Light in Darkness

            The light shines in the darkness,
           and the darkness can not overcome it.

                         —John 1.5


And the light is the life of all people.
In Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan,
the light shines and the darkness can't overcome it.
In those who trust, who hope, who heal, who bear witness,
the light shines.
Even in those who fear whoever's not White,
in those who despair of democracy,
or those who consider women as objects,
still, somehow, the light shines.
In days when our love falters and our hope loses its footing
the light shines.
In our deepest apathy and unbelief,
in our worst sin, still the light shines in the darkness.
The light that is the life of all people is our salvation,
shining in the unknown, shining in the unseeable,
now and always, still shining.
Still. Shining.

 

Steve Garness-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 27, 2023 

Good Is the Flesh

Good is the flesh that the Word has become,
good is the birthing, the milk in the breast,
good is the feeding, caressing and rest,
good is the body for knowing the world,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body for knowing the world,
sensing the sunlight, the tug of the ground,
feeling, perceiving, within and around,
good is the body, from cradle to grave,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the body, from cradle to grave,
growing and aging, arousing, impaired,
happy in clothing, or lovingly bared,
good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,
longing in all, as in Jesus, to dwell,
glad of embracing, and tasting, and smell,
good is the body, for good and for God,
Good is the flesh that the Word has become.

 

Brian Wren, Vision and Viewpoint newsletter, December 25, 2023 

The Light Came Down

There is a light
Bright star shining
In the dark night
Old tales come true

All of our fears
Hopes and prayers
He has heard
And answered us

The light came down
Cast the darkness away
He appeared
A helpless child
The light of god came down

There is a light
A new day dawning
Old things pass
All things made new

Prophets have spoken
All He would accomplish
When the light of God
Would dwell with men

The light came down
Cast the darkness away
He appeared
A helpless child
The light of god came to save us
To the world that He made us
O' Lord and savior
Alleluia

 

Josh Garrels, songlyrcs.com accessed on December 24, 203

Emmanuel

So often it seems we are so in the mood for Christmas,
but then something awful happens
and it changes everything.
But this is backwards.
Difficulties are constant: awful things happen—
and then Christmas comes along and changes everything.

This is the reason for the season.
“Because these days are dark,” the Beloved says,
“I come to be with you.
I see the pain, the loneliness, the despair.
I feel already the splinters of the manger, the nails.
And—therefore— I have come to be with you.”

Don't be afraid of the dark days, the broken days,
the hard days, the blank days.
This is where Christmas happens.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 18, 2023

The Meeting

After so long an absence
       At last we meet again:
Does the meeting give us pleasure,
       Or does it give us pain?

The tree of life has been shaken,
       And but few of us linger now,
Like the Prophet's two or three berries
       In the top of the uttermost bough.

We cordially greet each other
       In the old, familiar tone;
And we think, though we do not say it,
       How old and gray he is grown!

We speak of a Merry Christmas
       And many a Happy New Year
But each in his heart is thinking
       Of those that are not here.

We speak of friends and their fortunes,
       And of what they did and said,
Till the dead alone seem living,
       And the living alone seem dead.

And at last we hardly distinguish
       Between the ghosts and the guests;
And a mist and shadow of sadness
       Steals over our merriest jests.

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, public domain

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

 

Mary Oliver, best-poems.net accessed on December 17, 2023

The Spirit of the Lord

Just as Isaiah
The prophet has foretold
A sprout from Jesse’s root
Into a tree shall grow
This sprout shall bloom
Into a mighty tree of life
Its fruit will feed us
And its source will be our light

The Spirit of the Lord
Will come to dwell with us
A righteous judge
A mighty counselor
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe

For in him all the fullness
Of God was pleased to dwell
And through him
To reconcile all things to himself
Have you ever seen
A wolf and a lamb lie down together?
Can there ever be peace like this
Between enemies?
Can there ever be peace like this
Between enemies?
Would God dare to descend
To come live with his enemies?

The Spirit of the Lord
Will come to dwell with us
Put on flesh
Make peace for us with God
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe

Then I saw heaven open
And behold
A white horse with its rider
Righteousness his clothes
With eyes that burn like fire
And a crown atop his head
Robes dipped in blood
That he himself willingly shed
Yet I had no doubt
I still recognized his face
Son of God, Son of Man
Glorious grace

King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God
King of Kings and Lord of lords
Messiah, Christ, the Word of God

The Spirit of the Lord
Has come to dwell with us
Behold, the Lamb of God
Makes all things new
And by the word
Of his everlasting power
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
The baby in the manger
Upholds the universe
And he shall reign
Forever and ever

 

Kate Ribera, written for her church, Trinity Church, Seattle, Washington

Bypass

When they cracked open your chest, parting
the flesh at the sternum and sawing

right through your ribs, we'd been married
only five weeks. I had not yet kissed

into memory those places they raided
to save your life. I could only wait

outside, in the public lobby
of private nightmares

while they pried you apart, stopped
your heart's beating, and iced you

down. For seven hours a machine
breathed for you, in and out. God,

seeing you naked in ICU minutes
after the surgery ... your torso swabbed

a hideous antiseptic yellow
around a raw black ladder of stitches

and dried blood. Still unconscious,
you did the death rattle on the gurney.

