Advent Wreath-Lighting Liturgy: Hope

Jesus, as we enter again
into the odd story of your unusual arrival,
we find hope in the unprecedented.

We find hope
in the ambivalence and complexity
of words like restructuring and remission—
such open-future words
that could mean anything,
that mean anything could happen.

We find hope
in the mixed blessings
where our faithlessness and your faithfulness meet,
like our failure to care for your creation
leading to the unmerited favor
of this disconcertingly gorgeous fall.

detail from “The New Normal: Everyday Extremes and Disaster Disparities” by Roger Feldman
photo by Jenn Cavanaugh

You set the lonely in families
and the rootless in neighborhoods.
You bring the wanderers
into communities of faith
built and stewarded by generations
in the hope of our coming and yours.

Awaken us to our role
as astonished agents of hope
in such unlikely places
as our own gutted organizations,
our own unsettled families,
and our own anxious minds.

We are God’s people.
We light this candle
as a sign of our hope in the God
who comes to us in our darkest hour
and makes a home among us.
O come, Immanuel

Advent Again – day 21

earthly things and one from above

marika-spence-tornado

Tornado over Queensland, photograph by Marinka Spence

“Poem for the New Year” by Devin Johnston

I’ve tracked myself from day to day
how many steps through a field of snow
how many hours have I slept
what have I eaten
what did I burn
calories or cigarettes
what birds have poured
through Bellefontaine
where mausoleums bear the names
of Busch and Brown
Lemp and Spink
on marble white as winter endive
when I can read my title clear
to mansions in the skies
what have I read
how many words
what facts
statistics biometrics
what data aggregation
what news
of wins and losses
getting and spending
each dawn a color wheel
to gauge the shifting moods
the daylight sunk in trees
an index of attraction
According to the Tao Te Ching
each day brings more
and more of less
less and still less
with no end to nothing
and nothing left undone
Even here in Bellefontaine
along a winding street
silence brings an interval
of yet more distant sound
trucks along the interstate
a plane behind the clouds

Advent Again – day 4

“The word is very near to you…”

near-and-far

“Near and Far” by Jamie Heiden

“Nothing is Far” by Robert Francis

Though I have never caught the word
Of God from any calling bird,
I hear all that the ancients heard.
Though I have seen no deity
Enter or leave a twilit tree,
I see all that the seers see.
A common stone can still reveal
Something not stone, not seen, yet real.
What may a common stone conceal?
Nothing is far that once was near.
Nothing is hid that once was clear.
Nothing was God that is not here.
Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.
Here in the sun I sit alone
Between the known and the unknown.

Advent Again – Day 3

What are you waiting for?

from “I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for the Great Divide to be crossed

and I am anxiously waiting

for the secret of eternal life to be discovered

by an obscure general practitioner

and I am waiting

for the storms of life

to be over

and I am waiting

to set sail for happiness

and I am waiting

for a reconstructed Mayflower

to reach America

with its picture story and tv rights

sold in advance to the natives

and I am waiting

for the lost music to sound again

in the Lost Continent

in a new rebirth of wonder

 

I am waiting for the day

that maketh all things clear

and I am awaiting retribution

for what America did

to Tom Sawyer

and I am waiting

for Alice in Wonderland

to retransmit to me

her total dream of innocence

and I am waiting

for Childe Roland to come

to the final darkest tower

and I am waiting

for Aphrodite

to grow live arms

at a final disarmament conference

in a new rebirth of wonder

 

I am waiting

to get some intimations

of immortality

by recollecting my early childhood

and I am waiting

for the green mornings to come again

youth’s dumb green fields come back again

and I am waiting

for some strains of unpremeditated art

to shake my typewriter

magritte-la-clairvoyance

“La Clairvoyance” by René Magritte

 

and I am waiting to write

the great indelible poem

and I am waiting

for the last long careless rapture

and I am perpetually waiting

for the fleeing lovers on the Grecian Urn

to catch each other up at last

and embrace

and I am awaiting

perpetually and forever

a renaissance of wonder

Advent Again – Day 1

“Making Peace” by Denise Levertov

 

swords-to-ploughshares-evgeniy

“Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares” by Evgeniy Vuchetich, in reference to today’s lectionary reading: Isaiah 2:1-5

 

 

A voice from the dark called out,

‘The poets must give us

imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar

imagination of disaster. Peace, not only

the absence of war.’

      But peace, like a poem,

is not there ahead of itself,

can’t be imagined before it is made,

can’t be known except

in the words of its making,

grammar of justice,

syntax of mutual aid.

   A feeling towards it,

dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have

until we begin to utter its metaphors,

learning them as we speak.

  A line of peace might appear

if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,

revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,

questioned our needs, allowed

long pauses . . .

  A cadence of peace might balance its weight

on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,

an energy field more intense than war,

might pulse then,

stanza by stanza into the world,

each act of living

one of its words, each word

a vibration of light—facets

of the forming crystal.

Miss Vera Speaks

 

They ask how she grin through that face with that life.

I say I’s never shielded from nothing

‘Cept dying young.

 

People deep bruised by something

Talk like the world should end.

Won’t catch me dying every day like that.

 

‘Cause I seen them once

Just once – the cracks in the universe –

Thought I’d fall right through.

 

‘Stead I laughed – said some kind of God

Put up with a tattered-old place as here

Gotta have some grace for me.

 

– Jenn Cavanaugh

originally published in America, August 13, 2007

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