People, look east. The time is near Of the crowning of the year. Make your house fair as you are able, Trim the hearth and set the table. People, look east and sing today: Love, the guest, is on the way.
photo by Joel De Waard
Furrows, be glad. Though earth is bare, One more seed is planted there: Give up your strength the seed to nourish, That in course the flower may flourish. People, look east and sing today: Love, the rose, is on the way.
Birds, though you long have ceased to build, Guard the nest that must be filled. Even the hour when wings are frozen God for fledging time has chosen. People, look east and sing today: Love, the bird, is on the way.
photo by Josh Scholten
Stars, keep the watch. When night is dim One more light the bowl shall brim, Shining beyond the frosty weather, Bright as sun and moon together. People, look east and sing today: Love, the star, is on the way.
Angels, announce with shouts of mirth Christ who brings new life to earth. Set every peak and valley humming With the word, the Lord is coming. People, look east and sing today: Love, the Lord, is on the way. ~Eleanor Farjeon “People, Look East”
I watch the eastern sky from the moment I get up each day. 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, until He walked and stood beside us. He climbed up willingly to sacrifice Himself. Once risen, He returned to the brilliance of the heavens.
Look east, good people, Love is on its way again, and again and again.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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…we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet.
Christ walks on the earth as your neighbor as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him? ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst”from God is in the Manger
Upon the darkish, thin, half-broken ice There seemed to lie a barrel-sized, heart-shaped snowball, Frozen hard, its white identical with the untrodden white of the lake shore. Closer, its somber face— Mask and beak—came clear, the neck’s Long cylinder, and the splayed feet, balanced, Weary, immobile. Black water traced, behind it, An abandoned gesture. Soft in still air, snowflakes Fell and fell. Silence Deepened, deepened. The short day Suspended itself, endless. ~Denise Levertov “Swan in Falling Snow”
When we witness suffering, when the stranger in ragged clothes approaches and asks for help, how do we respond?
I too easily forget: I am also the least of these, desperate for rescue, suspended, immobile, in a darkening quiet, waiting, waiting.
He patiently stands at the closed door. His tender mercy lifts our deepening state, waits for us to open up, gives us wings to the eternal, endlessly forgiven, endlessly loved, endlessly endless.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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The whole of Christ’s life was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha, where he was crucified, even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as the cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day. From the creche to the cross is an inseparable line. Christmas only points forward to Good Friday and Easter. It can have no meaning apart from that, where the Son of God displayed his glory by his death. ~John Donne, opening words in his sermon on Christmas Day 1626
O dying souls! behold your living spring! O dazzled eyes! behold your sun of grace! Dull ears attend what word this word doth bring! Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace! From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs, This life, this light, this word, this joy repairs.
Man altered by sin from man to beast; Beast’s food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh. Now God is flesh and lies in manger pressed As hay, the brutish sinner to refresh. O happy field wherein this fodder grew, Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew. ~Robert Southwell from The Nativity of the Christ,Jesuit poet (1561-1595)
Our neighborhood hay crew
remembered on
frosty mornings before dawn
when bales are broken for feed
and fragrant summer spills forth.
In the dead of winter
during the darkest blowing icy nights
the bales open like a picture book
illustrating how life once was,
and will be again~
Rainy spring nights’ hay
becomes bedding
for new foals’ sleep
to guarantee sunshine
in the uneasy manger
on the darkest of days:
Communion.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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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
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”
Hanging old ornaments on a fresh cut tree, I take each red glass bulb and tinfoil seraph And blow away the dust. Anyone else Would throw them out. They are so scratched and shabby.
My mother had so little joy to share She kept it in a box to hide away. But on the darkest winter nights—voilà— She opened it resplendently to shine.
How carefully she hung each thread of tinsel, Or touched each dime-store bauble with delight. Blessed by the frankincense of fragrant fir, Nothing was too little to be loved.
Why do the dead insist on bringing gifts We can’t reciprocate? We wrap her hopes Around the tree crowned with a fragile star. No holiday is holy without ghosts. ~Dana Gioia “Tinsel, Frankincense and Fir”
There are plenty of ghosts hiding in the boxes of ornaments and garlands of lights I place on our Christmas tree.
Closing my eyes, I can see my father struggling to straighten our wild cut trees from our woods, mumbling under his breath in his frustration as he lies prone under the branches. I can see my mother, tears in her eyes, arranging ornaments from her parents’ childhoods, remembering times in her childhood that were fraught and fragile.
Each memory, every scratched-up glass ball is so easily breakable, a mere symbol for the fragility of us all this time of year.
Our real work of Christmas isn’t just during these frantic weeks of Advent but lasts year-long — often very hard intensive work, not just fa-la-la-la-la and jingle bells, but badly needed labor in this broken world with its homelessness, hunger, disease, conflict, addictions, depression and pain.
