Meditation for the Fourth Candle of Advent: the Candle of Love

With the fourth Sunday 

comes the lighting of the fourth candle, 

the candle of Love. 

Our wait is almost over, 

the circle is complete.

We have watched and waited, 

We have trodden the path of the four thousand year longing for light, 

for love;

and, 

at the darkest moment 

a spark is kindled 

as 

a pure light of love 

is born into our benighted world. 

The spark struck is Mary, 

The Woman 

whose name means 

full of light.

The girl 

who is our solstice. 

She is 

the perfect place 

of stillness,

so attuned to the Light

that in her all creation stills, 

the ancient cycle of sin is broken 

and 

even the darkness must yield 

to 

the Coming of the Sun of Justice.

Her womb 

is the first place of Easter;

the cave of rebirth and resurrection 

in which 

eternity and time 

are married,

and infinity will wed itself 

forever 

to clay's embrace. 

Here Eve's aching 

is healed 

and 

here Adam's sin 

is undone,

and from the dry root 

of the 

sundering tree 

a new shoot rises 

at the word of

One 

whose whole being 

is yes, 

whose whole being 

is 

Love.

"Behold the Handmaid of The Lord,

be it done unto me according to thy Word!"

Meditation poem for the Third Golden Night: O Radix Jesse; O Root of Jesse

 O Radix Jesse: O Root of Jesse

This evening we will meditate on the third of the great O Antiphons of Advent:

O Radix Jesse, O Root of Jesse!

We cry out to you O Root from which all springs,

first fecundity of the Divine!

Come and restore our fruitfulness so long shrivelled and sin wintered!

For we, obsessed only

with the flower that blooms 

and is gone so quickly, 

spill our tears upon the soiled surface

of the fading petal 

and forget the virtue of the root!

O Root of Jesse!

Help us lest we forget that strong growth, 

must come from a strong stock, 

to come to know a flower that would 

outlast the frost 

must come from deep roots, 

long buried, 

and anchored in 

the warm womb 

of Mother Earth

resting down the long 

ages in the divine dark!

O Root of Jesse!

Speak to us of Spring!

Of that new life you bring, 

a quickening felt through all creation,

a gospeled spark,

begun in the deep pulse of a seed 

now planted 

in that gateless garden 

so long prepared!

O Root of Jesse!

You are the point of origin 

where all begins,

where from eternity time blooms; 

where then comes forth from

Now; 

until that sprouting moment 

where all begins in you anew! 

Save us for your harvest of hope!

O Root of Jesse!

Mixing your luminous seed

with the deep humus 

of our muddied being

you bring forth new life!

Heal us 

and raise us from our barren sleep 

of sin and self

inviting us to bloom again 

as first intended and

yet more so than even this, 

for now, 

our roots entwined, 

grafted to your Divine stock, 

made at last again 

one people, one plant, one garden

in which you will walk, delight and dwell.

O Root of Jesse!

We call to you in our evening song 

as Adam did,

our gardener father who knew the names of all 

and saw your face reflected in his own 

until our bloom withered in his hand 

plucked from its sustaining root

by selfish desire.

O Root of Jesse!

We sing you our Magnificat, 

first sung by Eve our earth Mother,

long silenced since the sundering of her stock,

until she who is Eve and Jesse’s daughter both

became the place of planting 

where you,

divine root, and seed, and stock,

now born in time and lulled by her hymn

to sleep before your sorrows 

renew in us your

love so radical that we are again

delivered into Eden, rooted in 

peace,

God-grafted into grace.

"O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples;

before you kings will shut their mouths,

to you the nations will make their prayer:

Come and deliver us, and delay no longer!"

O Adonai! In the Fire of the Burning Bush

 Tonight we meditate on the second of the Advent O Antiphons: O Adonai! O Lord and Deliverer!

O Adonai!

We cry to you across the endless ages!

We call you by the name for the Name,

that only the One beyond all names may bear, O Hashem!

We seek from you our own exodus 

from the cold and hard world 

we have built within ourselves,

and hurt so many others by.

O Adonai!

We yearn for your deliverance! 

Free us from the slavery to that false self 

that is but a shadow of our souls

Let us put off the sandals that insulate us 

from the deep throbbing heart of Mother Earth 

and step into your Holy Presence 

which is everywhere,

and there,

bow down before 

the wonder of it all.

O Adonai!

Send to us the Angel of the Burning Bush!

