Tag Archives: Preparation

Light One Candle

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Last night we attended a Christmas concert at our 11 year old granddaughter’s school.  As one of the older children, she walked tall and proud to her seat to play her flute in a medley of Christmas music and we loved it.  Soon the stage was filled many smaller children who sang and jingled their bells.  One of their songs stuck in my head, and I have hummed it all day. A  a simple song, “Light One Candle” by Natalie Sleeth.
Light one candle for hope,
One bright candle for hope.
He brings hope to everyone.
He comes. He comes.
Verses 2, 3 and-4 replace hope with peace, joy, and love.
As we light the candles in our Advent wreaths and welcome His coming, may our song be the same. He comes. He comes.
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Lo, How a Rose…

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RoseinSnow2009The past week has been unusually cold and wet here.  One day was said to have been the coldest ever for this part of Texas.  Of course, we have not had the snow and ice so many north of us have had, but I am remembering one day in the first week of December in 2009. I took this photograph while it was snowing.  The rose is one of my favorite antique roses.  It is called Maggie, and is the only rose I know that has a sweeter fragrance after it is cut to bring inside.  I remember, too, the sweet carol that it illustrates.  Old rose, ancient song, story forever new.

Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming

From tender stem hath sprung!

Of Jesse’s lineage coming

As men of old have sung.

It came, a flow’ret bright,

Amid the cold of winter,

When half-spent was the night.

~ Fourteenth-Century German Melody

This verse, Sixteenth-Century German

Magnificat

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100_0934When I find a feather, I have long believed that it is a sign –  God sending me a reminder that he is with me, and that small things can be important in helping me know that.  I find feathers often and in strange places.  Once, a tiny feather blew across and stuck to my windshield on a drizzly day. One afternoon when I sat on my back porch, praying through a troubled time, I looked up to see what seemed to be a snowflake because of the way it drifted down to the flagstone path.  I looked up to see a dove on the edge of our roof – her bit of breast feather fluttering to the ground.

No wonder then, that I like Luci Shaw’s poem, Magnificat, published in the collection titled The Angles of Light.  

“I am singing my Advent to you, God: How all year

I’ve felt your thrusts, every sound and sight piercing

like a little sword – the creak of gulls, the racket

as waves jostle pebbles, the road after rain –

shining like a river, the scrub of wind on the cheek, a flute

trilling – clean as a knife, the immeasurable chants of green,

of sky: messages, announcements. But of what? Who?

Then, last Tuesday, one peacock feather (surprise!)

spoke from the grass; Flannery called hers “a genuine

word of the Lord.” And I – as startled as Mary, nearly,

at your arrival in her chamber (the invisible

suddenly seen, urgent, iridescent, having put on light

for her regard) – I brim over like her, quickening. I can’t

stop singing, thoroughly pregnant with Word! ”

Lucy Shaw, Magnificat, part of collection published in  Angles of Light

Is It True?

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When I read the poem below, I thought of all the sweet, familiar traditions we share as a family that help us focus on Christmas truth – the hanging of the green, happy Christmas colors, twinkling lights reflected in the children’s eyes, candlelight and firelight, stars and tiny manger scenes – all celebrating “This most tremendous tale of all, Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue, A Baby in an ox’s stall, ,The Maker of the stars and sea, Become a Child on earth for me..”

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true ? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare —
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Christmas,   John Betjeman, Poet Laureate of U.K. 1972 until his death in 1984

Gathering, Remembering

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Cherishing story and image long loved

Opening to untold story, unpainted canvas

Breathing lingering frankincense and myrrh

Gathering rosemary, remembering.

Opening to untold story, unpainted canvas

Blessing fresh possibility

Gathering rosemary, remembering

Unfurling swirl of mystery

Blessing fresh possibility

Breathing lingering frankincense and myrrh

Unfurling swirl of mystery

Cherishing image and story

~Mary Ann Parker, 2011

Previously posted in december 2011

Let Christmas Unfold

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008In our garden we plant host plants like Milkweed, fennel,dill and parsley  for butterflies. Once the larvae ravenously feed on these and undergo the change to chrysalis, nothing much seems to be happening until, metamorphosis complete, the limp wet wings begin to emerge and struggle to unfurl.  During this process if there is any attempt to help or rush the struggle, averting the necessary conditions for growth and transformation, the butterfly will not fly or live.