Even so, we enter winter next week replete with a startling splash of orange red that paints the skies in the evenings, the stark and gorgeous snow covered peaks surrounding us during the day, the grace of bald eagles and trumpeter swans flying overhead, the heavenly lights that twinkle every night, the shining globe that circles full above us, and the loving support of the Hand that rocks us to sleep when we are wailing loud.
Once again, I prepare myself to do the real work of Christmas, acknowledging the stark reality that the labor that happened in a barn that night was only the beginning of the labor required to salvage this world begun by an infant in a manger.
We don’t need a fragrant fir, full stockings on the hearth, Christmas villages on the side table, or a star on the top of the tree to know the comfort of His care and the astounding beauty of His creation, available for us without batteries, electrical plug ins, or the need of a ladder.
He is the garland of pure Light, staying on, staying on.
The ghosts and memories of Christmas tend to pull me up from my doldrums, alive to the possibility that even I, broken and fragile, scratched and showing my age, can make a difference, in His name, all year.
Nothing is too little to be loved…even me.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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)
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And God held in his hand A small globe. Look he said. The son looked. Far off, As through water, he saw A scorched land of fierce Colour. The light burned There; crusted buildings Cast their shadows: a bright Serpent, A river Uncoiled itself, radiant With slime. On a bare Hill a bare tree saddened The sky. many People Held out their thin arms To it, as though waiting For a vanished April To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched Them. Let me go there, he said. ~R.S. Thomas “The Coming”
You have answered us with the image of yourself on a hewn tree, suffering injustice, pardoning it; pointing as though in either direction; horrifying us with the possibility of dislocation. Ah, love, with your arms out wide, tell us how much more they must still be stretched to embrace a universe drawing away from us at the speed of light. ~R.S.Thomas “Tell Us”
Ah, this is Love~ You the Incarnate, stretched and fettered to a tree
arms out wide to embrace us who try to grasp a heaven which eludes us.
This heaven, Your heaven You brought down to us, knowing our pain and weakness.
You wanted to come here, knowing all this.
Holding us firmly within your wounded grip, You the Son handed us back to heaven.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
O living Word Please come and dwell in us Lord wipe away these tears O ancient Son, so long foretold We’re desperate souls, draw near
And we will stand Securely in the strength of the Lord Every heart will surely come and adore The Great I Am
O our Shepherd King Please come and dwell with us To fields of grace Lead on
We need You now Break our chains by Your glory and power Make us captive to a holy desire Come to us O Lord Come to us O Lord
Prince of Peace, Emmanuel Lord draw us close, unto Thyself King of kings, God’s chosen One We need you now, to Thee we run
We need You now Break our chains by Your glory and power Make us captive to a holy desire Come to us O Lord Come to us O Lord Songwriter: Eric Marshall
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The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. ~Isaiah 9:2
Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light—but the season should not move too quickly or too glibly, lest we fail to acknowledge the depth of the darkness.
As our Lord Jesus tells us, unless we see the light of God clearly, what we call light is actually darkness: “how great is that darkness!” (Matt. 6:23). Advent bids us take a fearless inventory of the darkness: the darkness without and the darkness within.
Advent is designed to show that the meaning of Christmas is diminished to the vanishing point if we are not willing to take a fearless inventory of the darkness. ~Fleming Rutledge from Advent- The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ
It is this great absence that is like a presence, that compels me to address it without hope of a reply. It is a room I enter
from which someone has just gone, the vestibule for the arrival of one who has not yet come. I modernise the anachronism
of my language, but he is no more here than before. Genes and molecules have no more power to call him up than the incense of the Hebrews
at their altars. My equations fail as my words do. What resources have I other than the emptiness without him of my whole being, a vacuum he may not abhor? ~R.S. Thomas “The Absence”
There is no light in the incarnation without witnessing the empty darkness that precedes His arrival; His reason for entering our world is to fill our increasing spiritual void, our hollow hearts, our growing deficit of hope and faith.
God abhors a vacuum.
We find our God most when we keenly feel His absence, hearing no reply to our prayers, our faith shaken, not knowing if such unanswered prayers are heard.
In response, He has answered. He comes to walk beside us. He comes to be present among us, to ransom us from our self-captivity by offering up Himself instead.
He fills the vacuum completely and forever.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here; dispel the shadows of the night, and turn our darkness into light.
The people that in darkness sat a glorious light have seen; the Light has shined on them who long in shades of death have been.
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…to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love –
What could a baby know of gold ornaments or frankincense and myrrh, of priestly robes and devout genuflections?
But the imagination knows all stories before they are told and knows the truth of this one past all defection
The rich gifts so unsuitable for a child though devoutly proffered, stood for all that love can bring.
The men were old how could they know of a mother’s needs or a child’s appetite?
But as they kneeled the child was fed. They saw it and gave praise!
A miracle had taken place, hard gold to love, a mother’s milk! before their wondering eyes.
The ass brayed the cattle lowed. It was their nature.
