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 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 9
The Gift
One day the gift arrives – outside your door,
Left on a windowsill, inside the mailbox,
Or in the hallway, far too large to lift.
Your postman shrugs his shoulders, the police
Consult a statute, and the cat miaows.
No name, no signature, and no address,
Only, “To you, my dearest one, my all…”
One day it fits snugly in your pocket,
Then fills the backyard like afternoon in Spring.
Monday morning, and it’s there at work –
Already ahead of you, or left behind
Amongst the papers, files and photographs;
And were there lipstick smudges down the side
Or have they just appeared? What a headache!
And worse, people have begun to talk:
“You lucky thing!” they say, or roll their eyes.
Nights find you combing the directory
(A glass of straw-colored wine upon the desk.)
Still hoping to chance on a forgotten name.
Yet mornings see you happier than before –
After all, the gift has set you up for life.
Impossible to tell, now, what was given
And what was not: slivers of rain on the window,
Those gold-tooled Oeuvres of Diderot on the shelf,
The strawberry dreaming in a champagne flute –
Were they part of the gift or something else?
Or is the gift still coming, on its way?
– Kevin Hart
Advent Reflection – Day 3
Advent
The wind in the winter wood
Drives the snowflake flock like a shepherd.
A fir tree, sensing how soon
She will be lit with holiness,
Strains to listen. She stretches wide
Her branches to the white paths,
Braced to brave the wind, growing
Toward that glorious night.
– Rainer Maria Rilke, born this day in 1875,
translated by Jenn Cavanaugh
Advent Reflection – Day 2
“Hope” by Thiago Elias
“Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul, and it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons…. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
– Vaclav Havel
Homespun 