Poetry

To announce and encourage a season of waiting seems preposterous to me sometimes. Too many people suffer through enforced waiting every day, and every path they try to take through their life’s wildernesses is blocked by human wreckage. The lectionary Gospel reading last week from Mark spoke of stars falling from the heavens, and for some people that image is not a metaphor. Some people’s skies are empty of signs of hope, and they can’t see a way through the darkness.

Yes, the realities of racism, violence against women, food insecurity, political unrest—so many painful realities that people face into everyday—make it hard for me to light the candles of Advent and sing hymns of waiting. We have waited long enough.

I wrestled with these thoughts as the prelude began in my church last week on the first Sunday in Advent. Then, with no rehearsal or liturgical prompting, three children formed into a circle at the front of the church and began to dance. Their innocent joy reached out into the sanctuary and, for a few moments at least, quieted my restless spirit.

As we enter into the second week of Advent and hear in the lectionary “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way,’” I am still restless for Gospel justice and peace to come soon. But those dancing children sparked in me a new imagining. Perhaps the sacred Star-flinger who sequined the skies in the beginning with light is now sowing stars into hungry and thirsty wildernesses by… [Read more…] about Advent Two: Preparing a Way

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

of the setting-free kind

truth
the setting-free kind if you know it
you should speak it
sing it like Mary did in the Bible: “God casts the mighty

from their thrones and fills the hungry with good things.”
but sounds of children’s growling bellies never score
in department store magnificat melodies.
doesn’t anybody get that “gentle Mary meek and mild” was

rasping out a revolution song? her belly swelling with
truth no one would want to hear: “God has scattered
the proud in their conceit. God has cast down the mighty from
their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” but how could we know? she was

“just a woman.” a teenager pregnant before her time and worse
pregnant before the wedding. what could a woman’s body
know? so somebody positioned her in a tableau and
left her there until Christmas day. then with

Mary attic-stored until the next cyber Monday
we sing instead Jesus loves me songs while our ears ring with
clatter from posturing pundits and politicians who can’t hear
the difference between the fickle-false fire of their own voices and

truth of the setting-free kind.

About Jill Crainshaw
Jill Crainshaw is a PCUSA minister and Blackburn Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is the author of several books on worship and ministry.… [Read more…] about An Advent Poem

“Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4).  “Sing for joy!” (Isaiah 12).

With these words, ancient biblical voices call us to joy on the third Sunday in Advent.

The Latin term for this week in the season of Advent is “Gaudete” or “Rejoice,” and on this Sunday many churches follow the historic practice of lighting a rose-hued candle of joy instead of the penitential purple or anticipatory blue candles of the other three Sundays.

I have been thinking in recent days that perhaps this Advent we should forego Rejoice Sunday. The world is too weary with violence and pain. Indeed, what manner of rejoicing even rings true as we strike a match and touch its flame to the joy candle on this year’s wreath?

My friend’s 75th birthday celebration made me stop and reconsider my decision to snuff out the joy candle. Party-goers were asked to write my friend a poem or blessing. As I thought about this request, I realized that my friend’s life itself is both blessing and poem, for she has done what she could over her years of living to be kind, not just during the idyllic weeks of quixotic Christmas snow globes, but for the season that is her lifetime, even during times when life was anything but kind to her.

Thinking about my friend’s 75 years of weeks and days of learning by doing how to be a kind and caring human being has made me reconsider the meaning of that rose-hued candle on the Advent wreath. A world weighed down by fear and grief needs gifts of kindness. We may even be… [Read more…] about Advent Three: Rejoice?