Advent is here!
As I described in last year’s post, Advent is the four weeks leading up to Christmas, and it is just as significant for the Christmas celebration as Lent is for Easter. Both are meant to be seasons of reflection, repentance, and preparation – a “quieting” of one’s soul, making room for the wild joy of the Day itself when it comes.
Furthermore, I shared in last week’s blog that Advent is the start of the Church calendar year.
So . . . Happy New Year, everyone! 🙂
I stepped into this season of newness and waiting by diving into work on the Next Book. Since The Ancient launched on November 25th (just in time for the holidays, if you’re looking for gift ideas . . .), my mind is finally free to turn to other tales in earnest. I’d already been dabbling, mind – the new life currently stirring in my creative womb is, in truth, a decade old, so I have pages of haphazard notes to sort through before I can commence outlining – but it has been exhilarating to turn the full force of my focus onto this new world. Furthermore, the world is taking shape before my eyes at an obligingly rapid rate.
Watch this space, folks – it’s gonna be a doozy of a year.
This sense of freedom has carried over into my reading. As the post “A Read-y Respite” confessed, I tend to read multiple books at once – all for different purposes, of course. This past week, I celebrated the new year by settling down into a blissful night of complete abandonment to my current literary circle of friends:
Each yielded a hope-stirring gem I felt I must share with you. Consider it an Advent present:
“We are writers, and we never ask one other where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know.”
~ Stephen King, On Writing
*Thank you, Mr. King, for voicing something I’ve never known how to articulate.
“He felt himself in the position of a puppy, when its master, taking it by the scruff of its neck, rubs its nose in the mess it has made. . . . And so Nekhlyudov, feeling all the repulsiveness of what he had done, felt also the powerful hand of the Master, but he did not yet understand the whole significance of his action and would not recognize the Master’s hand.”
~ Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection
*This is my first Tolstoy, and it’s peppered with vivid, evocative, arresting imagery like this. Yay, 19th-century Russian literature!
“It is a permanent astonishment to me how casually strewn with glory Britain is.”
~ Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling
*I love this man. He gets it.
“Santa Claus had not given them anything at all. Santa Claus did not give grown people presents, but that was not because they had not been good. Pa and Ma were good. It was because they were grown up, and grown people must give each other presents.”
~ Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods
*I read through the Christmas portions of each Little House book during Advent. It’s a tradition I started a few years ago, and I’ve grown rather fond of it; ’tis a homey, grounding comfort amidst a season of transcendental longing.
“The virginity of Mary and her child-bearing was hidden from the prince of this world; so likewise was the death of the Lord – three mysteries that are to be proclaimed with a shout, which were effected in the quiet of God.”
~ Ignatius, Early Christian Fathers
*A perfect “new year” meditation.
That last is a fitting segué into this year’s first Advent poem.
My first poetry collection, Songs in the Gate: Poems from the Borderland of Now and Not Yet, revealed that poetry is often a spiritual discipline for me. I find it particularly salutary to pray poetically through the seasons of the church year. Hence, you’ll be seeing four Advent poems on this blog over the next few weeks, followed by a sonnet for Christmas Eve.
NOTE: The weeks of Advent are often themed thusly: Week 1 – Hope; Week 2 – Peace; Week 3 – Joy; Week 4 – Love.
Happy Advent, friends.
Advent 2018
WEEK 1 – Hope
Some call you naïve
They cannot receive
The gift up your sleeve
Convinced you will leave
Afraid to believe
You do not bereave
But purpose to cleave
Not just to cope.
Some cast you as blind
They name you Unkind
For you will not find
The terror behind
Tomorrow, red-lined
But always remind
Your seekers to bind
Fast to your rope.
Some claim you are vain
That you can’t sustain
The fools who remain
With nothing to gain
But, bearing the pain,
In sunshine or rain
Resound your refrain:
Come up the slope.
This year, let my view
Be filtered through you
That I may see true
The glorious hue
I’ll stand with the few
Watch life spring anew
At your gentle cue
And name you Hope.
Looking forward to each Advent poem!
How do you manage to capture whimsy and such depth of truth at the same time?? I love it!!.,
Love your creative mind. Love your genius ❤