Tag Archives: Jesus

Christmas Day: Last Last Thing

After all we have done and left undone,after joy, after grief, after unbelief,after wrapping paper scattered on floor,after food is gone or stashed away,after conversations thrive or starve,after bombs are thrown and names are known,after fire and flood, after duties done,after every going down of Sun,the darkness still has not overcome,the darkness will not overcome.

Advent 12: You are in the wilderness

For Thou art in the wildernessDrawing and leading Thine Own love…(Christina Rossetti, “The Chiefest Among Ten Thousand”) The barren land will bear fruitbut now, in this waiting time, I must gowhere barrenness still lingersto meet with You who chose thisof all the compass points in creation,of every nook of the ever-expanding universe –chose this place,Continue reading “Advent 12: You are in the wilderness”

Advent 7: Shedding

When the cry comes out – Prepare the way! –are we found listening, heeding or tending toour own private laneways, our private gains?If I am to hear Him when He should appearand if my feet will be swift and fleet,I must jettison allthat I hold yet holds me, andthrow off the loves that so easilyContinue reading “Advent 7: Shedding”

Advent 5: Last Things

Hospital room. While my uncle and I tried to tend to my grandmother’s needs, we heard behind the curtain divider a granddaughter and grandson discuss cremation plans and how the west has avoided death while the east (both fresh from travel) takes the wiser path, rubbing face and hands in body ash and staring death’sContinue reading “Advent 5: Last Things”

Advent 4: Airport Christmas

We always move around and sofittingly our Christmas is mobile,each returning to their homes, like Josephand a heavily expectant Mary, carryingthe hope of the world in her womb. We depart carrying gifts in shopping bagsor catch up on forgotten things at airport stores.And when we arrive: reunion, butno birth, Messiah forgotten where we left HimandContinue reading “Advent 4: Airport Christmas”

Advent 3: Longing

O Lord, restore us deaf and blind, Unclose our lips tho’ dumb. (Christina Rossetti, “Advent”) At my desk, while a quiet internal road ebbed and flowed with the business traffic of the common afternoon, and wind kicked up dust from the gravel carpark and tossed hair into plaintive matts, and threw clothes into disarray IContinue reading “Advent 3: Longing”

“Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble?”

When David’s son scannedthe spiritual wreckage that was His houseand delared, “Destroy thisand I’ll raise it in three days,”He meantwhat He said not asmetaphor – which my students all knowis a kind of lying, a hedging of bets –but as Truth, both in symbol and fact.Daily they destroyed this house, and He,the true house, wouldContinue reading ““Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble?””