A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Twenty-Two -- "laid the Holy Child here inside my heart."

"The Miracle"
by Georg Johannes Gick


When all the winds were mild,
Mary came to me apart
and laid the Holy Child
here inside my heart.

My heart was made the manger,
and my body was the stall.
And now no man is stranger:
my life goes out to all,

To bring to each of them
this Child of heaven’s light,
to let them enter in, like flames
of candles to the holy night.

Source: The Shepherd’s Pipe


Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings/thoughts during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Twenty-One -- "The Great Joy"

Thomas Merton

The gospel of the nativity is, therefore, not merely the gentle comforting story of a mother and a sweet baby lying in a manger, a story which appeals to our hearts and brings us back once a year to the simplicity of our own lost childhood. It is a solemn proclamation of an event which is the turning point of all history – the coming of the Messiah, the anointed king and son of God, the Word-made-flesh, pitching his tent among us, not merely to seek and to save that which is lost, but to establish his kingdom.

The birth of the son of God is, then, our own birth to a new status, an elevation, an opening out of entirely new possibilities for humanity in Christ.

The nativity message is not only of joy but of the joy; the great joy which all the people of the world have always expected without realizing what it was. The nativity gospel is, then, the announcement of life.

Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings/thoughts during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Twenty -- "The Risk of Birth"

"The Risk of Birth"
by Madeleine L'Engle

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn-
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn-
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.


Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings/thoughts during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).  And I share this poem almost every year. I have loved it -- and been challenged by it --ever since I first read it in The Risk of Birth: A Gift Book of Christ Poems selected by Luci Shaw (my copy is so old that the retail price was just $1.45).

Right now, given the recent actions of the current U.S. administration and congress, the first two lines of the first stanza strike me especially hard. Instead of "the earth," in my heart and hearing I substitute the word "humans." Especially the most vulnerable among us.

The hatred and lack of civility in our discourse disturbs me. The nasty wall-building -- rhetorical and literal -- dismay me. The self-centeredness of many politicians and those who voted for them confounds me. The seeming intentional provocations of international "enemies" alarms me. As a result of the actions of the administration and congress, it does feel as if "time runs out & the sun burns late."

All those things bother me, if I am honest, because I behold the seeds of them all in myself. Seeds which, if not for the grace of God, could too easily flower into bad fruit. Hatefulness, inequality, bigotry, warlikeness, and more. Far from the fruit the Christ-child, that Love who took the risk of birth, came to bring us -- "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control."

I wrestle with how to be a person of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, and self-control when it feels like the times call for outrage, action, protest, and rebellion against the powers and principalities.  Perhaps they are not incompatible. How do I channel my outrage into appropriate soulful action while abiding in love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

In other words, how do I let Love still take the risk of birth when I'd rather be angry and in-your-face?

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn-
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.  

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Nineteen -- "No child does"

"A Child in Starlight"
by Elmer Diktonius

There is a child,
A new-born child --
A rosy, new-born child.

The child whimpers --
All children do.
And the mother takes the child to her breast.
Then it is quiet.
So is every child.

The roof is not over tight --
Not all roofs are.
And the star puts
Its silver muzzle through the chink,
And steals up to the little one's head.
Stars like children.

And the mother looks up at the star
And understands --
All mothers understand.
And presses her frightened baby
To her breast --
But the child sucks quietly in starlight:
All children suck in starlight.

It knows nothing yet about the cross:
No child does.

Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).   

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Seventeen -- "We left our sheep that night/ And found the Lamb."

"Star Witness”
by Beth Merizon

How could we be anything but true
believers –
We shepherds who heard the news
first-hand from heaven.

There stood that angel on the
grazing ground
Like a white fan,
Like a white blaze,
lighting the air all around;
Telling us the Promised One had come,
And where He was,
And what His destiny.

And then that great arc of angels
Singing a gloria.




Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Sixteen -- "Silence, God's Presence, and Advent"

Biblical parallels. I've been thinking about them a lot this season -- especially when it seems like all sorts of parallels are being made between the worlds in the Old Testament and the New -- to point to Jesus' coming. Still, I thought of a parallel that I don't think I've seen anybody else has drawn -- and that is between Jesus and Elijah and caves (hmmm, perhaps that's a tri-allel).

But it occurred to me, that Jesus was probably born in a cave (mangers in that day and place often put in caves) and Elijah hiding out in one. And how silence infused them both.

