When everyone had gone
I sat in the library
With the small silent tree,
She and I alone.
How softly she shone!

And for the first time then
For the first time this year,
I felt reborn again,
I knew love’s presence near.

Love distant, love detached
And strangely without weight,
Was with me in the night
When everyone had gone
And the garland of pure light
Stayed on, stayed on.
~ May Sarton “Christmas Light” from Collected Poems

That afternoon, the air’s large hand
took hold of their backyard
apricot tree, the one that
had fruited, bountifully, a lush yield
in late summer, caught it in a downdraft
of chill, shook it lightly, again, again,
loosening each leaf from its
thumb of stem.
For two days I watched
the leaves’ pale, ground-ward drift,
each leaf singly, in its
gentle shedding, among all
the glints of gold,
each crumpled flick of fiber
from its stem’s thumb
a departure, a declaration.
An announcement, God saying,
gently, Thank You for
a lovely job. Now,
time to let go.
~Luci Shaw “Loewy’s Apricot Tree, Fall 2022”

The child wonders at the Christmas Tree:
Let him continue in the spirit of wonder…

The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy
Which shall be also a great fear, as on the occasion
When fear came upon every soul:
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.
~T.S. Eliot from “The Cultivation of Christmas Trees”

…the Lord will be your everlasting light,
    and your God will be your glory
Isaiah 60:19

I watch the eastern sky from the moment I get up each day. This time of year, most mornings remain dark, rainy and gray but there are some dawns that start with a low simmer around the base of the Cascade peaks. The light crawls up the slopes and climbs to illuminate the summits, then explodes into the skies.

Christ started small and lowly, then slowly crawled, then He walked beside us. He climbed up willingly to sacrifice Himself – to let go for our sake.

Once risen, He returned to the brilliance of the heavens.

Look east, good people,
Love is on its way again,
and again
and again.

This year’s Advent theme is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s sermon on the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1928:

The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come. For these, it is enough to wait in humble fear until the Holy One himself comes down to us, God in the child in the manager.

God comes.

He is, and always will be now, with us in our sin, in our suffering, and at our death. We are no longer alone. God is with us and we are no longer homeless.
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer – from Christmas Sermons

The tree of life my soul hath seen,
Laden with fruit, and always green;
The trees of nature fruitless be
Compared with Christ the apple tree.
This beauty doth all things excel;
By faith I know, but ne’er can tell
The glory which I now can see
In Jesus Christ the apple tree.
The tree of life . . .
For happiness I long have sought,
And pleasure dearly I have bought;
I missed for all, but now I see
’Tis found in Christ the apple tree.
2
I’m wearied with my former toil,
Here I shall sit and rest awhile;
Under the shadow I will be
Of Jesus Christ the apple tree.
The tree of life . . .
This fruit doth make my soul to thrive,
It keeps my dying faith alive;
Which makes my soul in haste to be
With Jesus Christ the apple tree.
The tree of life . . .
(from the collection of Joshua Smith,
New Hampshire, 1784)