All men by their nature give praise. It is all they can do.
The very devils by their flight give praise. What is death, beside this?
Nothing. The wise men came with gifts and bowed down to worship this perfection. ~William Carlos Williams “The Gift”
The uncontained contained infinite made finite humble made worthy a Deliverer delivered hungry sated on mother’s milk unsuitable made perfect darkness illuminated with possibilities the eternal here and now
How can you measure the love of a mother, Or how can you write down a baby’s first cry? Candlelight, angel light, firelight and starglow Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn. Gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo! Angels are singing; the Christ child is born. Shepherds and wise men will kneel and adore him, Seraphim round him their vigil will keep; Nations proclaim him their Lord and their Saviour, But Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep. Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger: Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay. Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation: A child with his mother that first Christmas Day. ~John Rutter – words and music
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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…yea, thou art now Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother, Thou hast light in dark, and shutt’st in little room Immensity, cloister’d in thy dear womb. ~John Donne from “Annunciation”
Christ, whose glory fills the skies, Christ, the true, the only Light, Sun of Righteousness, arise, Triumph o’er the shades of night; Dayspring from on high, be near; Day-star, in my heart appear.
Dark and cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by Thee; Joyless is the day’s return Till Thy mercy’s beams I see; Till they inward light impart, Glad my eyes, and warm my heart.
Visit then this soul of mine, Pierce the gloom of sin and grief; Fill me, Radiancy divine, Scatter all my unbelief; More and more Thyself display, Shining to the perfect day. ~Charles Wesley “Christ, whose glory fills the skies”
It seems impossible that God could be contained within a womb. The Creator, who made the heavens, went inward into His vast universe of atoms and sub-atomic particles. He hosted tiny cellular nuclei within His body, instead of the heaven-flung massive nebulae in distant galaxies.
And He chose to do this. Out of His love and goodness, He became Light in the darkest space of the human body, to be birthed to illuminate a world bent on destruction.
From radiance to ribosomes, from cosmos to cytoplasm, from galaxies to Golgi apparatus, from moons to mitochondria, from utter darkness to “let there be light.”
And there is Light. God is there, coming from above and coming from within.
Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
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Advent 2023 theme …because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song
Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. I muse at how its being puts blissful back With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black, Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. By that window what task what fingers ply, I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault: You there are master, do your own desire; What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt? ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Candle Indoors”
Sometimes a lantern moves along the night, That interests our eyes. And who goes there? I think; where from and bound, I wonder, where, With, all down darkness wide, his wading light?
Men go by me whom either beauty bright In mould or mind or what not else makes rare: They rain against our much-thick and marsh air Rich beams, till death or distance buys them quite.
Death or distance soon consumes them: wind What most I may eye after, be in at the end I cannot, and out of sight is out of mind.
Christ minds: Christ’s interest, what to avow or amend There, éyes them, heart wánts, care haúnts, foot fóllows kínd, Their ránsom, théir rescue, ánd first, fást, last friénd. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “The Lantern Out of Doors“
Now burn, new born to the world, Doubled-naturèd name, The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame, Mid-numbered he in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came; Kind, but royally reclaiming his own; A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fíre hard-hurled.
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east… ~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”
In three days, we have gone from a sub-zero wind chill ice storm from the north to a balmy 60 degree storm from the south, both winds taking out our power and plunging us into a deeper darker night.
Rather than resort to generator power immediately, I break the darkness with candle light. It is only a brief respite as candles burn down, batteries die, and we’re back in darkness again until the power lines are patched and the transformers restored.
Sometimes the Advent and Christmas season can feel like that: a recharge for my faith that has gone dark and cold, a fire lit under me to banish creeping doubt and discouragement. I need more than Advent rituals and Christmas traditions to keep the darkness in its place beyond today.
God doesn’t need beeswax or batteries to keep His Light on. He just needs us: our trust, our love, our desire for understanding, our need for Him.
We are the candles that shine forth in the world to light the way for those around us who are floundering in the dark.
And that, Charlie Brown, is what Christmas is all about…
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And in despair I bowed my head “There is no peace on earth,” I said, “For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men.”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail With peace on earth, good will to men.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
You, who are beyond our understanding, have made yourself understandable to us in Jesus Christ. You, who are the uncreated God, have made yourself a creature for us. You, who are the untouchable One, have made yourself touchable to us. You, who are most high, make us capable of understanding your amazing love and the wonderful things you have done for us. Make us able to understand the mystery of your incarnation, the mystery of your life, example and doctrine, the mystery of your cross and passion, the mystery of your resurrection and ascension. ~Angela of Foligno (1248-1309)– prayer
To all of you who come to this page each day to read words, hear music, see images of our farm life: may your sore heart be blessed, your troubled soul encouraged as we explore together the mystery of who was born today.
He does not sleep, so our eyes can rest. He came to die and rise again so we might live. He is the beauty and truth we seek for peace on earth.
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