Yes, silence.

Silence speaks – yes, speaks, oddly enough – to a hunger evident in our culture. Just look at the rising interest in silent retreats and contemplative reading. Something in our souls tells us that getting quiet is a good way to meet God. That is something the prophet Elijah discovered. When he needed to hear God, the Lord told him:

“Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.” Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.”

Now Elijah was not a Quaker, though we would be happy to claim him (but only if he repented of killing the 800 prophets of Baal – hardly a Quaker act). Come to think of it, maybe Elijah was the first Friend. He learned that God was in “a gentle whisper.” What Elijah’s story teaches us lies at the heart of Friends silence. Quaker silence is about the real presence of Christ being with us in an intimate way. Quaker silence encourages us to relax so deeply in the love of God that we hear the Spirit’s voice whispering softly in our soul’s ear.

And that is "the silence of eternity" that Whittier spoke of -- a silence experienced by Elijah and those who stopped by the manger in the cave. At that manger they experienced a holiness that awed them into stillness and silence which is the only appropriate response to being in the presence of the Divine.

And in that silence, they heard in their souls the words echoing down eternity's way "`et in terra pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis." "On earth peace, good will toward all humankind."

It is my hope during this season that I put aside the rush of life and any expectation of hearing God amidst the busyness. I need to wait quietly by the cave of my soul for the Eternal presence.

Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).  

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Eighteen -- "O all ye who have trod/ The wine-press of affliction"

Poor mothers, with your hoard
Of endless love and countless pain–
Remember all her grief, her gain,
The Mother of the Lord.

Mourners, half blind with woe,
Look up! One standeth in this place,
And by the pity of His face
The Man of Sorrows know.

Wanderers in far countrie,
O think of Him, who came, forgot,
To His own, and they received Him not–
Jesus of Galilee.

O all ye who have trod
The wine-press of affliction, lay
Your hearts before His heart this day–
Behold the Christ of God!


Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
Source: from “A Hymn for Christmas Morning” in Thirty Years: Being Poems New and Old
Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life). 

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Fifteen -- "A Child will be our King."

Prophets

Once in the Advent season
When I was walking down
A narrow street

I met a flock of children
Who all came running up to me
Saying that they were prophets
And for a penny they
Would prophesy

I gave them each a penny

They started out
By rummaging in trash-cans
Until they found
A ragged piece of silk

It’s blue, they said
Blue is a holy color
Blue is the color that
The mountains are
When they are far away

They laid the rag
On a small fire
Of newspaper and shavings
And burned it in the street

They scraped up all the ashes
And with them decorated
Each other’s faces

Then they ran back to me
And stood
In a circle ‘round me

We stood that way
In a solemn silence
Until
One of the children spoke

It was the prophecy!

He said that long before
The pear tree blossoms
Or sparrows in the hedges
Begin to sing

A Child will be our King.

--by Anne Porter

Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life). 

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Fourteen -- "Dear Jesus, I have to give you something"

As often as I look at the place where the Lord is born, my heart enters into a wondrous conversation with the Child Jesus. And I say, “Dear Lord Jesus, how you are shivering; how hard you lie for my sake, for the sake of my redemption. How can I repay you?”

Then I seem to hear the Child’s answer, “Dear Jerome, I desire nothing but that you shall sing ‘Glory to God in the highest’ and be content. I shall be even poorer in the Garden of Olives and on the Holy Cross.”

I speak again, “Dear Jesus, I have to give you something. I will give you all my money.”

The Child answers, “Heaven and earth already belong to me. I do not need your money; give it to the poor, and I will accept it as if it were given to me.”

By Jerome
Source: Cries from the Heart


Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Eleven

The Christmas Star in the night sky, the shining of the Christmas light in the night – all this is the sign that light breaks into the darkness. Though we see about us the darkness of unrest, of family discord, of class struggle, of competitive jealousy and of national hatred, the light shall shine and drive it out.…Wherever the Christmas Child is born in a heart, wherever Jesus begins his earthly life anew – that is where the life of God’s love and of God’s peace dawns again.

Emmy Arnold
Source: Watch for the Light

*****************

When the Song of the Angels Is Stilled
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

 

Howard Thurman

"The Work of Christmas" 

Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).

A Quaker Advent Reader: Day Eight

"O Simplicatas"
by Madeleine L’Engle


An angel came to me
and I was unprepared
to be what God was using.
Mother I was to be.
A moment I despaired,
thought briefly of refusing.
The angel knew I heard.
According to God’s Word
I bowed to this strange choosing.