In many ways, Advent is a similar process of waiting and transformation. We may be tempted to rush the slow but steady journey but we need to take the time to live and lean into the meaning and experience of the coming of Christ.  It is not yet Christmas.  It is Advent, a time to anticipate the story and meaning.  In her book Simply Wait, Pamela Hawkins suggests that we take a walk through our home, room by room, and say a short blessing in each space.  “Take your time, imagine how you will live in this time and place over the next few weeks in ways that could help you not to hurry Christmas.”

What other ways help you be present to this Advent day and let Christmas unfold?

Expecting

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006Advent is a season of anticipation, of expecting, of waiting for birth.  My first response to the noun expectancy points to waiting in anticipation of important creation and change. I am reminded of my pregnancies – the anxious wondering of confirmation followed by wonder, amazement, and yearning for birth, then holding my sons to my heart.

Then, my grandchildren have been welcomed with joy in planning, preparing, making room!  For each of our granddaughters, I have begun writing a letter as soon as I heard the announcement of their conception.  I write that letter during our time waiting for them and give it to their parents when they are born to be kept until they are ready to keep it themselves.  I am journaling right now to the girl child who will come into our arms in the Spring. She is already in my heart.

Advent is like that journal for me – an expression of unconditional love and longing, a looking forward to the promise of a coming that will forever change our lives.

Waiting

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006“Advent is a dance set to the rhythm of waiting. We wait for the holy, we wait for the birth, we wait for the light…Advent reminds us that we are a pregnant people, for God calls each of us to bring forth the Christ.”      Jan Richardson, in Sacred Journeys:  A Woman’s Book of Daily Prayer.

 

Fear Not

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When an angel

snapped the old thin threads of speech

with an untimely birth announcement,

slit the seemly cloth of an evern more blessed

event with shears of miracle,

invaded the privacy of a dream, multiplied

to ravage the dark silk of the sky,

the innocent ears, with swords of sound:

news in a new dimension demanded

qualification.  The righteous were

as vulnerable as others.  They trembled

for those strong antecedent Fear nots,

whether goatherds, virgins, worker

in wood, or holy barren priests.

In our nights

our complicated modern dreams

rarely flower into visions.  No contemporary

Gabriel dumbfounds our worship,

or burning, visits our bedrooms.

No satellite signpost hauls us, earthbound

but star-struck, half around the world

with hope.  Are our sensibilities too blunt

to be assaulted with spatial power-plays

and far-out proclamations of peace?

Sterile, skeptics, yet we may be broken

to his slow, silent birth, his beginning

new in us.  His big-ness may still burst

our self-containment to tell us,

without angels’ mouths, Fear not.

God knows we need to hear it, now,

when he may shatter, with his most shocking

coming, this proud, cracked place,

and more if, for longer waiting,

he does not.

Luci Shaw, Accompanied by Angels:  Poems of the Incarnation

Looking for the Star

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 The house is very quiet and still this afternoon, on this first Sunday of Advent. I have loved having all 12 (and another on the way) of us together.  After our family’s Sunday morning at church and lunch together, our adult children and our grandchildren have dispersed to their own homes.  Those who live in Fort Worth have been here the last 4 days during which we gathered all for a Thanksgiving feast, and as has become our tradition, then the Christmas tree was brought in and festive decorations begun. Lights in the yard and on the tree were reflected in the happy eyes of little girls, music filled spaces between laughter and excited conversation.   

As I sit among all the not yet placed wreaths, manger scenes, garlands and dear old things we hang on the tree, I think how the anticipation and joy did not leave with the children.  I sit in the quiet for a time.  Then I light the first Advent candle and begin listening to James Galway’s On the Way to Bethlehem.   Advent begins. How will you mark your Advent journey?  I would love to hear.

Adult Advent Announcement

O Lord,
Let Advent begin again
In us,
Not merely in commercials;
For that first Christmas was not
Simply for children,
But for the
Wise and the strong.
It was
Crowded around that cradle,
With kings kneeling.
Speak to us
Who seek an adult seat this year.
Help us to realize,
As we fill stockings,
Christmas is mainly
For the old folks —
Bent backs
And tired eyes
Need relief and light
A little more.
No wonder
It was grown-ups
Who were the first
To notice
Such a star.

~  David A. Redding,, from If I Could Pray Again