Christmas 1.5 - Ashes to Sand and Water

Early on Christmas morning, while it was still dark, I set out for the beach, about a ten-minute drive from where we were staying. The other members of my family have exhausted their resources when it comes to dealing with the ashes, and it probably seems odd that I would have decided that a Christmas sunrise on the beach at St. Augustine was a right time and place, but when I flipped open my phone and saw the reading that came up, I felt vindicated.

As I drove through the dawning light and walked along the beach where we all ran and played and sunned and built sandcastles for so many years, I thought about those words:

Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. ~Luke 2:10-11.

God's son, my son, incarnation, cross, life, death, light overcoming the dark. It seemed to me exactly the right thing to do, to wade into the gentle ocean and scatter ashes as the sun rose.

The next day, I found this poem stashed away in my email, and it seemed appropriate and compelling, given how I had celebrated Christmas:

But the silence in the mind
is when we live best, within
listening distance of the silence
we call God. This is the deep
calling to deep of the psalm-
writer, the bottomless ocean
we launch the armada of
our thoughts on, never arriving.

It is a presence, then,
whose margins are our margins;
that calls us out over our
own fathoms. What to do
but draw a little nearer to
such ubiquity by remaining still?

(from "AD" by R.S. Thomas)

(Cross-posted from Metanoia)

Advent 3.6 ~ Mary et al.

I hope that Vinita Wright is good with me dropping these poems of hers in here. I found them when she first posted them ~ she blogs here ~ and could hardly wait for this week, with its focus on Mary, to get here.

I am much taken, in this difficult season, with expressions of the original dislocation it celebrates.

Gabriel

How much shrinking did you have to do
to get into the house?
How much shine had to be rubbed off
to become visible?
Did you carry the plan like a secret fire in the heart,
because such information could cause
a whole new rebellion up there?
And when the girl said yes, how much
did you ache to grow legs and lungs and
a head of hair, just to know the sensation
of your spirit breaking open?

Copyright © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Mary’s Mom

I’d like to know if you noticed anything different
about your daughter. On a particular day, did she seem pale
or out of breath? Was she weepy? Did you have to tell her things twice?
When the truth came out, did you agonize about why
she hadn’t come to you? Did you tell her father, or did she?
And—be honest, now—when you, being the mother, being a woman,
understood the situation, didn’t you enjoy some moments
of sheer satisfaction? Didn’t you say to God, one eyebrow arched,
“You couldn’t have picked a better one”?

Copyright © 2009 Vinita Hampton Wright

Advent 2.7 - Let in Your Child Tonight

I think this might be the best set of Advent meditations I've found this year, thanks to A Concord Pastor. First, commentary by Drew Christiansen, S.J:



And second, the poem itself is on the Concord Pastor site linked above.

For those of us struggling through Advent, challenged at every turn by the juxtaposition of our own sorrow against the light we try to await in hope, this is a tremendous poem for the transition from Week 2 to Week 3.

John O'Donohue

I have not, obviously, kept up with this blog at all this year. I've found Advent to be very rough going, much more difficult in an inexplicable kind of way than I had anticipated. I don't feel brave or hopeful or anticipatory at all.

But I read this, here, this morning. Words like courage and plenitude seem as foreign to me as Hebrew and Greek have been over the past two years of study, but I am not completely immune to the prospect of new beginnings and rhythms.



For a New Beginning


In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.


~ John O'Donohue ~