Tag: Advent

Awaiting His Arrival: From Dross to Gold

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But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears?
For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver;
he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.
Malachi 3: 3-4

    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.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “The Wreck of the Deutschland”


Awaiting His Arrival: From Doing to Being

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Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking,
“What then is this child going to be?”
For the Lord’s hand was with him.
Luke 1: 66

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What if, instead of doing something, we were to be something special?
Be a womb.
Be a dwelling for God.
Be surprised.
~Loretta Ross-Gotta from “To Be Virgin”

Awaiting His Arrival: From First to Last

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 rainjewels
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Revelation 22:13
Of the Father’s love begotten,
ere the worlds began to be,
he is Alpha and Omega;
he the source, the ending he,
of the things that are, that have been,
and that future years shall see,
evermore and evermore!
~Aurelius Clemens Prudentius

Here is the message of Advent: faced with him who is the Last, the world will begin to shake. Only when we do not cling to false securities will our eyes be able to see this Last One and get to the bottom of things. Only then will we have the strength to overcome the terrors into which God has let the world sink. God uses these terrors to awaken us from sleep, as Paul says, and to show us that it is time to repent, time to change things. It is time to say, “all right, it was night; but let that be over now and let us get ready for the day.” We must do this with a decision that comes out of the very horrors we experience. Because of this our decision will be unshakable even in uncertainty.

If we want Advent to transform us – our homes and hearts, and even nations – then the great question for us is whether we will come out of the convulsions of our time with this determination: Yes, arise! It is time to awaken from sleep. a waking up must begin somewhere. It is time to put things back where God intended them.
~Father Alfred Delp, written in a Nazi prison in 1945 shortly before he was hanged for treason  “The Shaking Reality of Advent”

 

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Silence to Time Suspended

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 Immediately his (Zechariah’s) mouth was opened and his tongue set free,
and he began to speak, praising God:
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
~Luke 1: 64, 78-79

 

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”

And we are silenced too by our questioning the motives of God, by trying to be God ourselves, and so sit suspended, immobile, in the darkening quiet, waiting, waiting.
We are met by the tender mercy of His light illuminating our deepening, raised to the eternal, suspended, forgiven endlessly.

 

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Fearful to Unafraid

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“Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God.“
 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.”
Luke 1:30, 38

 

As if until that moment
nothing real
had happened since Creation

As if outside the world were empty
so that she and he were all
there was — he mover, she moved upon

As if her submission were the most
dynamic of all works: as if
no one had ever said Yes like that

As if one day the sun had no place
in all the universe to pour its gold
but her small room
~Luci Shaw “Virgin”

 

and she
looked up at him, their looks so merged in one
the world outside grew vacant, suddenly,
and all things being seen, endured and done
were crowded into them: just she and he
eye and its pasture, visions and its view,
here at the point and at this point alone:-
see, this arouses fear. Such fear both knew.
~Rainer Maria Rilke from “Annunciation to Mary”

Awaiting His Arrival: From Emptied to Overflowing

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He has satisfied the hungry hearts and sent the rich away with empty hands.
Luke 1:53

For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.
Habakkuk 2:14

 

 Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love’s sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour,
All for love’s sake becomes poor.
~Frank Houghton

 

Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new.
~Luci Shaw from “Mary’s Song”

 

Do you think you could contain Niagara Falls in a teacup?
Don’t come with a thimble when God has nothing less to give you
than the ocean of himself.
~Brennan Manning

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Frantic to Centered

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Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
    you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
 For my eyes have seen your salvation…
~Luke 2: 29-30

Life is meant to be lived from a Center,
a divine Center…
Life from the Center is a life of unhurried peace and power.
It is simple.
It is serene.
It is amazing.
It is triumphant.
It is radiant.
It takes no time, but it occupies all our time.
We need not get frantic.
He is at the helm.
And when our little day is done we lie down quietly in peace,
for all is well.
~Thomas Kelly

Simeon and Anna waited patiently in the temple for their glimpse of the Lord, and once granted that glimpse they were ready to lie down quietly in peace.   They lived from the Center, and accepted that He is at the helm, no matter what, no matter when, no matter how.   All is well.

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Trouble to Mystery

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The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary…”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
Luke 1: 28-30, 38

 

…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 –

but who was God.
~Denise Levertov from “The Annunciation”

 

This is the honest grace of her body:
that she is afraid, and in this moment does not
hide her fear.
Until in the cave of her body
she might feel without willing it a tenderness
begin to form. Like the small, ghostly
clover of the meadow; the deer hidden
in the hills. A tenderness like mourning.
The source of love, she thinks, is mourning.
…the child that will soon form
inside her body, this loss by which we come
to bend before the given, its arms that open
unexplained, and take us in.
~Laurie Sheck from “The Annunciation”

 

Still, the secret at her heart burns like
a sun rising. How to hold it in—
that which cannot be contained.

But then, part dazzled, part prescient—
she hugs her body, a pod with a seed
that will split her.
~Luci Shaw from “Mary Consider Her Situation”

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Awaiting His Arrival: From Already to Not Yet

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For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Romans 8:24-25

 

Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch—
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured; not-yet-

Not-yet-not.

I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
~Jane Hirshfield “Not Yet”

 

To wait for the “not yet” is a hard sweet tension in the Christian life.

It is hard not yet having what we know will be coming.
But it is sweet to have certainty it is coming
because of what we have already been given.
Like the labor of childbirth,
we groan knowing what it will take to get there,
and we are full to brimming already.

The waiting won’t be easy;
it will often be painful to be patient,
staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted,
barely able to function.
Others won’t understand why we wait,
nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for.

Yet we persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping,
like Mary and Joseph,
like Elizabeth and Zechariah,
like the shepherds,
like the Magi of the east,
like Simeon and Anna in the temple.

This is the meaning of Advent:
we are a community groaning together in expectation of what is to come in the morning.

 

By waiting and by calm you shall be saved,
In quiet and in trust your strength lies.
~Isaiah 30:15

Awaiting His Arrival: From Doubt to Assurance

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Matthias-Stomer-Annunciation-Painting
Matthias Stomer’s Annunciation

 

Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this?
Luke 1:18

“How will this be?” Mary asked the angel…
Luke 1:34

Zechariah asks:
How can I be sure?
How can I trust this is true even when it doesn’t make sense in my every day world?
How can I trust God to accomplish this?

These are not the questions to be asked;
he was struck mute, speechless until immersed in the miracle of impossibility
and only then assured by the Lord and released from silence, he sang loudly with praise.

Instead, we are to ask, like Mary:
How can this be?
How am I worthy?
How am I to be confident within incomprehensibility and calm in the midst of mystery?
How am I to be different as a result?

It is when we are most naked,
at our very emptiest,
that we are clothed and filled with God’s glorious assurance.
We do not need to be sure
to accept what He asks of us.
We just need to be.
Changed.

 

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality.
With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season

Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles.
The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.
~Sylvia Plath from “Black Rook in Rainy Weather”