A palace should have been
the birthplace of a king
(I had no way of knowing).
We went to Bethlehem;
it was so strange a thing.
The wind was cold, and blowing,
my cloak was old, and thin.
They turned us from the inn;
the town was overflowing.

God’s Word, a child so small
who still must learn to speak
lay in humiliation.
Joseph stood, strong and tall.
The beasts were warm and meek
and moved with hesitation.
The Child born in a stall?
I understood it: all.
Kings came in adoration.

Perhaps it was absurd;
a stable set apart,
the sleepy cattle lowing;
and the incarnate Word
resting against my heart.
My joy was overflowing.
The shepherds came, adored
the folly of the Lord,
wiser than all men’s knowing.

********************
"The Canticle of Mary"

My soul magnifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;
Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid;
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed;
Because He who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is His name;
And His mercy is from generation to generation
on those who fear Him.
He has shown might with His arm,
He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
and has exalted the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich He has sent away empty.
He has given help to Israel, his servant, mindful of His mercy
Even as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his posterity forever



Yes, I know that Quakers don't recognize liturgical seasons. But I like Advent and so will be sharing various readings during this season (all of which fit with my understanding of Friends faith and life).  

"All Creation Waits" - An Advent Book Recommendation

Though we Quakers normally eschew recognizing "holy-days," believing as we do, that no day is more holy than any other, I must confess that Advent is my favorite of the liturgical seasons. I love the poetry, songs, art, and anticipation of this special time -- the hope that it embodies.

Still, as a Friend, I remain fully rooted in the sacramental potential that each day's quotidian activities afford. Hence the title of my blog -- "Holy Ordinary." So I was delighted to receive a copy of All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings.

In this delightful book by Gayle Boss (illustrated by David G. Klein) the wonder of advent is unveiled in a fresh way through the most natural life of this world -- that of God's humblest creatures.  Boss takes us into the very heart of humble words of Romans 8:22 that "the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time." We humans far too often make Christian faith all about us -- seeing ourselves as the pinnacle of life on earth. Boss's book reminds that we are a part of the "whole creation" and that advent is a "mystery of new beginnings."

Instead of wise men, shepherds, or even sanitized sheep of most congregational Christmastime crèches, we are invited into the world of chipmunks, raccoons, wild turkeys, lake trout, and even snakes (who often get little respect from Christians who have a memory of a certain serpent in Eden).  Boss opens her introduction with a quote from Meister Eckhart:

Every single creature is full of God
and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature–
even a caterpillar–
I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God
is every creature.

She then takes us into worlds of burrowy, hibernating, downy anticipation of new creation.  Her short meditations reveal the peace and grace of the wild things that are as surely a part of God's creation as are we. Boss presents us with stories of hope amidst the animals' realities of cold, predators, and privation of the season. Realities that many of us, wrapped in a warm houses filled with food and family, forget. Our biggest discomforts rarely amount to first world inconveniences.  Yet, much of the world identifies with realities faced by our animal friends. We would do well to do so, as well. They remind us that many of us live in a consumer society that has us dangling a hair's breadth from economic disaster -- and that death and despair can stalk even we comfortable middle class Americans. And yet, there is still a hope that is eternal. Advent and Boss's meditations remind us of that.

Wendell Berry once wrote:
When despair for the world grows in me
 and I wake in the night at the least sound
 in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, 
I go and lie down where the wood drake 
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. 
I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water. 
And I feel above me the day-blind stars 
waiting with their light. For a time 
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

All Creation Waits takes us into the peace -- and grace and hope -- of wild things and the mystery and blessing of Advent. You'll want to get a copy for you, your family, and others you love.


© Wendell Berry. "The Peace of Wild Things" is excerpted from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry.

"With the voices singing in our ears, saying That this was all folly..."

The Journey of the Maji

by T. S. Eliot

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

"The Journey of the Maji" by T.S. Eliot from Collected Poems 1909-1962. © Faber and Faber, 1974. (buy now)

From "The Writer's Almanac"

"Lo, in the silent night..."

Lo, in the silent night
A child to God is born

And all is brought again
That ere was lost or lorn.

Could but thy soul, O man
Become a silent night!
God would be born in thee
And set all things aright.

