Part of one of my favorite poems, period. Now with connections to yesterday’s words from Barth. Read along to the music….
from “Messiah (Christmas Portions)” by Mark Doty
…
Advent Reflection – Day 21
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Advent Reflection – Day 20
I fully intended to provide some commentary on this amazing excerpt from Karl Barth’s commentary on Luke 1:5-23, but he says it all and brings together the seemingly disparate themes I’ve been dwelling on this season: the sacred and the secular, our disconnection and longings for more, and our role as heralds and followers. All I could do was hang on and try to redact it faithfully (emphases mine).
“Above all it saddens us that we are so cut off from each other, that there are always such different worlds – you in your house and me in my house, you with your thoughts and me with mine. This is simply not the way life is meant to be, this separate life we all lead. But with one single change we could have infinitely more joy and good fortune and righteousness among us, if we could open our hearts and talk with each other.
And then we experience the fact that we are mute. Yes, we certainly talk with each other, we find words all right, but never the right words; never the words that would really do justice to what actually moves us, what actually lives in us; never the words that would really lead us out of our loneliness into community. Our talk is always such an imperfect, wooden, dead talk. Fire will not break out in it, but can only smolder in our words….
Zechariah was mute because he did not believe the angel. We all are just like Zechariah in the sanctuary. Every one of us has a hidden side of our being that is, as it were, in touch with God. We are secretly in a close connection with the eternal truth and love, even if we ourselves are not aware of it…. Yes, this inward word of God, which God speaks to us by means of his angels, contains precisely that which so moves and unsettles us. It is this word that so delights and grieves us, and which we would so gladly tell one another.
Without this word we would not suffer so deeply from the need that presses in upon us, and from the injustice that we must stand by and watch. We would not be able to resist so powerfully and become so indignant against the lies and violence that we see dominating life apart from this word. We would not have the urge to exercise love and to become loving if it were not for the fact that within us is God’s voice, placed into our heart. In this way God spoke to Zechariah of something quite grand – a coming great decision and turning of all things, of the approaching better age at hand, of the Savior meant to become a helper for the people, and of his herald, whose father he himself would become….
Believing is not something as special and difficult or even unnatural as we often suppose. Believing means that what we listen to, we listen to as God’s speech. What moves us is not just our own concern, but precisely God’s concern….
We must once and for all give up trying to be self-made individuals. Let us cease preaching by ourselves, being right by ourselves, doing good by ourselves, being sensible by ourselves, improving the world by ourselves. God wants to do everything, certainly through us and with us and never without us; but our participation in what he does must naturally originate and grow out of his power, not ours. O, how we could then speak with one another. For whatever does not grow out of God produces smoke, not fire….
So now here we stand, simultaneously deaf and mute like Zechariah…. In spite of his unbelief, he was still a herald of Advent, one who waited for God…. When everything came to pass which he could not believe and could not express, then he was suddenly able to believe and speak. For God does not stand still when we come to a standstill, but precedes us with his deeds and only waits so that we can follow. And so we will accept – even with all that we cannot say, and with all that we have not yet heard – that we are also heralds of Advent. We will finally believe, and then we will also hear.”
– Karl Barth, “Lukas 1:5-23,” from Predigten 1917 , translated by Robert J. Sherman in Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas (Farmington, Penn.: The Plough Publishing House), 133-140.
Advent Reflection – Day 19
Advent by Rae Armantrout
In front of the craft shop,
a small nativity,
mother, baby, sheep
made of white
and blue balloons.
*
Sky
god
girl.
Pick out the one
that doesn’t belong.
*
Some thing
close to nothing
flat
from which,
fatherless,
everything has come.
Advent Reflection – Day 18
Getting back to notions of the secular and sacred…
I’m being haunted by a mythical creature. It’s Sufjan Stevens’ Christmas Unicorn. It’s stalking me. I’m not sure what it wants. I suspect it doesn’t have a real agenda or even one coherent message for me, but over and over again this season I’ve heard one couplet or another trotting up behind me, pretending to mind its own business, but being all sly and apropos and quite obviously following me for the rest of the day.
This weekend involved spending too much time in my own head exploring the spectrum of mental health and illness on which most of us fall in between, and how we all set ourselves and each other up for crazy, and here came the lines
Oh I’m a criminal pathology
With a history of medical care
I’m frantic shopper and a brave pill popper
And they say my kind are rare
I’ve been devoting much energy toward keeping Christmas simple this year, but yesterday was a full day of shopping and preparations and hoofbeats that sounded like
Oh I’m hysterically American
I’ve a credit card on my wrist….
