image, it made today the perfect deadline to mail/distribute the. December 12, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

This year December 12 falls on 12/12/12, the last time this kind of repeated date will happen in this century. You can find all sorts of information about today's date all over the Internet, including ties to the Mayan calendar and the supposed end of the world nine days from how. Lots of nonsense for the superstitious. Of course, many people, including Christians, would call belief in appearances of the Virgin Mary superstitious. Is it superstition, or is it faith? I don't believe it much matters. This particular visitation by Mary has a significance for the Americas, and probably the world, that should be noted. She appeared to Juan Diego, a mestizo--a person of mixed race--as a mestizo. In fact, Our Lady of Guadalupe is the only depiction of Mary as a person of color in all of Latin America and even the world. If you want to learn a bit more about Our Lady of Guadalupe, you can read my sermon given at Grace Church Norwalk two years ago.

That year the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe fell on a Sunday, which is why I was preaching that day. This is the first Advent in a number of years that I will not be preaching on the Third Sunday of Advent. This is the first Advent in almost 30 years that I have not had a church community to walk with through this season of waiting and watching. I'm doing a lot of waiting and watching as I search for a new parish in my new community.

Some things that I'm accustomed to doing will take place this year. The group of friends with whom I've celebrated the Winter Solstice/Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever for the last few years will be gathering again on Saturday. While I won't be there in person, we will be having dessert and opening presents via Skype. It seems appropriate that Rachel and I spent time this evening, December 12, 2012, testing out the Skype app on my smart phone. It's not perfect, but it should do the trick. Now if we could just develop Transporter technology...

And now for a small bit of fun. Take a look at the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe on my cards in the photo above. Do you notice anything? Below is another picture of the icon done in sand. I found it in several places on the web with no attribution. Compare it to the rubber stamp image, and you should find the answer. Hint: It's not the colors. Some of my cards are done with the more traditional colors, and some are not.