Another Advent

Another Advent

For Andy, who suggested the possibility.

From the darkness that returns
each year we sing our plaintive song
and ask that God will come again
and fill our lives with what we know
and hardly know is all we need.
The fire burns low, the night is long,
and yet we feel in some way held
within the circle of this flame
that still we tend with anxious care
in some place hidden from the eyes
that mock and laugh and turn away
with restless ease towards their end.
The world too turns, and we await
the power that fills our life with light
and let our alleluias ring
within the darkness of the earth.

C.M.M. 12/17

Waiting for the dawn

The longest night is very close now. The dark comes before we know it, and lasts so long. On these western fringes our fires burn small – pinpricks of light in the wide darkness. The warmth of summer, the plenty of autumn – these are memories. Food is hoarded against the midwinter feasting, and after that we will hunger a little.

If we look to the north, we see only the night. Further west there is the wide restless sea – and nothing. In the southern sky, there is a bright star with a lesser in attendance. But it is to the east that we look, the eastern sky where the rim of light will grow, the distant lands where, long ago already, something wonderful happened. More wonderful still: it happens again and again, coming to assuage our darkness at the year’s turning, bringing light to the hidden places of our hearts, promising us that we have not been forgotten.

It is dark now, but it will be light. The child will bring it. Come, Lord Jesus.

Taking Advent seriously

ADVENT PROSE REVISITED

Rend the heavens, come quickly down –

Can we mean it? In the dark

to ask the God to come like this

would have us tremble at the presence

sought that Sunday as we sang.

Behold, thou wast angry and we sinned – 

dear God, we try, we know our sin, 

we see too clearly where we are.

The veiled women weep, the bomb

explodes on distant soil:

we worry lest our own are there,

care less about the ruined lives

among the debris of our wars.

All our deeds are like a polluted garment -

hung about us in the cold

as if we fear our nakedness,

would do anything to hide.

The child dies at the hands of those

whose task is care and love

while we, appalled, avert our eyes

from innocence betrayed.

We all fade like a leaf

and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away –

light little things in the face of creation

and yet, and yet …

Lord, we continue. You have never

swept us from the face of earth.

We love and beget and children

lovely children, innocent and clean

come naked into the world

in your eternal promise of what can be.

Your Son will come, again, again

and we have hope, another chance

to use your world in precious ways

to hold your people to your face.

As tiny fingers clasp round ours

we reach into the dark and feel

the strength of love enfolding us.

The heavens are rent as if a cloud

were parted at the end of rain

and light will come too bright to tell – 

we sing again. Come, Lord, and soon.

©C.M.M

I wrote this some time ago at this point in the year. Sadly, the world that I linked to the words of the Advent Prose has, if anything, become a sadder place - and one very much in need of the promises of hope.

Lights in the darkness

..and more candles
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

All right - I'm late with a blog post on Christmas . Tough. I've not had a minute at my own proper computer till now, and I draw the line at blogging on my phone while entertaining a two-year-old - of which more, perhaps, anon. But now, after a restorative walk on the fringe of the forest with my pal, I want to remember what happened before the post-Christmas church takes over and moves us 12 years on before we've had the Magi yet.

For it was a splendid season, crowded but splendid. Having retained the Advent feel right up to the quiet Eucharist with the surprisingly large congregation on Advent 4, we had a full church again that afternoon for a Carol Service. Our choral group 8+1 sang, the children paraded up and down with camels, shepherds and random sheep, the mulled wine flowed and we all grew mellow and cheerful. And then, in the close proximity that had seemed so impossible in prospect - how to gear up again so soon? - we came back to church for Midnight Mass. The pic shows what we saw. And although we had to put the nave lights on because people might need to see words of carols and such, this is more or less what I saw throughout the service. There are benefits from sitting in the front row .... There were carols serious and carols frivolous: the former during communion, the latter during the serving of the cider cup (we're dead versatile when it comes to beverages). Mr B and I had our annual fun singing with our friends who happen to sing tenor and soprano. There was incense. And - joy - the crib was under the altar, and looked amazing. The starry backdrop paper was a final stroke of genius, and I recognised the packing straw from one of our presents ...

