Category: heaven

In Dazzling Darkness, An Epiphany

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newyearsice

Deep midwinter, the dark center of the year,
Wake, O earth, awake,
Out of the hills a star appears,
Here lies the way for pilgrim kings,
Three magi on an ancient path,
Black hours begin their journeyings.

Their star has risen in our hearts,
Empty thrones, abandoning fears,
Out on the hills their journey starts,
In dazzling darkness God appears.
~Judith Bingham “Epiphany”

It might have been just someone else’s story,
Some chosen people get a special king.
We leave them to their own peculiar glory,
We don’t belong, it doesn’t mean a thing.
But when these three arrive they bring us with them,
Gentiles like us, their wisdom might be ours;
A steady step that finds an inner rhythm,
A  pilgrim’s eye that sees beyond the stars.
They did not know his name but still they sought him,
They came from otherwhere but still they found;
In temples they found those who sold and bought him,
But in the filthy stable, hallowed ground.
Their courage gives our questing hearts a voice
To seek, to find, to worship, to rejoice.
~Malcolm Guite “Epiphany”

…the scent of frankincense
and myrrh
arrives on the wind,
and I long
to breathe deeply,
to divine its trail.
But I know their uses
and cannot bring myself
to breathe deeply enough
to know
whether what comes
is the fragrant welcoming
of birth
or simply covers the stench of death.
These hands
coming toward me,
is it swaddling they carry
or shroud?
~Jan Richardson from Night Visions –searching the shadows of Advent and Christmas

birchgold

Unclench your fists
Hold out your hands.
Take mine.
Let us hold each other.
Thus is his Glory Manifest.
~Madeleine L’Engle “Epiphany” from the Weather of the Heart

newyearsice2

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
~T.S. Eliot from “Journey of the Magi”

futuremapletree3

The Christmas season is a wrap, put away for another year.
However, our hearts are not so easily boxed up and stored as the lights and decorations and ornaments of the season.

Our troubles and concerns go on; our frailty a daily reality.
We can be distracted with holidays for a few weeks, but our time here slips away ever more quickly.

The Christmas story is not just about
light and birth and joy to the world.
It is about how swaddling clothes became a shroud
that wrapped Him tight.
There is not one without the other.

God came to be with us;
Delivered so He could deliver.
Planted on and in the earth.
Born so He could die in our place
To leave the linen strips behind, neatly folded.

Christmas: a dazzling unwrapping of glory to free us from darkness.
Epiphany: the Seed of His Spirit takes root in our hearts.

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A Christmas Dayspring

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Now, newborn,
in wide-eyed wonder
he gazes up at his creation.
His hand that hurled the world
holds tight his mother’s finger.
Holy light
spills across her face
and she weeps
silent wondering tears
to know she holds the One
who has so long held her.
~Joan Rae Mills from “Mary” in  Light Upon Light 

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”

Through the tender mercy of our God,
With which the Dayspring from on high has visited us;
To give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
To guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:78-79 (Zechariah’s Song)

It never fails to surprise and amaze:
a colorful dawn seems to come from nowhere. 

There is always bleak dark,
then a hint of light over the foothills in a long thin line,
followed by the appearance of subtle dawn shadows
as if the night needs to cling to the ground a little while longer,
not wanting to relent and let us go. 

Then color appears, erasing all doubt:
the hills begin to glow orange along their crest,
as if a flame is ignited and is spreading down a wick. 
Ultimately the explosion of Light occurs,
spreading the orange pink palette unto the clouds above,
climbing high to bathe the glaciers of Mount Baker
and onto the peaks of the Twin Sisters.

~a Dayspring to our dimness~

From dark to light, ordinary to extraordinary.
This gift is from the tender mercy of our God,
who has become the Light of a new Day,
guiding our feet on the pathway of peace. 

We no longer need to stumble about in the shadows.
He has come to light our darkness.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
~John 1:5

Sleeping child, I wonder, have you a dream to share?
May I see the things you see as you slumber there?
I dream a wind that speaks, like music as it blows
As if it were the breath of everything that grows.

I dream a flock of birds flying through the night
Like silent stars on wings of everlasting light.
I dream a flowing river, deep as a thousand years,
Its fish are frozen sorrow, its water bitter tears.

I dream a tree so green, branches wide and long,
And ev’ry leaf and ev’ry voice a song.
I dream of a babe who sleeps, a life that’s just begun.
A word that waits to be spoken.
The promise of a world to come.
~Charles Bennett “Sleeping Child”

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God is Not Dead, Nor Does He Sleep…

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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 Christmas Bells

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
~Howard Thurman “The Work of Christmas”

The core truth of Christ’s birth is that when God became man, he entered the world in a posture of extreme humility and extreme vulnerability, and that posture never changed.