May he call out to us, 

so lost in our own thoughts 

and worries 

and dreams,

that we may 

at last 

remember 

the holiness of the ground 

we stand on in every place 

and at every time

for our where and when

rests always in

your divine 

Now.

O Adonai!

Draw us to yourself, O Holy One!

Lead us on that pilgrim path

from the depths of our selfishness 

to the heights of the mountain of compassion

and emptiness.

Bid us enter into the cloud, 

that dissembles thought 

and pierces the proud heart 

so to open the soul to the 

truest of loves. 

O Adonai!

Let us hear the thunder in the void!

There at the summit and centre of our souls 

inscribe your new Law of Love 

upon the tablets of our hearts

in letters of divine fire!

O Adonai!

At hour of sunset 

and star rise we call to you!

Hear the chant of your Church,

echoing the long and faithful love

of Abraham, and Isaac and their storied

generations.

Listen to these ancient invocations!

Look not on us,

nor on our readiness,

Look instead on she who is,

the Lady of Israel, 

the Daughter of Zion,

the Queen of Heaven!

She who is 

our burning bush, 

always aflame

but ever unconsumed,

who holds 

within her sacred womb 

the mystery 

of the Name made flesh!

Hear us sing her new song of deliverance

Hear the mystery magnified in woman 

who in that holiest of births

brings about

our deliverer,

and invites

our exodus

home.

O Adonai!

"Magnificat anima mea Dominum!" 

We cry with her,

and in her holy 

burning words 

we hear the song of her people, 

our ancestors of spirit, echoed anew

"Ashira L’Adonai ki ga’oh ga’ah!"

And so we sing 

with all the generations 

this Advent night!

"O Adonai,

and leader of the House of Israel,

who appeared to Moses 

in the fire of the burning bush

and gave him the law on Sinai:

Come and redeem us 

with an outstretched arm!"

O Wisdom: O Sapientia!

 O Wisdom! 

O Sapientia!

This night the Church turns toward the second half of its Advent journey as with eight great cries from the aching heart of humanity we express the ancient longing for wholeness, 

for liberation, 

for union with the divine, 

for grace… 

Let us pray these ancient invocations of the eight Golden Nights together...

From the long cold of our Edenic exile we turn towards the sky and kindle hope looking into the dark for a light beyond all night and we sing the ancient invocations of Presence and power:

The O Antiphons!

Those that sing the deepest magic from before the dawn of time…

 

So at sundown each evening from now until Christmas Eve as we pray the Magnificat of Mary we will call on the One who comes… 

The One who descends that we may ascend… 

who goes forth from the Father that we may return with Him to the houses of light… 

We will call on Him by names so ancient they are written in words of fire in the hidden heart of Creation their lightening letters breathed forth from the Divine as transcendent touches that set souls longing and hearts bursting as their litany of longing is intoned

Tonight we call on Him by the ancient name by which He is known to all people of all times and places! 

O Sapientia! O Wisdom! 

We cry out from the heart of our foolishness, from the loss of our shallow knowing, from our listing and lying about the truth and the wound at the heart of all things…

O make us wise… 

Enlighten our darkness…

Long sought and hidden, 

yearned for by sages and saints, 

desired by philosophers and poets 

down the ages Wisdom comes… 

so often lost… 

so often found… 

so needed today.

Pouring forth its divine energies 

as Hochma, 

as Hagia Sophia, 

as God at play, 

as a young girl in the full exultation of wonder, 

as a woman birthing beauty and blessing, 

as an eldress sage where being and experience are fused at last into 

Wisdom… 

For Wisdom 

is revealed in the heart, 

and in the womb, 

in the mother 

and in the child,

for in no other way could 

so close a union, 

an inter-weaving, 

an inter-being, 

an incarnation 

be revealed.

For the One who comes

is already

and always

here.

Hidden yet always present…  

Heard thundering from the cloud, 

from the mountaintop, 

in the burning of the bush, 

on the edge of the breeze 

in the quiet rhythm of the breath, 

and in the rippled

waters

of the womb.

And so, as the tide of sunset washes this world 

in the dark ocean of night,

we breathe and stand for the Maiden Mother’s song

And chant our first invocation…

To the Word, 

to Wisdom,

to the One who is…

to the One who comes...

“O Wisdom

Who proceedeth from the mouth of the Most High, 

Who fills the Universe and holds all things together in a strong yet gentle manner,

O come to teach us the way of truth!”

