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Patching together a content
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Second Sunday of Advent
Philippians 1:9-11
Here is my prayer: That your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
Wendell Berry often wrote poetry on Sunday. After twenty years or so he collected the poems into a book called A Timbered Choir.
Poetry rushes through me differently than other writing. Good poems thin my blood, give me goosebumps, force tears into my eyes. Sometimes I just shiver.
In Watch for the Light, a compilation of Advent writings that I’m reading this year, a poem by Sylvia Plath invited me into the darkness of these short, short December days. Plath herself was often caught in the darkness, and we ourselves do well to acknowledge our own kinship with it. Dawn could not exist without the darkness.
In this darkness we don’t seem to matter much, and our questions echo like drums against the endless sky. Mostly what returns to us is silence. We all know that silence. Even as we are grateful for the choruses of Christmas, we also know the inky black darkness of Advent, impenetrable, unknown, still. The sun shines today in central Illinois. But it will be dark again before 5 pm.
I’d like to share Sylvia’s poem with you on this second Sunday of Advent, keeping in mind Paul’s stunning prayer for all of us at the beginning of his letter to the Philippians.
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Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent
Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then –
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largess, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant
Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you dare to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
We have been like men and women dreaming, Lord, but then our mouths are filled with laughter. You tell us that those who sow in tears will reap rejoicing. Let us pray with joy. Let our eyes and ears open onto what is pure, lovely, admirable, even as we also sit silently in the dark, waiting. For you.
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