I dip into a few of the posts littered around my virtual life written by people doing what they’re supposed to be doing – digging for reality, making meaning, sharing insights, confronting others’ otherness – and instead of inspiring me, it compounds my cynicism even as I sit down to do the same thing.
We are legions wide and we chose no sides
We are masters of mystique
This time of year I find myself saying “‘Tis the season” to just about everything, good and ill, because it is. Does any other time of year catalyze so much reconciliation and relational dysfunction? It’s the season of connection and disconnection that brings out the best and the worst in us. Our overconsumption in this time represents the antithesis of the historic call to fast and yet it becomes a form of stress that performs at least one of the functions of fasting: it reveals our failings and discontents. We have to face how disconnected and dissatisfied we really are because the season stirs in us longings to be connected and satisfied.
The Christmas Unicorn’s main theme is our search for the sacred in the secular. We have to admit that we are working with a mishmash of observances of our own creation at Christmas, but it doesn’t mean there’s nothing there to observe.
Oh I’m a Christian holiday
I’m a symbol of original sin
I’ve a pagan tree and magical wreath
And a bowtie on my chinOh I’m a pagan heresy
I’m a tragic-al Catholic shrine
I’m a little bit shy with a lazy eye
And a penchant for sublime….For I make no full apology
For the category I reside
I’m a mythical mess with a treasury chest
I’m a construct of your mind….
The Christmas Unicorn freely and unapologetically admits he’s a mongrel beast, as are all our human holy-days, as are we all. Our traditions are artificial constructs that alternately gain and lose significance over time, which is why we require new ones, even if they are artificial constructs. We long for the sublime, but it’s a little too subliminal for us. We need to attach it to something concrete or to establish something concrete from which to jump into it. Nostalgia manifests our desire to be part of a tradition, which in turn outs our desire to be part of something larger than ourselves. Those desires can and will be misdirected, sure. We can put our hope in the nostalgia itself, but there’s nothing wrong with the impulse, and the occasional misdirection is a symptom of reality. We were created to be part of something larger that is not yet complete.
You may dress in the human uniform, child
But I know you’re just like me
I’m a Christmas Unicorn! (Find the Christmas Unicorn!)
You’re a Christmas Unicorn too!
And then the beast slays me with a borrowed refrain as nostalgic to my generation as White Christmas, at once a confession and assurance of pardon:
Love, love will tear us apart again
It’s all right. I love you.
Advent Reflection – Day 16
Usually we remember the massacre of the innocents after Christmas, but this year we’re remembering a little early. I sorted through classical images of the scene until I hit upon Leon Cogniet’s, painted in 1824, and I had to stop. It would be fitting to show (and you may see the detail that stopped me in my tracks here http://u1.ipernity.com/20/06/51/11880651.e59938c2.560.jpg), but this scribe decided we can all imagine the horror just fine. Better to be confronted with a glimpse of “the world’s hope,” fragile as he seems here.
Who Says
While the innocents were being massacred who says
that flowers didn’t bloom, that the air didn’t breathe bewildering scents.
that birds didn’t rise to the heights of their most accomplished songs
that young lovers didn’t twine in love’s embraces
But would it have been fitting if a scribe of the time had shown this
and not the monstrous uproar on a street drenched with blood
the wild screams of mothers with infants torn from their arms
the scuffling, the senseless laughter of soldiers
aroused by the touch of women’s bodies and young breasts warm with milk
Flaming torches tumbled down stone steps
there seemed no hope of rescue
and violent horror soon gave way to the still more awful
numbness of despair
At that moment covered by the southern night’s light shadow
a bearded man leaning on a staff
and a girl with a child in her arms
were fleeing lands ruled by the cruel tyrant
carrying the world’s hope to a safer place
beneath silent stars in which these events
had been recorded centuries ago
– Julia Hartwig, translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh
“Flight to Egypt” by Ethiopian iconographer Amete Sellassie
Advent Reflection – Day 15
More on the light that shines in the darkness….
How the Light Comes: A Blessing for Christmas Day
“And the Darkness Did Not Overcome It” by Jan L. Richardson
I cannot tell you how the light comes.
What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining.
That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us.
That it loves searching out what is hidden what is lost what is forgotten or in peril or in pain.
That it has a fondness for the body for finding its way toward flesh for tracing the edges of form for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart.
I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.
And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still
to the blessed light that comes.
Art & Reflection by Jan L. Richardson. Go here http://adventdoor.com/category/poetry/page/2/ to see more of her amazing Advent images and reflections or here http://janrichardsonimages.com/details.php?gid=60&pid=345 to purchase a digital download or art print
Advent Reflection – Day 14
I have a soft spot for carols that acknowledge that not all was perfect, peaceful, silent, or holy when Jesus was born, that the messiness of his birth and the world he was born into is part of the point of him being born at all. He comes to those who need him in a world that needs him. Pretty fables of all being calm and bright comfort me less than knowing the light shines in the darkness.