Rudolph takes tickets

And then .... Well, then we had the annual dash to Edinburgh on Christmas morning, on a ferry staffed by Santa and his crew, and the joy of a dinner cooked by the hand of another and the conflagration of the pudding cooked by mine. And the children were as high as kites and very amusing, and ... and ... and we forgot to take the remains of our cake home and had to go back for it, turning off the westbound M8 at Livingstone. Think another hour on the journey - worth it, I reckon.

Today, however, it's hard to realise that less than a week has passed since that magical night. And really this is what has fuelled this post. The anticipation, the emotion, the celebration - these are all features of birth itself, human birth in human homes. I feel sad for the people who have their houses decorated at the beginning of December, who have no concept of Advent, of waiting, and who then tear down their lights and throw out their trees and say thank heavens that's over before it's even New Year's day. I can't help wondering how they'd see it if their standard response were to be applied to the birth of a child in their family. Picture it:

Four weeks before the baby is born, the family start decorating the house with all manner of lights, greenery and so on. The pregnant mother helps a bit, but her mind is, understandably, on other things. Occasionally there are drunken parties, all themed around the approaching birth. On the night of the birth itself, the family assemble, fight a bit. Next day they have a massive party, eat themselves sick and drink themselves into oblivion. But three days later, when the mother brings the baby home, she finds that the house is bare, tidy but bleak, and everyone has gone home. There are no more celebrations, no sense of joy. As far as everyone's concerned, it's all over until the next baby - or something.

Silly, isn't it. But some of us have only really been celebrating for less than a week, and we're still really happy about remembering what happened and demonstrating that happiness. Because what we are celebrating changed everything, just the way the birth of a new baby changes everything. And you can't put change back in the loft till next year.

Warmth, light and love: the Advent journey

If you're really old - a silver surfer par excellence - you might remember this book: Footprints in the Snow, by the author with the unlikely name of Racey Helps. It seems to have been the first book he wrote, in 1946, and I must have been an early fan. (No, I couldn't read in 1946, but ...). I was thinking, as I wrote my last post about Advent, about what it is that we feel in this season, and it was when I was musing that it is certainly not a feeling confined to Christians that the memory of this book surfaced.

Today as I write the darkness of the early night has already engulfed us at 4.30 in the afternoon. It has been a foul day, and though the weather this week has until now been sunny and cold, it was threatening - the menace of black ice under the sun, the stubborn slush that would have you upended in a trice. It gives me pleasure to have returned to my warm house, to put on lights and fires - central heating isn't enough: I need orange flames to complete the setting - and to be safely inside for the evening. Better, we are expecting friends to come round and sing with us, sing Advent music and enjoy the shared experience.

That is a particular instance, fixed very specifically in time and place and inclination. The child's book above reaches the same area of contrast: that which separates cold, wet darkness, loneliness and threat  from warmth and love. From my memory, the little anthropomorphic characters with names like Millicent, Barnaby and Nubby Tope (that's the mole) find themselves frightened and menaced on a cold winter night and end up warm and safe and loved. It happens all over the place - in Wind in the Willows, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, even in Spooks (MI5 HQ being the safe hub where danger only rarely and shockingly obtrudes and usually happens outside). And it is there, I believe, at the heart of what happens in Advent, and particularly poignantly when Advent is experienced in the cold darkness of a northern winter.

That's where the rush to put up lights, to flock to warm, cheerful shops, to drink in cosy pubs comes from especially strongly at this time. The world is a hard place, but we can crowd together in a communal setting that will give us the illusion at least of being part of a group; we buy presents and send greetings and when these are reciprocated we have the warm glow of ... love? And whether it's real or commercialised, people feel the need for it, feel this need always but especially in the dark times.  If we are mature participants in a tradition that says wait, prepare, sense the darkness because of what you know will come, don't try to break it too early, then we savour the possibilites of our tradition to nurture our need and supply us with the realisation of love that did come, that does come. But if we are so wretched because of our physical situation, or our emotional or mental state, it can be harder to feel beyond the loneliness and threat of the season - and that's when the stories come in.