Jesus, God made flesh, spent his life as a carpenter and an itinerant preacher. He proved so vulnerable that he was easily executed by the Roman Empire, with only the tiniest band of followers still clinging to their faith.

And if we who call ourselves Christians are to truly imitate Christ, then shouldn’t we also place little regard on our own worldly status? Jesus told us to take up our own cross, not to nail others to that terrible tree.

Yes, Christ is King, but of a very different kind of kingdom, where the first are last, where you love your enemies, where you bless those who persecute you, and where you sacrifice to serve your neighbor.
~David French from Christianity is a Dangerous Faith in the New York TImes -12/21/25

Let the stable still astonish;
Straw – dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.

Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: “Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and earth
Be born here, in this place?”

Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms
Of our hearts
And says, “Yes,
Let the God of Heaven and Earth
Be born here –

In this place.
~Leslie Leyland Fields “Let the Stable Still Astonish”

During Advent, I am guilty of nostalgia and sentiment, invoking the gentle bedtime story of that silent night, with the infant napping away in a hay-filled manger, His devoted parents hovering, the humble shepherds peering in the stable door.   

All is calm.  All is bright.

Yet no – this is not a sentimental story.
It is astonishing.

God never sleeps.

This is no gentle bedtime story: 
– a teenage mother gives birth in a smelly cave among domestic animals, with no alternative but to lay her baby in a rough feed trough.

– the heavenly host appears to shepherds – the lowest of the low in society – shouting and singing glories which causes terror.

– Herod’s response to the news that a Messiah had been born is to kill a legion of male children whose parents undoubtedly begged for mercy, clinging to their about-to-be murdered sons.

– a family’s flight to Egypt as refugees seeking asylum so their son would not be yet another victim of Herod.

– Jesus grows up to become itinerant and homeless, tempted while fasting in the wilderness, owns nothing, rejected by His own people, betrayed by His disciples, sentenced to death by acclamation before Pilate, tortured, hung on a cross until He gave up his spirit.

– Jesus understood He was not of this world. He knew the power that originally brought him to earth as a helpless infant lying in an unforgiving stone trough would eventually move the stone covering His tomb.

He would be sacrificed,
He would die and rise again,
He would return again as King of all nations.

When I hear skeptics scoff at Christianity as a “crutch for the weak”, they underestimate the courage it takes to walk into church each week admitting we are a desperate people seeking rescue. We cling to the life preserver found in the Word, hanging on for dear life. It is only because of grace that we survive the tempests of temptation, shame, guilt and self-doubt to worship an all-knowing God who is not dead and who never ever sleeps.

This bedtime story is not for the faint of heart. It is meant to astonish. The Power invoked created the very dust we are made of, and breathed His life into us.

So be not afraid:
the wrong shall fail
the Right prevail.
He chose this place to be among us.
Peace on earth, good-will to men.

The grass withers, the flower fades,
But the word of our God stands forever.
Isaiah 40:8

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God Crosses the Threshold: Brought Low For Us

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sunrise1111

… Oh the heretics!
Not to remember Bethlehem,
or the star as bright as a sun,
or the child born on a bed of straw!
To know only of the dissolving Now!

Still they drowsed on –
citizens of the pure, the physical world,
they loomed in the dark: powerful
of body, peaceful of mind,
innocent of history.

Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas!
And you are no heretics, but a miracle,
immaculate still as when you thundered forth
on the morning of creation!
~Mary Oliver from Goodness and Light

tumblr_m6e96k3hza1qznd0so1_1280
Nativity by N.C. Wyeth
sunset1224145

Christmas hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answering music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
~Christina Rossetti “Christmas Eve”

…the deepest darkness is the place where God comes to us.
In the womb, in the night, in the dreaming;
when we are lost, when our world has come undone,
when we cannot see the next step on the path;
in all the darkness that attends our life,
whether hopeful darkness or horrendous,
God meets us.
God’s first priority is not to do away with the dark
but to be present to us in it.
~Jan Richardson

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:12

snowyyew

God crossed the threshold, bringing Light down low into our darkness.

God is with us, God is for us.
Let’s open the door for Him.

snowylamp

Traditional Austrian Lullaby lyrics
Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.
For all is hushed,
The world is sleeping,
Holy Star its vigil keeping.
Still, still, still,
One can hear the falling snow.

Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.
The night is peaceful all around you,
Close your eyes,
Let sleep surround you.
Sleep, sleep, sleep,
‘Tis the eve of our Saviour’s birth.

Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.
While guardian angels without number,
Watch you as you sweetly slumber.
Dream, dream, dream,
Of the joyous day to come.

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An Advent Threshold: When a Door Opens, Ah, What Then?

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“Thin places,” the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space.
Holy.
~Sharlande Sledge

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in your hand
Ah, what then?
~Samuel Coleridge  “What if you slept”

Advent does not train us to look away from suffering. No, it gives us the strength with which to face it. A cup of water. A stone on which to rest. A star to guide us. And the essential hope to know that somewhere, a door is opening.

Advent is how we survive, for to live in Advent is to root ourselves in the essential gravity of things, to know that love and goodness are always stronger than whatever seeks to defeat them. We train our eyes on the small and know that it matters. A flower. A kind word. A child in the manger. That is the way that God breaks through the void.
~Stephanie Saldaña “Living on Manger Street”

I know for a while again,
the health of self-forgetfulness,
looking out at the sky through
a notch in the valley side,
the black woods wintry on
the hills, small clouds at sunset
passing across. And I know
that this is one of the thresholds
between Earth and Heaven,
from which I may even step
forth from myself and be free.
~ Wendell Berry, Sabbaths 2000

The partition thins between this world and the world to come, or
the next or the other world. On the other side of the partition
the dead are living. As one grows older some of the dead grow
more alive, more essentially themselves. One loves them more. As
the next world grows more distinct, this one becomes, not more
vague, but more strange.
~Wendell Berry “New Poems”

photo by Nate Gibson

“Thin places,” the Celts call this space,
Both seen and unseen,
Where the door between the world
And the next is cracked open for a moment
And the light is not all on the other side.
God shaped space.
Holy.
~Sharlande Sledge

Ah, what then?

Home is not nearly big enough for heaven to dwell.  I must content myself with this visit to the thin edge, peering through the open door, and waiting until invited to come inside.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

In the stillness of a church where candles glow,
In the softness of a fall of fresh white snow,
In the brightness of the stars hat shine this night,
In the calmness of a pool of healing light,
In the clearness of a choir that softly sings,
In the oneness of a hush of angels’ wings,
In the mildness of a night by stable bare,
In the quietness of a lull near cradle fair,
There’s a patience as we wait for a new morn,
And the presence of a child soon to be born.
~Sally Beamish “In the Stillness”

An Advent Threshold: In a Time Like This, Celebrate A Birth

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Winter solstice morning rainbow this morning

Gloomy night embraced the place
Where the Noble Infant lay;
The Babe looked up and showed his face,
In spite of darkness, it was day.
It was thy day, Sweet! and did rise
Not from the east, but from thine eyes.

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span;
Summer in winter; day in night;
Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
~Richard Crashaw from “In the Holy Nativity of Our Lord” 

The pines look black in the half-
light of dawn.  Stillness…

While we slept an inch of new snow
simplified the field.  Today of all days
the sun will shine no more
than is strictly necessary.

At the village church last night
the boys – shepherds and wisemen –
pressed close to the manger in obedience,
wishing only for time to pass;
but the girl dressed as Mary trembled
as she leaned over the pungent hay,
and like the mother of Christ
wondered why she had been chosen.

After the pageant, a ruckus of cards,
presents, and homemade Christmas sweets.
A few of us stayed to clear the bright
scraps and ribbons from the pews,
and lift the pulpit back in place.

When I opened the hundred-year-old Bible
to Luke’s account of the Epiphany
black dust from the binding rubbed off
on my hands, and on the altar cloth.
~Jane Kenyon “At the Winter Solstice”

Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch…

There is not a guarantee in the world. Oh your needs are guaranteed; your needs are absolutely guaranteed by the most stringent of warranties, in the plainest, truest words: knock; seek; ask. But you must read the fine print. “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you.” That’s the catch. 

I think that the dying pray at the last not “please,” but “thank you,” as a guest thanks his host at the door… The universe was not made in jest but in solemn, incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see.
~Annie Dillard “Winter Solstice” from The Abundance

It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss-
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.

It was time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight-
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.

And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.
~Madeleine L’Engle “Into the Darkest Hour”

On this winter solstice, my prayer is to remember this day turns the world away from its descent into darkness and back toward the Light.

Even when everything is falling apart, the Light guides our way into the path of peace.

And may the Word of the Lord spill onto our hands and into the opened stable of our hearts.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Lyrics:

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
~James Agee

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An Advent Threshold: Came Down

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The Word became flesh.
Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed.
Incarnation.
It is not tame.
It is not beautiful.
It is uninhabitable terror.
It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light.

