Today’s Advent question was, “Who helped you to do something today?” My first thought was along the lines of someone helping an old lady across the street. I was brought up on good old fashioned New England self-reliance. People don’t help me. I help other people. Yet that isn’t the message of Advent.

Advent, the time that we wait for the Savior for the one who will do something for us when he comes. But what about now? The question helped me think more about who I am, about our interconnectedness. Laura Darling helped me do that thinking today through her post on the Confirm not Conform blog. Bishop Laura Ahrens helped me start thinking about this by sharing a link to the blog on Facebook.

I thought about who has helped me do something today from another angle as I drove to work. How did I know how to drive? My mother taught me to drive years ago. It is something I do just about every day. Who helped me to do something today? She did.

This morning, I read the lectionary for today, the feast of Nicholas Ferrar. Ferrar was an ordained deacon in the Church of England. He lost much of his family wealth in the Virginia Company but later published the poems of George Herbert. Ferrar did something that helped me do something today. He published the works of Herbert, and I read some of Herbert’s poetry today.

We are all interconnected, across time, across space.

BLest Order, which in power dost so excell,
That with th’ one hand thou liftest to the sky,
And with the other throwest down to hell
In thy just censures; fain would I draw nigh,
Fain put thee on, exchanging my lay-sword
For that of th’ holy Word.

But thou art fire, sacred and hallow’d fire;
And I but earth and clay: should I presume
To wear thy habit, the severe attire
My slender compositions might consume.
I am both foul and brittle; much unfit
To deal in holy Writ.

Yet have I often seen, by cunning hand
And force of fire, what curious things are made
Of wretched earth. Where once I scorn’d to stand,
That earth is fitted by the fire and trade
Of skilfull artists, for the boards of those
Who make the bravest shows….

From Herbert’s The Priesthood, published in 1633 by Ferrar.

So, I turn the question to you,

“Who helped you to do something today?”