I loved that little book Footprints in the Snow. I can remember reading it, in my bed, in the winter - and I cannot recall reading it on a light summer evening. Very early, I think, I realised the attraction of the warmth and light and love at the end of a hard journey. I believe we are all like this, and we are all searching, whatever we believe, for just that: warmth, light, love. If we can help to provide that as well as need it, we are doing well.

Advent: waiting in the moment

Advent again. And every year, a little more suddenly than the preceding year, the same ritual tasks - that moment when you realise that it's time to forage in the forest (and we won't tell where) for just the right selection of greenery, from the delicate lace branches that droop below the candle wreath to the wonderful pink berries from the church grounds that were obviously designed by the Creator to complement the liturgical colours, the chilly morning in the empty church when fingers fumble with the secateurs and drop spiny leaves on the carpet. This year we added the cool scent of eucalyptus to the wreath for the pleasure of doing so, and the finished article was more ebulliently leafy than any of its predecessors. We wonder if anywhere else does it quite like this ... but we doubt it.*

Shortly after that I made my Christmas cake, thinking, as always, of the first time I did this, heavily pregnant and extremely sore after sitting down on black ice while shopping and deciding that I'd be happier standing, baking, than sitting and worrying. Stir up Sunday may no longer have its own collect - Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people ...  - but that's the day the fruit goes in the sherry, or the sherry in the fruit, and a week later the cake is made and drizzled with the left-over liquor. Later I shall turn my mind to puddings, brandy butter, cranberry sauce ...

And then there will be cards to think of. Is it inane still to send cards when I could greet so many people through Facebook and Twitter? Was it always daft to give them to friends we see all the time, or to the family we shall spend Christmas with? But I remember how I used to love writing the few cards I sent as a child, loved receiving them - and there's a part of me can't bear to give this up. I have dealt with presents for the grandchildren, and refuse to panic about their parents, let alone anyone else - present-giving should be a joy, not a worry.

Tonight, however, I shall be doing what I most enjoy: singing the music of the season, rehearsing carols for Christmas. And on Sunday I'm expecting to participate in a wonderful, quiet, dark, candle-lit Evensong, at which Mr B and I will sing with two friends, singing the music of the waiting and the longing that is Advent, repeating the glorious setting of my own words that is the Advent Song we premiered last year and which is now obviously reaching so many people on YouTube. I listen to it, and the wonder returns; I know that singing it will take me to a place that nothing else can.

Of all the seasons, this is the one to restore the mystery and awake the longing that can too often be submerged in the busyness of life - even church life. It's good to take time to wait in the moment.

*For the sharp-eyed and critical, I can report that by the time Advent Sunday came, the altar frontal was purple - a faded, pinky-purple, but definitely not red. Just saying ...

Words, words, words...

I've made a belated discovery about the potency - or otherwise - of words. Words of carols, to be specific, and words of other choral music. Yes, words have always been my business, so you'd think I might have found this out sooner, but there you are.

It began, I think, with a phone call from the organist at the Cathedral of The Isles, Cumbrae. Old friend that he is, he wanted to share with us the success at their Advent Carol service of a piece John had written years ago - Advent Invocation - to words that I had first scribbled down on the back of a bill as we drove over the moor road from the Claonaig ferry, years ago. He told us how he'd put the words into the order of service, and how he felt that had helped people's appreciation of the whole.

A short while after that, I found myself typing out the words of familiar Christmas carols and hymns (for a congregational booklet, since you ask - and yes, we have the licence!) in the corporate rush to get everything done on time. Even words that I had sung for the past half century suddenly had to be checked, punctuation put in the right places - and suddenly I began to see the words as if for the first time. Many of them are not what I would write for now, but I kept having sudden glimpses into the minds and imaginations of the original authors - and it was startling in its newness.

And then there was my own Advent Song. Following our friend's example, we asked for the words to go into the Order for Evensong, so that people could follow them as we sang. And for the first time I've had people talking about the words of the piece almost as much as they do about the music. Now, I feel that the music is by far the greater accomplishment, for I know how much goes into it as opposed to the sudden rush of blood to the head that produces the words - I'm not a hard worker when it comes to that sort of thing - so I feel slightly guilty. But I'm glad to have the piece taken as a whole, and appreciated as a whole, and thrilled that it seems to be doing so well on YouTube.