Unknown
Source: 15th Century verse

Add your thoughts at inward/outward

December -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here—and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels hovering overhead? Hark.

-- by Gary Johnson. From "The Writer's Almanac"

Advent -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

Advent

by Mary Jo Salter

Wind whistling, as it does
in winter, and I think
nothing of it until

it snaps a shutter off
her bedroom window, spins
it over the roof and down

to crash on the deck in back,
like something out of Oz.
We look up, stunned—then glad

to be safe and have a story,
characters in a fable
we only half-believe.

Look, in my surprise
I somehow split a wall,
the last one in the house

we're making of gingerbread.
We'll have to improvise:
prop the two halves forward

like an open double door
and with a tube of icing
cement them to the floor.

Five days until Christmas,
and the house cannot be closed.
When she peers into the cold

interior we've exposed,
she half-expects to find
three magi in the manger,

a mother and her child.
She half-expects to read
on tablets of gingerbread

a line or two of Scripture,
as she has every morning
inside a dated shutter

on her Advent calendar.
She takes it from the mantel
and coaxes one fingertip

under the perforation,
as if her future hinges
on not tearing off the flap

under which a thumbnail picture
by Raphael or Giorgione,
Hans Memling or David

of apses, niches, archways,
cradles a smaller scene
of a mother and her child,

of the lidded jewel-box
of Mary's downcast eyes.
Flee into Egypt, cries

the angel of the Lord
to Joseph in a dream,
for Herod will seek the young

child to destroy him. While
she works to tile the roof
with shingled peppermints,

I wash my sugared hands
and step out to the deck
to lug the shutter in,

a page torn from a book
still blank for the two of us,
a mother and her child.

by Mary Jo Salter, from Open Shutters. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. (buy now)

from "The Writers Almanac"

Karma -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

Christmas was in the air and all was well
With him, but for a few confusing flaws
In divers of God's images. Because
A friend of his would neither buy nor sell,
Was he to answer for the axe that fell?
He pondered; and the reason for it was,
Partly, a slowly freezing Santa Claus
Upon the corner, with his beard and bell.

Acknowledging an improvident surprise,
He magnified a fancy that he wished
The friend whom he had wrecked were here again.
Not sure of that, he found a compromise;
And from the fulness of his heart he fished
A dime for Jesus who had died for men.

-- Edward Arlington Robinson

Christmas -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

Though crowded be the inn, although God’s son
Is lying in the hay, my soul may enter.
There’s need, on man of flesh, of thoughts that centre
On fleshly things today: here cryeth one.

Who’ll cry one day for us, compared to whom
A queen’s newborn is but a worthless plaything.
This child in manager will fulfil our waiting
Whenas the times are full and ease our doom.

God resteth in our flesh, here fatherless,
In heaven motherless. Word co-creative,
God, Father of the virgin and her native,
Lies in the hay. Rest here and cease thy stress,

My soul, cease rhyming without rhyme or reason.
A mute humility is here in season.

-- by Constantijn Huygens

The Winter Is Cold, Is Cold -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

The winter is cold, is cold.
All’s spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?

If joy’s gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life.
If I protect myself
I’m hiding, Lord, from you.
How we defend ourselves
In ancient suits of mail!

Protected from the sword,
Shrinking from the wound,
We look for happiness,
Small, safety-seeking, dulled,
Selfish, exclusive, in-turned.
Elusive, evasive, peace comes
Only when it’s not sought.

Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world.
Let me stretch out my hands
To purifying fire,
Clutching fingers uncurled.
Look! Here is the melting joy.
My heart beats once again.

--by Madeleine L’Engle

Birthing -- A Poem for this Season of Wonder

How does one birth peace. . .
in a world that seems to prefer the profits of war?
How can one birth hope. . .
in a time when devastation is born of poverty and pandemic?
How does one birth love. . .
in a world whose heart is captive to fear?
How can one birth joy. . .
How can one birth joy?
The plastic manger scene on the front lawn
just doesn't do it!
Birthing is so much more!
It is, and requires. . .
radical intimacy,
prolonged patience,
the coming together of pain and ecstasy,
the joining of our deepest hopes and fears.
Face it,
birthing is a messy business.
And yet this process occurs every moment of our lives:
as our bodies birth cell upon cell,
as our minds birth ideas and dreams into the world,
as our spirits birth. . .
in the midst of labor and pain. . .
as our spirits birth.. JOY!

-- by Mark Unbehagen