Our hearts and homes are filled with anticipation of Christmas – music, the laughter of children, twinkling lights, and cookie baking. But there is no blocking the awareness of evil and horror in our world. Media brings the terror of war and injustice of humans to even children right into our living room. We may prefer to close our eyes and shut our ears to this threatening clamor, and may be tempted to think there has never been so much to fear at a Christmastime. But through the ages, there has been darkness and wrong – 100 years ago, in the trenches of WW I, the December of the attack on Pearl Harbor , and in the time before the first Nativity.
The poem below was written years ago by Madeleine L’Engle. I believe it was one of the previously unpublished pieces included in the collection in Winter Song, published by L’Engle and her friend Luci Shaw in 1996, and was written some time before that, so at least 20 years ago. But it sounds like she could have been writing after seeing this morning’s newscasts.
Into the Darkest Hour
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, as quoted in Winter Song, Christmas Readings by Madeleine L’Enlge & Luci Shaw
Stones and Feathers 
Thank you so much for your Advent meditations. I have been enjoying them greatly. I have not commented or even pushed the like button on each one, but they have given me such joy. Thank you.
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To have given you joy means so much to me, Sonja. To be honest, at the end of November I was quite ill and so many necessary tasks loomed before me that I thought briefly that I could not write a post for every day for Advent. But I really wanted to do this as part of my own Advent practice, and chose to trust I would be given what it took each day, and began. And that is what I have been given, just what I needed from day to day. It thrills me when that is meaningful to someone else, so thank you for letting me know. Christmas Blessings to you and those you gather around you these next days as we enter the final days of Advent journey.
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