In a way, my Advent this year has been shaped by this piece. But I don't think that's a bad thing.

Advent song in audio

For all the lovely people who commented so appreciatively about the new anthem this week, I've made my first attempt at uploading a video to YouTube. The photos are all from this time of year, most of them taken from my window as a flaming dawn broke, or in Holy Trinity church where the recording was made. We're both delighted that people liked it as much as they did.

Advent Song

Look, God, look

in the vastness of your dark

hear this song

in the chorus of the world

where I sing

for the glory of your coming

held by love

as the music pours from me

a flame within

as the night falls around me

hear my prayer

and come through the darkness

hold me waiting

as you wait to be born.

©C.M.M. 11/05

I wrote these words six years ago. Advent for me, as I've probably blogged before, is a wonderfully Celtic experience born of darkness and tiny lights and being out on the edge of the hugeness of what to the ancients must have seemed a limitless sea. I cannot conceive of Advent in the Antipodes. Not long after I wrote it, Mr B, aka the musician John McIntosh, mentioned that he might like to set it to music, but it took him to this year to do it, and it was finished about three weeks ago. It is quite, quite lovely.

Today it was performed for the first time. And I really mean that: until this afternoon we had never heard it with the four voices for which it was written. But today we had an Evensong at Holy Trinity, a variant on the traditional Anglican choral service in which a quartet - including me and Mr B - sang the anthem, the responses and a plainsong psalm with a harmonised response for the congregation. The church was dimly lit - a combination of half our usual lighting, all the candles, the red heaters that give at least the illusion of warmth, and tiny lights clipped to our music stands - and the atmosphere electric. When we stood at the back of the church to begin with the Matin Responsory, the silence was absolute; when Andrew prayed, the silences between his words fell like a blessing; when we sang the Advent Song I felt once again the limitless power that takes over when we are all totally immersed in the moment. There was for me the additional dimension of hearing people take such care over my words - it's an awesome thing to write something and have it handed back to you so beautifully. 

Andrew's brief homily reminded us in no uncertain terms that Advent is not Christmas. I don't think anyone there this afternoon was in any doubt about the magic of the season: the exquisite tension of the waiting, the longing. The great sound of the final hymn - Lo, He Comes - came like an explosion of emotion. And when it was over, and we finally tore ourselves away from the place where the  barriers between earth and heaven had grown very thin indeed, it was snowing. 

On a day such as today, I would be no-one else, and nowhere else. 

The first candle ...

Goodness, that was great! As I said in my last post, I love Advent - and it began today in fine style up the hill at Holy T. From the lighting of the first purple candle in the Advent Wreath - and if you look closely you will see that the new candles arrived in the nick of time - to the exuberant singing of "Lo, he comes with clouds descending", we were on an emotional rollercoaster, urged on by Kevin Our Bishop on his second visit to us.

Urged to pitch our tents facing the rising sun, intrigued by the vision of the newly-re-licensed Lay Team as tent-pitchers extraordinaires, delighted by +Kevin's vision of him throwing back his youthful locks in order to see and by his donning of a wonderful pink and purple "preaching scarf" (you can see it adorning his crozier in the sadly fuzzy pic taken in mid-sing at the end of the service) - by the time we staggered to the back of the church for coffee and buns we felt we'd been on a journey already.

Just as it should be, in fact - even if we have another four weeks to go.

The Advent of Advent

The mornings are dark; the darkness returns early. Tonight it is chilly and more gales are threatened. The sea is restless and the trees groan. Living here, it seems unreasonable to have a tidy Advent wreath, with neat flowers or tidily trimmed holly or even - shudder - the plastic variety. No, we go more for the exuberant greenery that has not a little of the pagan about its appearance, complemented by the wonderfully suitable pink berries from the cotoneaster (I think) in the church grounds. Arguments have raged in past years about the colour of candles to be used in such a wreath, and I maintain to this day that God put that bush in the grounds to encourage us to the purple and pink variety, but that is another story.