“He Came with His Love” performed by the Schola Cantorum of St. Peter’s in the Loop
First Coming
He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace
He came when the Heavens were unsteady
and prisoners cried out for release.
He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He died with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait
till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
He came, and his Light would not go out.
He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
– Madeleine L’Engle
Advent Reflection – Day 13
How to be a Poet, Advent Version
I figured if I rambled through enough of my favorite Advent-related writings a theme or two for the season would emerge. I’m still circling around the articulation of it, but the first theme relates to the implicit question of how to handle our holy days and seasons in our day and age.
In Day 10’s post Andrew Greeley writes that “we who are followers of Jesus do not run from the secular; rather we try to transform it. It is our mission to make holy the secular aspects of Christmas just as the early Christians baptized the Christmas tree.” The English language harbors many words that have acquired self-contradictory meanings. We can count the word “holiday” in their number. Taking a holiday implies checking out, vacation, a break from the reality of the everyday. Greeley encourages Christians instead to make our holidays, by steadily embracing certain qualities and, I would add, fostering a certain quality of attention to the time and times. Which brings us to another ambiguous word that has been much on my mind: “secular.” The word originally referred to something “of a generation or time” – timely rather than timeless. The Church began using it to distinguish between worldly and heavenly matters, “secular” denoting that which is passing away. From there it has come to signify that which is not religious or spiritual. In common usage it sometimes functions as the opposite of sacred, which it is not. It refers to the religiously neutral aspects of a particular time and place, which may or may not be sacred. Most of our daily activities would be considered secular – work, conversation, meals, recreation – yet we can easily recognize the spiritual significance and sacred potential of each of them. Seasons like Advent and Lent invite us to do so. Greeley reminds us to make holy our work, our conversations, and meals and recreational activities. Wendell Berry says “There no unsacred places.” During Advent we remember that God has come to us in time, at just the right time, and we redeem our time waiting for Him to come again. We are waiting for the eternal to enter the secular. Here’s the context of that line from Berry:
How to be a Poet
(to remind myself)
i
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.
ii
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
iii
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
– Wendell Berry
We observe Advent the way poets observe: through the radical simplicity of sitting down, being quiet, and learning to speak of silence with disturbing it. We bend our resources and histories toward playing our own particular parts in a larger intention and story. Rather than loudly denouncing the world for stealing our holiday we observe it and make it holy and offer it again. We watch and work for the sacred to animate our secular lives and celebrations. As the hopes and fears of our times and desecrated places rise to the surface so easily this time of year, we acknowledge them as our own and expect Jesus.
Advent Reflection – Day 12
“The Angel Spreads the Good News to the Shepherds” by Hua Xiaoxian
from “Going to God with the Shepherds”
If you want to go to God, go without
your certainties. Take your graces. Leave
your certainties behind. If you go looking
for a Triangle inside a Trefoil inside
a Conundrum, you’ll miss the greatest sight
of all, the Holy Trinity playing
children’s games on the lawns of heaven. If
you only look for the Virgin of the Window,
you’ll walk right past Our Lady, laughing and telling
stories with a group of friends….
And so
go with the shepherds on their angelic quest.
Go to that hick town that David left
as soon as he got the chance, go to the stable,
see what you never expected to see, the doors
to God opening in that manger against
all certainty….
– Louis William Countryman
Advent Reflection – Day 11
from “Room for Christ”
“It is no use saying that we are born two thousand years too late to give room to Christ. Nor will those who live at the end of the world have been born too late. Christ is always with us, always asking for room in our hearts.
But not it is with the voice of our contemporaries that he speaks, with the eyes of store clerks, factory workers, and children that he gazes; with the hands of office workers, slum dwellers, and suburban housewives that he gives. It is with the feet of soldiers and tramps that he walks, and with the heart of anyone in need that he longs for shelter. And giving shelter or food to anyone who asks for it, or needs it, is giving it to Christ….
[There was a] custom that existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning. In every house then, a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called ‘the stranger’s room’; and this was not because… the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because – plain and simple and stupendous fact – he was Christ.
It would be foolish to pretend that it is always easy to remember this. If everyone were holy and handsome, with alter Christus shining in neon lighting from them, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone. If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet, then people would have fought to make room for her. But that was not God’s way for her, nor is it Christ’s way for himself, now when he is disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth.”
– Dorothy Day
Homespun 
