By surprise
Another treat of a poem from Jan Richardson:
For Joy
You can prepare
but still
it will come to you
by surprise
crossing through your doorway
calling your name in greeting
turning like a child
who quickens suddenly
within you
it will astonish you
how wide your heart
will open
in welcome
for the joy
that finds you
so ready
and still so
unprepared.
– Jan Richardson
“Let it penetrate your heart”
Always good to remember . . .
On this great gift of the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, I can’t help but post Mary’s beautiful words to Juan Diego, words that she speaks to each one of us:
“Listen, and let it penetrate your heart, my dear little son; do not be troubled or weighted down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?”
“Let it penetrate your heart.”
Awaiting His Arrival: From Shadow to Light
photo by Josh Scholten
…the rising sun will come to us from heaven
to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.
~Luke 1:78-79
…yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.
~John Donne
Prepare
And another beautiful Advent poem by Jan Richardson:
Prepare
Strange how one word
will so hollow you out.
But this word
has been in the wilderness
for months.
Years.
This word is what remained
after everything else
was worn away
by sand and stone.
It is what withstood
the glaring of sun by day,
the weeping loneliness of
the moon at night.
Now it comes to you
racing out of the wild
eyes blazing
and waving its arms,
its voice ragged with desert
but piercing and loud
as it speaks itself
again and again.
You can see her artwork and read the rest here.
The Advent Door
Stumbled upon this beautiful Advent poem:
Blessing the Door
First let us say
Copyright Jan Richardson
a blessing
upon all who have
entered here before
us.
You can see the sign
of their passage
by the worn place
on the doorframe
as they walked through,
the smooth sill
of the threshold
where they crossed.
Press your ear
to the door
for a moment before
you enter
and you will hear
their voices murmuring
words you cannot
quite make out
but know
are full of welcome.
On the other side
these ones who wait –
for you,
if you do not
know by now –
understand what
a blessing can do
how it appears like
nothing you expected
how it arrives as
visitor,
outrageous invitation,
child;
how it takes the form
of angel
or dream;
how it comes
in words like
How can this be?
and
lifted up the lowly:
how it sounds like
in the wilderness
prepare the way.
Those who wait
for you know
how the mark of
a true blessing
is that it will take you
where you did not
think to go.
Once through this door
there will be more:
more doors
more blessings
more who watch and
wait for you
but here
at this door of
beginning
the blessings cannot
be said without you
So lay your palm
against the frame
that those before you
touched
place your feet
where others paused in this entryway.
Say the thing that
you most need
and the door will
open wide.
And by this word
the door is blessed
and by this word
the blessing is begun
from which
door by door
all the rest
will come.
– Jan Richardson, from Through the Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas.
Advent . . . and bacon!
Love this post from Bill Donaghy over at The Heart of Things:
Bacon and the Glorious Subterfuge of Christmas
After Mass yesterday, which inaugurated the First Sunday of Advent, we took the family (and me dear ole’ Da who’s visiting from Maine) to a fairly new breakfast venue in town called The Bacon Press. They had an incredible array of bacon themed and bacon saturated fare, and needless to say, I felt as if I were still participating in the afterglow of the Heavenly Banquet, yeah, as if the source of all grace flowing from the altar at St. Patrick’s had indeed perchance sent a little trickle of glory into said establishment. If anyone is scandalized by what I just wrote I apolo… no, you have not yet tasted bacon.
I believe the Jews were kept from eating pork not because it was evil, but lo, because they could not yet withstand the wonder of bacon until the Messianic age, when bacon’s light would be set properly in its place as a secondary good, i.e. “You have a greater than bacon here.” – Matthew 12:41b
During breakfast, as I was enjoying some pancake-battered, deep-fried bacon with my beautiful wife and children, and me dear ole’ Da who’s visiting from Maine, himself so wrapt in the glory of bacon that he rose from table and shared the idea with the general manager that “instead of bagels you could have ‘bacels’ which would be bagels with bacon in them”, and as if it could get any better than all of this, Johnny Mathis soared through the restaurant radio singing “O Come Let Us Adore Him.” Here’s a sampling of the lyrics that I’m sure you’ve all been hearing in your local neighborhood Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton’s, etc.