The photo shows the initial stages of the process: find your greenery. I am unwilling to give the exact location of the trees that provided ours this year, as I and my accomplice should not really have been doing this thing, but we were careful - and some of the best trees actually had fallen bits that were ideal for our needs. On this occasion we deterred any witnesses by having with us a small and wailing child, though the best deterrent was probably the weather forecast. At the moment of the photo, I had just been deluged with water from the branches. You can see that I am a cheerful, uncomplaining sort ...

Anyway, the wreath is constructed and looks rather fine. Apart, that is, for the candles - the person who takes delivery of them had not yet produced this year's box, and we had to make do with purple ones, of which we have a goodly number left over from other years. (The uninitiated should note that when Hayes and Finch sends out Advent candles, they allow for people to have four purple and one white, as well as the pink one for Gaudete Sunday. If you use the pink one, you build up a stock of unused purple candles). Perhaps I shall manage a photo on Sunday if the new ones have turned up. If you really cannot control your impatience, you can see a past effort here, though I note that it looks considerably less fulsome than later offerings have become. And the berries look more red than pink. I shall endeavour to take a pic in daylight.

I love Advent. Can't you tell?

Another Advent poem

I've posted another Advent poem on frankenstina. I'm grateful for the commission that led me to write it, and hope that as the magazine in which it now appears (the SEC's lovely publication Inspires, which seems to me to grow in stature with each edition, my own contribution notwithstanding) is out in the public domain it is now all right for me to post the poem.

The idea of a recurring need in our deepest places – for warmth, for love, for reassurance – seems to me especially poignant and powerful in the last months of the year. As the days shorten after the equinox, this can be felt as a disturbance, a restlessness of spirit reflected in the irregular rhythms of the free verse of the opening section of the poem. This settles into metre to reflect the idea of this experience recurring every year through the ages, a sort of incantatory passage in homage to our Celtic ancestors for whom the coming of the light was in every sense such an important event.

A new look at Advent with a new birth

After a week of dead brain and frozen imagination, I've found the words to express how I felt when little Anna was born. You can see the result here.

But for readers who don't go for poetry, a word of explanation. I always find Advent incredibly special. The culmination of it all is of course the Midnight Mass of Christmas Eve, but as with Holy Week and Easter, the preparation and participation in the whole journey is all. This year feels very different. The arrival of Anna on the day before Advent Sunday, on the first day of the snow that brought the country to a halt, seemed to bring an end to my anticipation, my waiting and longing, before it had even begun. It's inevitable, I suppose, that annual repetition and my own aging will bring a familiarity that might tend to dull the keen edge of the Advent mystery, but this birth and its timing meant that once more a mystical birth was replaced in the front of my preoccupations by a very human birth.

Now I have two Advent grandchildren - see this poem about Alan - it strikes me that the season may never be quite the same again. But maybe this is how it should be - because if there's one thing I've learned in all these years it is that you can't stand still or you turn into a fossil. And we can't have that, can we?

The waiting season

It's cold, tonight. At the end of this afternoon, the sky behind us grew in a wonderful flaming intensity over the still, shining sea lying like steel between us and Bute - and then died, leaving only the afterglow on the hills. Now the night is nailed to the sky with hard, bright stars - not my words, but taken from a poem by Vernon Scannell which I cannot for the life of me track down. It must've been in an anthology in school, and these lines come into my head often at this time of year, for it's an Advent/Christmas poem and the season is almost upon us.

As readers of this blog will know, I love Advent. I love it especially out here on the western fringes of Europe, when the darkness intensifies and makes all the more special the promise of light to come. I have written a new poem for Advent, but as it is to appear in Inspires magazine I shall leave publication online till after I've seen it in print. However, I shall not be beginning Advent in the west this year: I shall be in the city, in the East, waiting for another birth as the season of Advent begins.

I don't know how much blogging I'll be doing while I'm there, but the iPad will accompany me. It does little for the accuracy of my typing but much for my sanity. There is also a highly addictive game on it, for which I blame Ewan. But I'm going in order to be useful, so games and blogs may not be in order. Watch this space, though ...

Blooming elsewhere

I've been posting over at Love Blooms Bright today, on the advent blog begun last year to which a group of bloggers in the Episcopal church contribute. You should take a look - not just because I've posted there, natch, but because it contains a wealth of thought-provoking, meditation-enhancing material, as well as some that can only be described as pure delight.

