Christmas

Each Christmas season I am so happy to revisit favorite music and poems, as well as to discover new ones. Here is a collection of new poems and favorites music that have become part of this Advent season for me.

Emmanuel | Malcolm Guite

O come, O come, and be our God-with-us
O long-sought With-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.

Our Land | Langston Hughes

We should have a land of sun, 
Of gorgeous sun, 
And a land of fragrant water
Where the twilight is a soft bandanna handkerchief
Of rose and gold, 
And not this land
Where life is cold.

We should have a land of trees,
Of tall thick trees,
Bowed down with chattering parrots
Brilliant as the day,
And not this land where birds are gray.

Ah, we should have a land of joy, 
Of love and joy and wine and song, 
And not this land where joy is wrong.

Annunciation  | Scott Cairns

Deep within the clay, and O my people

very deep within the wholly earthen

compound of our kind arrives of one clear,

star-illumined evening a spark igniting

once again the tinder of our lately

banked noetic fire. She burns but she

is not consumed. The dew lights gently,

suffusing the pure fleece. The wall comes down.

And—do you feel the pulse?—we all become

the kindled kindred of a King whose birth

thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.

Luci Shaw

A long day, profligate with rain,

followed by a clear night, and a

prodigality of stars.

Such a spendthrift God we have,

his large hand spreading a magical

rosy light over the morning hills.

Doesn’t your breath often

quicken with delight, like a wave cresting?

And if so, what exhilaration can you

spread around, like sudden sunlight

through the window, or strawberry jam and cream

on a scone?

How else can you keep the loveliness

but by writing it down so that friends may

partake the nourishment of your delight?

Eve | Andrew Roycroft

There is no eve here,

just enduring famine silence

wordless darkness over the face of

town.

The mother’s expectation,

though bruised now

by contracting pain,

still believes

that He,

formed within the womb

within the world he formed,

will finally come to earth.

And she will make him room

will give him birth.

Much of what I’ve been returning to in my mind is imagining New Creation what Christ returns and set's all things right. I love what Czeslaw Milosz captures in this poem.

Arcadian Wild - such a favorite. And I love this song

Favorite song to sing in church during Advent…

This never grows old…

This is my favorite song to sing loud in the car…