Agonized laboring led to it,
vast upheavals of intergalactic space,
time split apart,
a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself.
You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this:
“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”
Came down.
Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see.
It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms.
It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.
~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark

Down he came from up,
and in from out,
and here from there.
A long leap,
an incandescent fall
from magnificent
to naked, frail, small,
through space,
between stars,
into our chill night air,
shrunk, in infant grace,
to our damp, cramped
earthy place
among all
the shivering sheep.

And now, after all,
there he lies,
fast asleep.
~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels

[The Incarnation is like] a wave of the sea which, 
rushing up on the flat beach, 
runs out, even thinner and more transparent, 
and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears.
~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire

Perhaps it is the mystery of the thing that brings us back,
again and again, to read the story of 
how God came down and disappeared into us.

How can this be?
God appearing on earth first to animals,
then the most humble of humans.

How can He be?
Through the will of the Father and the breath of the Spirit,
the Son was, and is and yet to be.

O great mystery beyond all understanding.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
Beata Virgo,
cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum.
Alleluia!

O great mystery and wondrous sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord lying in their Manger!
Blessed is the Virgin
whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

Still Life by Zurbaran in the Norton-Simon Museum in Pasadena, CA

The composer Morten Lauridsen, is a Washington state native who was born only a few miles from where my mother grew up in the wheat fields of the Palouse, and now lives in retirement in the San Juan Islands.  He wrote about his inspiration, wanting to compose something that honored the words as much as the Still Life painted by Zurbaran (above) honored the Virgin Mary.

In Lauridsen’s own words:

“Zurbarán (1598-1664) is the painter of “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose.” The objects in this work are symbolic offerings to the Virgin Mary. Her love, purity and chastity are signified by the rose and the cup of water. The lemons are an Easter fruit that, along with the oranges with blossoms, indicate renewed life. The table is a symbolic altar. The objects on it are set off in sharp contrast to the dark, blurred backdrop and radiate with clarity and luminosity against the shadows.

In composing music to these inspirational words about Christ’s birth and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, I sought to impart, as Zurbarán did before me, a transforming spiritual experience within what I call “a quiet song of profound inner joy.” I wanted this piece to resonate immediately and deeply into the core of the listener, to illumine through sound.

The most challenging part of this piece for me was the second line of text having to do with the Virgin Mary. She above all was chosen to bear the Christ child and then she endured the horror and sorrow of his death on the cross. How can her significance and suffering be portrayed musically?

After exploring several paths, I decided to depict this by a single note. On the word “Virgo,” the altos sing a dissonant appoggiatura G-sharp. It’s the only tone in the entire work that is foreign to the main key of D. That note stands out against a consonant backdrop as if a sonic light has suddenly been focused upon it, edifying its meaning. It is the most important note in the piece.

A scholarly essay about Lauridsen’s composition is here.

Another version by a different composer:

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An Advent Threshold: Hushed in the Dark

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What is coming upon the world is the Light of the World.
It is Christ.
That is the comfort of it.
The challenge of it is that it has not come yet.
Only the hope for it has come, only the longing for it.
In the meantime we are in the dark,
and the dark, God knows, is also in us.
We watch and wait for a holiness to heal us and hallow us,
to liberate us from the dark.
Advent is like the hush in a theater just before the curtain rises.
It is like the hazy ring around the winter moon that means the coming of snow which will turn the night to silver.
Soon.
But for the time being, our time, darkness is where we are. 
~Frederick Buechner from The Clown in the Belfry

Darkness is not where we will dwell forever.
We are hushed in fear and hungry for Light.

We are promised this in the Word:
“and night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light…
Revelation 22:5.

Somewhere between the Word in the beginning
and the Word that becomes flesh
and the Word thriving in our hearts and hands,
there is the sacred silent Light of God come to earth.

This Advent becomes a threshold of quiet stillness,
as we stand poised to cross into the Light brought by His Word;
He is a flint struck to our wick in our eagerness to abolish the Darkness with the eternal glow of His illuminating Word.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

Lyrics:

In winter’s house there’s a room
that’s pale and still as mist in a field
while outside in the street every gate’s shut firm,
every face as cold as steel.

In winter’s house there’s a bed
that is spread with frost and feathers,
that gleams in the half-light like rain
in a disused yard or a pearl in a choked-up stream.

In winter’s house there’s a child asleep
in a dream of light that grows out of the dark,
a flame you can hold in your hand
like a flower or a torch on the street. 

In winter’s house there’s a tale that’s told
of a great chandelier in a garden,
of fire that catches and travels for miles,
of all gates and windows wide open.