O come all ye faithful
Joyful and triumphant…
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels
O come let us adore Him
Joyful and triumphant…
Come and behold Him
Born the King of angels
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
O come let us adore Him
Christ the Lord
Christ the Lord
I turned to Rebecca and had a 23 second adult conversation (which was long for us because we have three kids under 7 years old, were in a restaurant, and there was the added distraction of bacon). “How crazy is it that even in the midst of our secular culture, in our local neighborhood Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton’s, and The Bacon Press, we’re listening to Johnny Mathis soaring through the restaurant radio singing “O Come Let Us Adore Him”?
Ah, the Glorious Subterfuge of Christmas. We can run but we cannot hide. He comes. Even into Walmart, Targét, CVS, Tim Horton’s, and The Bacon Press. He comes in a thousand ways, down a million little roads bringing His Life and Love through any and every crack in the culture we leave open. So let’s not feel manipulated by the Christmas music playing in the KMart the day after Halloween, but rejoice! Jesus is in the Kmart! The Heavenly Bread lies in the tabernacle and the Heavenly Banquet is offered in our churches but in a certain sense the invitation is also in our stores, on car radios, workplaces, bus stations, everywhere at Christmas time! So come let us adore Him.
And that’s the glorious subterfuge of bacon.
O Advent!
And this from Elizabeth Scalia:
Holy Advent; Holy Hope in Light
November 30, 2014 by
Welcome! Welcome! I shed tears of gratitude and joy that you have come round again, O Advent, to shake us from our torpor as early night comes, and the match is struck, and the message is brought home once more; that we are forever in the absence of light; it is beyond us and exterior until we make it welcome and bring it, like a lover, within. Welcome into our deepest void, welcome into the parts of us touched by human frost and stunted. Welcome, O Light, beaming glorious, into remotest apertures of our souls, rays aglow, warmth permeating where we have left old fires unattended and embers to wane, and our abysses to grow chill, and uninhabitable. Welcome light; dispelling illusion, and chasing old ghosts to rest.
Today the promise; the story begins again. The beginning; quiescence, empty and void. Then movement; an annunciation; a Word -one boundless, vibrant “yes” that shakes creation; “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior!” Soon their will be dreams, and silent wondering, and a gathering, and a starry night rent with song. The Word Present penetrates lonely, lost humanity, and enters into the pain and fear, the tumult and whirlwind; He and sets His tent with us not merely dwelling among, but literally with us; with hunger, with the capacity for injury and doubt -with enough vulnerability to be broken- and within this espousal, everything is illuminated!
You can find the rest here.
Advent Sunday
Advent Sunday
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go ye out
With lighted lamps and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.
It may be at the midnight, black as pitch,
Earth shall cast up her poor, cast up her rich.
It may be at the crowing of the cock
Earth shall upheave her depth, uproot her rock.
For lo, the Bridegroom fetcheth home the Bride:
His Hands are Hands she knows, she knows His side.
Like pure Rebekah at the appointed place,
Veiled, she unveils her face to meet His Face.
Like great Queen Esther in her triumphing,
She triumphs in the Presence of her King.
His Eyes are as a Dove’s, and she’s Dove-eyed;
He knows His lovely mirror, sister, Bride.
He speaks with Dove-voice of exceeding love,
And she with love-voice of an answering Dove.
Behold, the Bridegroom cometh: go we out
With lamps ablaze and garlands round about
To meet Him in a rapture with a shout.
~Christina Rossetti
Fighting “the black dog”
Sharing this from Tod Worner:
The Vital Necessity of Advent
December 3, 2013 by
“Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”
– G.K. Chesterton.
Dear Jesus, do I need Advent. I just do. Living in the upper Midwest during the melancholic waning days of fall, begrudging the early arrival of snow flurries and enduring the bone-chill that summer had (mockingly) made me forget, I need Advent. You see, I am predisposed to what Winston Churchill once called “the black dog”. The black dog is an ill-defined woefulness that can gnaw at you at unpredictable times for indescribable reasons. Not classically a depression, it is rather a longing for something that is unfulfilled by anything here on earth. If not tilting into a fuller depression, perhaps this is a good thing. C.S. Lewis, after all, once wondered,
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.”
And that is why I need Advent. Advent, originating from the Latin “Adventus”, means “a coming, an approach, or an arrival”. It is a season of anticipation, of expectation and of reform in preparation for the arrival. But what is it we are anticipating, expecting, and preparing for? Nothing more than the entry of God into History, the Word Made Flesh, the Messiah, the Savior of Mankind. We are awaiting, expectantly and eagerly, the Central Event of Human History. The Incarnation. Nothing less than that. And that is why I need Advent.
You can finish reading over here.
Witnesses to Hope 