Go and see!

Advent obsessions

I've been thinking about The Advent Prose today. Actually, I've been obsessed with the images in it since yesterday, when it was the first piece sung at the Eucharist, reinforced by the OT lesson for the day. Recently I've grown impatient with archaic language in worship, but the imagery of "we all do fade as a leaf" and "our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" is compelling stuff. And I realised in conversation that the very familiarity of the words in their plainsong setting removes the sense of the archaic, and that I am free to take them to myself.

As a result, I think I've written my first post for Love Blooms Bright, the Advent blog. It will appear on Sunday, but in the meantime I commend the blog to you for a fascinating series of meditations and insights into the season of Advent. And I shall try not to rant about not anticipating Christmas - except to say that it is much more meaningful to keep Advent first!

Reflections

Sunset reflections
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Looking back on yesterday's carol service, two very different reflections - one mine, the other from a total stranger. Mine first, though. And this was how strange it was to hear a poem of mine read by someone else - for yesterday was only the second time this has happened to me. Suddenly something intensely personal takes on its own life - grows up, if you like - and heads off into the world in the manner of your child going off to school holding someone else's hand. Furthermore, because another person reads with different phrasing, the words take on a different resonance, so that yesterday I heard something new, even though I knew it was coming. The first time this happened, some years ago, I didn't know that the person leading the meditation was going to use a piece of mine, and I found myself thinking "this is very familiar - I wonder who wrote it"...

The second feedback of the day came in a chance meeting in the street, when a woman whose husband had attended the service reported to Mr B that he had enjoyed the singing immensely - but that it was of course a younger choir than was usual in Dunoon, with young voices. And I thought of our group, reading glasses and all, average age pushing 60 - and smiled.

Waiting

Candlelight and darkness. Music, words, silence. The Advent Carol Service at Holy Trinity was filled with a real sense of expectation - the advent expectation that is so distinct from the celebration of Christmas. Such was the matching of readings to readers, such the mystery of the music which is God's highway, that the listeners seemed to have stopped breathing. Even the dog lying at the feet of its owner - someone who hadn't even known the service was to happen, who had been spirited in, dog and all, at the end of an afternoon walk - made no sound. As Merton's words had it, intellects ...quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

And at the end, how joyful we all seemed, greeting one another at the back of the church over mulled wine and mince pies! We do things in style on our damp hill - and at moments such as these, our poverty matters not a bit. We are wealthy beyond reason.

Advent

Flashless
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

I rather like this picture, taken as the male voices of the ad hoc choir for Cumbrae's Advent Carols rehearsed and I wandered about listening to them and experimenting with my camera. It conveys some of the feelings I have about Advent - the darkness, the pools of light, the afternoon already dimming in the short December day. I was powerfully reminded of my first experiences of the Episcopal Church, here in this place in the late 1960s, as we sang "Let all mortal flesh keep silence", one of my favourite hymns and one which I had never heard before coming to Cumbrae. Music, darkness, light: all powerful stimuli to memory - and to something else, something at the very heart of Advent.

I shall be posting a new poem for Advent in two blogs: frankenstina and love blooms bright, where there are already two lovely Advent posts. Do visit!

Light in the darkness

Sanctuary candles
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

The season of Advent begins tomorrow - though the date of this post shows Sunday has already begun. Despite the sudden outbreak of premature Christmas lights, trees and garlands everywhere from the cafe in East Enders to the seafront in Largs to the shore road in Dunoon, this is a special time of waiting in the dark of winter for the light of the Incarnation. This photo was taken today in the Cathedral of The Isles, Cumbrae, a special place with its own vision of hope, where we were rehearsing for tomorrow's Advent Carol Service.

It is not only through music that I shall be marking the season, though goodness knows there will be plenty of that. Do visit the new blog, love blooms bright, where a group of bloggers will be contributing their own reflections on a daily basis from Monday. This is the brain-child of Kimberly, and it promises well.

And for those who are bamboozled by the colours of the candles in our Advent wreath, you can find an explanation here