Monday Morning Musing: Advent 1

This season, or rather, this group of seasons, (Advent-Christmas-Epiphany) is what fills my spirit up. Not in that jolly, let's-decorate-and-shop sort of way. But in more of a the-world-could-be-coming-to-an-end-now-how-shall-we-live way. I know. It's a lot. The readings assigned for the four Sundays of Advent wake us up with admonitions and exclamations. Christianity remembers what has been

in light of what is yet to be. It's as luminous as candles flickering in a wreath of flame.

This season calls us into a beautiful not yet. A place we remember somewhere deep within but cannot name. And so we name it with ritual and rite, with liturgy and illumination, with prayer and poetry.

Here is a wondrous work for this first week of Advent, by the poet David Graham, called Listening For Your Name. I hope it calls to you from someplace you almost remember.

As a father steals into his child's half-lit bedroom

slowly, quietly, standing long and long

counting the breaths before finally slipping

back out, taking care not to wake her,

and as that night-lit child is fully awake the whole

time, with closed eyes, measured breathing,

savoring a delicious blessing she couldn't

name but will remember her whole life,

how often we feel we're being watched over,

or that we're secretly looking in on the ones

we love, even when they are far away,

or even as they are lost in the sleep

no one wakes from--what we know

and what we feel can fully coincide, like love

and worry, like taking care in full silence

and secrecy, like darkness and light together.