Greening

 The Greening

The Greening.

December cold moon 

wanes and waxes,

sharp edged as ice

like a peephole cut 

in the night sky

she looks into 

a realm of pure light

casting her long shadows 

across the frosted glass ground

scribbled by bare black branches.

Above the diamond lit stars, 

below the glittering snows, 

reminders both that even 

the darkest of winter days 

gives way at last to dawn.

Now the night of greening comes 

as in defiance of the cold and dark 

the forest is foraged for the gift of life 

hidden in its grey sleeping hills. 

Comes forth the ivy, 

in her tenacity and strength!

Comes forth the holly,

bright berried and blood blessed!

Comes forth the red Rowan,

long mountain born!

Comes forth the Fir Tree, 

in her verdant mantle!

Now nature once again 

hallows the halls 

of consecrated stone, 

illuminating the cloisters 

and the advent purpled apse 

as scribes once warmed 

the word with colour.

Leaf and branch and winter fruit 

gathered and laid as offerings

bringing life and warmth 

into the place of peace, 

clothing the Advent wreath 

and its singing people 

in circling sanctuary! 

Lighting our longing 

we lay them for 

our Saviour evergreen 

who brought forth 

the new Spring

in the libation of his bright blood 

upon the old earth, 

in the divine seed planted 

upon the rocky skull,

there overcoming the old

sin-wintered death’s stroke at our roots, 

He grafts us to Himself anew

our Advent Adam, binding the knot 

in swaddling, and breathing 

new blessing over the earth,

as with His holy birth 

a breeze from summerlands 

hits hard and drives back 

the cold and dark!

He the true source of our verdant life,

a root renewed, 

a shoot green and bursting,

born from a thornless Rose 

that blooms this Winter night,

blessed beneath the whitest snow,

as now the greening comes again.

Traditionally the evening of December the 16th was the day of the Greening of the Church when people brought branches and fruits from the  forests to decorate the Churches, monasteries and holy wells to prepare for the Christmas Feast...

Wintry: a meditation poem of Winter Light

Wintry: A Meditation Poem of Winter Light

A dreary day you say?

Wintry yes, but dreary?

There I choose to differ.

Remember.

What have you seen along the way?

The winter cherries are beginning to bloom

in the gardens along the road.

Small flurries of blossom erupt from frosted buds launching clouds of colour skywards

Pink, white and delicate as castor sugar dusting they soften sight like in looked for blessings.

Yes, the red gold and purple leaves have all fallen, but

now their breeze shifting shapes makes a kaleidoscope of the forest floor,  

while over head the bare branches describe their complicated winter geometry to the wind, each twig an ink stick scribbling on the sky.

Along the street the lamps are early lit

in windows and paint the pavement yellow, gold and orange,

shining boxes of warmth and light, out and upward into early darkness;

behind each a mind, a soul, a heart on fire with all the subtle colours of emotions’ ever shifting palette painting stories of day’s doings in their words.

Christmas trees and silvered lights make of the land a mirror to our constellated sky,

each a drop of glimmer grace, each a bell calling us to home and hearth and beyond again at last to Bethlehem.

Look up my friend.

Look around, about and then within,

You daily live a rainbowed life, 

so praise this winter dark, a blessed yearly chance to see again the light, the colours that shine beneath, behind all things

from which the light arises 

out of which the colour comes.

A reflection for the feast of St. John of the Cross

 

One of my favourite Advent reflections is this beautiful poem based on the writings of St. John of the Cross. It reminds us that in each moment we are all Midwives of the Presence. Let us invite Mary to dwell in the Cave of our hearts that the Christ may be born in us always +

Advent

If

you want

the Virgin will come walking down the road

pregnant with the holy,

and say,

“I need shelter for the night, please take me inside your heart,

my time is so close.”

Then, under the roof of your soul, you will witness the sublime

intimacy, the divine, the Christ

taking birth

forever,

as she grasps your hand for help, for each of us

is the midwife of God, each of us.

Yet there, under the dome of your being does creation

come into existence eternally, through your womb, dear pilgrim—

the sacred womb in your soul,

as God grasps our arms for help; for each of us is

His beloved servant

never far.

If you want, the Virgin will come walking

down the street pregnant

with Light and sing ... 

.

--St. John of the Cross, “If You Want” in Daniel Ladinsky Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West (New York: Penguin Group, 2002), 306-307.

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