"His body is trying to warm itself up,"
they explained, to comfort me.

 

Susan-Kelly DeWitt, Greatest Hits 1983-2002 (Pudding House Publications)

Flying Over West Texas at Christmas

Oh, little town far below
with a ruler line of a road running through you,
you anonymous cluster of houses and barns,
miniaturized by this altitude
in a land as parched as Bethlehem
might have been somewhere around the year zero—

a beautiful song should be written about you
which choirs could sing in their lofts
and carolers standing in a semicircle
could carol in front of houses topped with snow.

For surely some admirable person was born
within the waffle-iron grid of your streets,
who then went on to perform some small miracles,
placing a hand on the head of a child
or shaking a cigarette out of the pack for a stranger.

But maybe it is best not to compose a hymn
or chisel into tablets the code of his behavior
or convene a tribunal of men in robes to explain his words.

Let us not press the gold leaf of his name
onto a page of vellum or hang his image from a nail.
Better to fly over this little town with nothing
but the hope that someone visits his grave

once a year, pushing open the low iron gate
then making her way toward him
through the rows of the others
before bending to prop up some flowers before the stone.

Billy Collins, Aimless Love (Random House, 2013) 

Toward the Light

Too often our answer to the darkness
      is not running toward Bethlehem
            but running away.
We ought to know by now that we can't see
      where we're going in the dark.
Running away is rampant . . .
      separation is stylish:
            separation from mates, from friends, from self.
Run and tranquilize,
      don't talk about it,
      avoid.
Run away and join the army
      of those who have already run away.
When are we going to learn that Christmas Peace
      comes only when we turn and face the darkness?
Only then will we be able to see
      the Light of the World.

Ann Weems, Kneeling in Bethlehem (The Westminster Press, 1987)

Good News

             The spirit of the Holy One is upon me,
           because God has anointed me;
           God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed.
                         —Isaiah 61.1


Beloved,
may your Spirit flow through me today,
that all I do and say may be good news to the poor,
offering power to the oppressed, healing to the broken,
courage to the despairing, freedom to the captive.
May all I do bring light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death.
May I be good news to all those
who hunger for gentleness and respect.
Anoint me with your kindness, that I may offer kindness
even to those who do not ask it,
your love to those who do not understand it.
May I be a faithful vessel,
for it is your Spirit, not my effort, that blesses.
By that Spirit, send me, God,
to bear your grace to the world.
Amen.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 12, 2023

Into This World

 Into this world, this demented inn

in which there is absolutely no room for him at all,

Christ comes uninvited.

But because he cannot be at home in it,

because he is out of place in it,

and yet he must be in it,

His place is with the others for whom

there is no room.

His place is with those who do not belong,

who are rejected by power,

because they are regarded as weak,

those who are discredited,

who are denied status of persons,

who are tortured, bombed and exterminated.

With those for whom there is no room,

Christ is present in this world.

 

Thomas Merton

Our Fathers

Our fathers, who lived all their lives on earth—
are going now. They have given us all
we need, and when we asked, they gave us more.

Their names are beautiful to us, holy
as the names of stars, as familiar
as the roads we traveled, falling asleep

on the way from one farm to another.
Their kingdoms were small; they were never
interested in more than one homestead,

and as for evil: although they could not
keep it from, us, they tried to keep us from
temptation, though we were like all children

and wanted our own power and glory,
world without end, forever and amen.

 

Joyce Sutphen, After Words (Red Dragonfly Press, 2013)

Knots

Trying to tie my shoes, clumsy, not able to work out
the logic of it, fumbling, as my father stands there,
his anger growing over a son who can’t even do
this simplest thing for the first time, can’t even manage
the knot to keep his shoes on—You think someone’s
going to tie your shoes for you the rest of your life?—
No, I answer, forty-five years later, tying my shoe,
hands trembling with this memory. My father
and all those years of childhood not being able to work out
how he loved me, a knot so tight it has taken all my life
to untie.

 

Joseph Stroud, Of This World (Copper Canyon Press, 2009) 

Waiting

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
but of course it's not. It's Advent,
the Season of Not Yet, a time of waiting.
Some dreams you work for;
for others you can only wait.
We can't hurry The Time, we can only wait for it.
Sometimes the poet searches for the word;
sometimes they can only wait for it to come.

At the end of the musical piece,
just before the final note— the musicians pause,
for in that little pause the music arrives.
The magician knows, just before removing the veil
to reveal the amazing feat, just then—
… to wait a moment,
for it is in that moment that your heart leaps up.

In Advent we pin our hearts on what we're waiting for,
and we rest our hearts in the waiting itself,
for in waiting is the meeting of the power of our longing
and our powerlessness, and there,
in the openness, in that magical blank space,
mysteries often happen.

 

Steve Garnass-Holmes, unfoldinglight.net December 5, 2023