Advent: Night symphony

Watchfires scattered

on cold, rocky fields

sitting, cloaks drawn

against cold, watching

random bleatings,

mewings, night sounds

black night

star studded

tenor or soprano

first, then basses

baritones and altos next

voices joining, rising

explosion of sound

night sky filled

with light, radiant

star shining down

voices, light, heavens

beckoning  hallelujah

unto us

unto us

unto us

This is the fourth Sunday of Advent, when the fourth candle is lit in anticipation of the coming of God’s Son. If you’d like to learn more about the season of Advent, I recommend Discovering Advent, an e-book by Mark Roberts, spiritual director of Laity Lodge.

Photograph: Galaxy by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Advent: The stories of waiting

I’m living this story

and I know how it ends

so if I know how it ends

does that mean the story

is the point

I’m living two stories as one

my story and his story

and I know how they end

so does this mean the stories

have the same ending

This is the way

my story ends

in the joy of anticipation

in the joy of waiting

This is the way

his story ends

not with a bang

or a whimper

but glory

Photograph: Dramatic Sky by Vera Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission. 

If you’d like to know more about the season of Advent, Mark Roberts, the spiritual director for Laity Lodge, has an e-book entitled Discovering Advent that is both succinct and thorough.

Waiting for forgiveness

It trails from a window,

scarlet talisman of hope

or promise wrapping

around the promise

of safety and deliverance,

a vine entwining souls

and hearts and spirits,

binding two strands

into one not easily broken,

tying Jericho to Bethlehem,

as she waits inside,

faithful.

Today is the second Sunday of Advent. In churches observing the season, the second of four candles will be lit, today’s candle signifying the waiting for forgiveness. If you’d like to know more about the season of Advent, Mark Roberts, the spiritual director for Laity Lodge, has an e-book entitled Discovering Advent that is both succinct and thorough (and I highly recommend it).

Painting: The Scarlet Rope by Hannah Haesook Lee.

"Discovering Advent" by Mark Roberts

I grew up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church in New Orleans. Catholic New Orleans. To say we were aware of our minority status would be an understatement. From St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter to the hundreds of Catholic churches and all over the city, and the strong school system that included some of the best high schools in the state, Protestants in general tended to find themselves a relatively small group. All of that would change, particularly after Vatican II and the changes it brought to the Catholic Church, but in the 195os the Catholic Church dominated the religious scene in the city.

My Lutheran church was definitely a liturgical church, but we tended to less liturgical side of things, almost as if we were trying to prove how different we were from the Catholic churches. So there wasn’t much emphasis on the church calendar or the church year. We observed Lent, Easter and Christmas, of course; most everyone did that. But that was about the extent of it.

Flash forward 50 years. The church we now attend, Central Presbyterian Church in suburban St. Louis, doesn’t observe the entire church calendar, but it does include Advent. Each year, for the four Sunday leading up to Christmas, an Advent candle is lit, usually by a different family each week who shares a short devotion and prayer.

I knew what it was, but I didn’t fully understand the meaning of the candles or even the colors associated with Advent until I read Discovering Advent by Mark Roberts. Roberts, the scholar in residence at Laity Lodge and minister, teacher and author, has written an introduction to Advent that explains the meaning of the season well beyond “the weeks leading up to Christmas.”

He tells the story of Advent by telling the story of his own personal experience with the season, from largely nothing to an awareness to a growing appreciation for what it means. For readers like me, this sounds like a very familiar journey, one which helps us reach a deeper understanding of what the Advent season is.

It is a time of waiting and expectation, Roberts says, and a time of anticipation. Each of the candles that are lit has a special significance – waiting for the shepherd, forgiveness, waiting with joy and waiting for the Son. And while Advent is full of symbol and ceremony, the main point, Roberts, says, is to grow “into a deeper, truer relationship with God. It’s sharing our yearning and hope with the community of faith. It’s getting in touch with our need for a Savior and our yearning for the kingdom of God.”

He includes a complete devotional guide, explaining what to do, how to do it, and examples of prayers, devotions and readings.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. It’s a good day to light an Advent candle. It's a good day to consider waiting for the Shepherd.

The Jesus Prayer

Last November, my wife and I drove one Saturday over to Columbia, Missouri, to see youngest son in college. We brought food relief, went out to eat (at the Flatiron, if you’re ever there and looking for something good and inexpensive), and then hit the University of Missouri bookstore. My wife and youngest son gravitated to logo clothing while I wandered among the book stacks, and specifically the poetry stacks.

One of the books I found was Short Trip to the Edge by Scott Cairns.

Cairns is an accomplished poet and an English professor at Mizzou, where he teaches modern and contemporary American literature and creative writing. He’s also an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and he writes about his faith. A lot. His Love’s Immensity, in fact, is a collection of translations and adaptations of writings of various Christian apostles, disciples and saints on faith and prayer, from Saint Paul to St. Therese of Lisieux, and written as poems.

Short Trip to the Edge is the account of four pilgrimages Cairns made with the hope of finding a spiritual father to guide him in a life of prayer – two to the monasteries and “sketes” of Mount Athos, one to an Orthodox monastery in Arizona, and the fourth back to Mount Athos, this time with his teenaged son. To join Cairns on his journey is to discover some of the most revered places in the Orthodox church, to see how seekers and others undertake a pilgrimage, and to watch as they and the monks and priests leading them participate in worship.

It’s a very different kind of Christian faith from what I’ve experienced. It’s a tribute to Cairns’ writing that I found myself sitting alongside him, in my own “stall,” listening to the chants of the monks and standing in line with the other pilgrims to receive the Eucharist, and then afterward to join in venerating the icons. (And veneration of the icons is something almost alien to this evangelical Presbyterian.)

As I was finishing the book this past week, what should arrive in my email but a daily reflection from Mark Roberts, senior director of Laity Lodge and Scholar-in-Residence, part of the High Calling organization (my blog is affiliated with the High Calling Blogs). This is a daily email, and Roberts has been writing and meditating on the Gospel of Mark. Thursday’s reflection cited the Jesus Prayer. And Roberts said that, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, “One of the most common and influential prayers is… the so-called ‘Jesus Prayer,’ which has a variety of forms, and is spoken millions of times each day by believers throughout the world.”

And it’s the prayer that Cairns prays throughout Short Trip to the Edge.

Okay, so it was a coincidence. But I ponder coincidences like that, and I started to pray the words. I can’t say that anything miraculous has happened as a result, nor do I expect that. But I’m finding it is a way to calm myself and focus, and I’ve started praying it several times a day.

The words are simple.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”


Short Trip to the Edge also has things to say about poetry. Visit TweetSpeak Poetry for my post on that aspect of the work.

On Friday, my friend Jim Schmotzer looked at The Jesus Prayer in poetic form, and it's a beautiful rendering. The fact that it was on both of our minds at the same time is another one of those coincidences.