In winter’s house there’s a flame
being dreamt by a child in the night,
in the small quiet house at the turn in the lane
where the darkness gives way to light.
~Jane Draycott

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An Advent Threshold: A Golden Pin in the Folds of Time

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Beyond the brimming ages Gabriel waits,
his foremost message burning on his breath.
Through time men slide, creeping through the gates
of birth and out again the doors of death.

He sees kings rise and kingdoms fall to dust;
he sees unnumbered souls unfleshed; to some
he gives slight hints, but the full knowledge must
wait, for his best words are not for them.

Then at last, coming from afar
he sees, gleaming like a golden pin
in time’s folds, Mary, rising like a star
above the fretted seas of what had been;

bright hinge on which the gate of Heaven creaks,
to her he turns, inclines himself, and speaks.
~J.C.Sharl “Annunciation”

Be patient and without bitterness,
realizing the least we can do
is make coming into existence
no more difficult for Him
than the earth does for spring when it wants to come.
~Rainier Marie Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet

And in all of this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last light off the black West wind went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

Kings and kingdoms come and go, reduced to dust over time.

So the Word waited, like the earth waits for spring,
for a golden point of light to overwhelm the dark.

She says “let it be”, not “no, not me, not now.”

Transformed, simply by accepting Him:
a simple, but oh so difficult faith,
like a tender shoot breaking through
the crust of frozen earth
seeking the Sun, needing now to bloom.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

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An Advent Threshold: What Are You Seeking? Come and See What is Possible…

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The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” 

The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
 Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, 
“What are you seeking?” 
And they said to him, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”  

He said to them, “Come and you will see.” So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was about the tenth hour.

One of the two who heard John speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.  He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means Christ). He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, 
“You are Simon the son of John. You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).

 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”  Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip said to him, “Come and see.”  

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”  Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”  Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”  Jesus answered him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.”  And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”
John 1:35-51

I never knew what was going on.

He would say, “Let’s go,” and we
would follow. “Follow” was his word.

And we would. Fools we were to let that
take us all that way. Why we did to this day

I don’t know. Look how it ended. Look
what it became. But what did we have

to stay for? Nothing. There wasn’t much
work. Nothing much to do. There were no

stories left. Bread. Fish. So we ended up
with more bread and fish. But we did find

stories and stories. Well, what else is there?
I never did much along the way. Look it up…

I will say, though, that it was his words. Words!

Imagine. Words had never done what his did.
I’d listen, and I wasn’t much of a listener. Then

later I would try to make sense of them. I couldn’t.
But I could feel them. And maybe that was it, how

they got inside you and made you wonder and wrinkle.
They got in my brain’s garden and made it seem like

the roots were above ground and all the flowers and
vegetables, all the nourishing, were now below…

See? See how hard it is to
explain this stuff? You just started seeing everything with a

new mind. You began to be drawn to a whole new world,
and it was a world.

You might say, okay, whatever, and yet those words
did become flesh, my flesh. And my flesh, my body, held

the kingdom of God, and if it’s a place that’s a place
for children, then most of what I know really doesn’t matter.

Labor doesn’t, and money, and reason, and, well, you
go make a list. He’d get me so confused. And then we’d

head off worrying about how we would eat and where
we’d sleep. Our feet were filthy. My God, we were always

filthy. We stank. And then he’d go and point at birds or
stalks of grain, even stop and have us kneel before a flower,

and then he’d smile. That haunts me still. That smile.
And then he died. He brought out hate, not love. He had

a terrifying sense of justice. Nothing he said or did
was impossible. Maybe that was it. It was all possible.
~Jack Ridl from “Bartholomew: Disciple”

What are you seeking? What are you looking for in your life?

Jesus asks the new disciples because He needs to know whether they are expecting a wise rabbi/teacher, or a prophesied Messiah come to change the world, or a mighty king who will liberate them from political oppression.

No matter what our expectation is, Jesus asks that we come to see what he is doing, following him to witness what will happen as he speaks, allowing his words to become our new flesh and skin.

He takes us to the threshold of heaven and throws the gate wide open. Nothing he says or does is impossible.

He shows us what is possible simply by asking us what we hope for.

I am reading slowly through the words in the Book of John over the next year or so. Each week, I will invite you to “come and see” what those words might mean as we explore His promises together.

My 2025 Advent theme:
On the threshold between day and night

On that day there will be neither sunlight nor cold, frosty darkness. 
It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—
with no distinction between day and night. 
When evening comes, there will be light.
Zechariah 14:6-7

So once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.
~Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk

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