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.

Of plainsong, penitence and nightly fears and fantasies

We were practising plainsong this morning - a group from the congregation learning the Tonus Peregrinus and familiarising themselves with the twiddly endings of the second part of the psalm, which had a few interesting ligatures to confuse and delight. And as a result, I've been singing plainsong in my head ever since - not just the chants we were doing, but somehow, mysteriously, parts of Compline as well as whatever ideas flitted over my brain wedded to a succession of neumes.

We're doing a basic Prayer Book evensong for our contribution to the Holy Week services in the town, and so we're singing all the syllables and using traditional language - and I have to say it was fine, and that I was happy to do this and let it wash over me without a qualm. But what strikes me in these moments is how conscious of sin and unworthiness the church was, how insistent on human sinfulness and the need to repent, and how aware of frailty and vulnerability. This is backed up by the collection of spiritual readings that I tend to digest before bed - last night's homily from the early church was full of the need to contrast sinful me with the purity of Christ. And they were so afraid of the night - of nightly fears and fantasies, of all perils and dangers of the night. The nights must have been so very dark, and so full of the unknown and the feared, when life was short and surrounded by threat.

Are we so sure now that we've got it all licked? With our electric lights, our computers transmitting our late-night ramblings to anyone who cares to read them, our antibiotics and skilled surgeons? Is the universe really tamed, the night purged of fear? And sinfulness? Let's not even go there.

But if we waken at four to soundless dark, what do we think of? Unresting death? I can't think that Philip Larkin was alone in this. I shall continue to love Compline, to plainsong, above any other service of the church.  And now it's past midnight ...

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. 

Paschal Alleluias

Allejuia! The New Fire was lit, the Paschal Candle processed into the dark church, the old readings heard, the Litany sung. Now the candle burns in the darkness, to be there when we return to church in the morning, where the risen Christ will greet us in the breaking of bread ...

It never fails, that dark service, the tiny lights that grow in the gloom as the candles around are lit from that first fire. Always the thrill, always something different and much that is timeless. Tonight a sudden wind threatened the fire, making the lighting of it difficult - and raising the possibility of a server or two losing an alb to the flame - but when it came, in a rush of gold in the gloaming, it was all the more triumphant. Tonight it was so dark and our tiny candles so compelling that we who read could not see the floor, feeling our way to the lectern as if we had just learned to walk. Tonight I sang the plainsong of the Paschal Litany rather than the Exsultet, and felt there was no reason for the song to stop.

And it is so, so satisfying to know that the Paschal candle has been left burning, left in this era of Health and Safety, this time of Insurance Risks - our candle will be there burning in the morning. Allelulia!

Aubade?

Waking at four to soundless dark ... well, not exactly. It was seven and the sky had whispers of light in it. Mustn't let my enthusiasm for Larkin obscure the facts. Fact is, I woke and found myself reviewing the past two weeks with the awful clarity that dawn brings - and this is what, unclouded by warm fuzzy feelings or distorted by immediacy, came out:

The miracle of our having decided to invite our eight-voice choir to join us for the carol service in a year when so many of the home-grown singers were under par - and the joy that so many people came to hear them on a day when several of our own congregation didn't.

The enjoyment of the church decorating day, including the therapy (for me) of polishing the silver.

The realisation that as far as I'm concerned Advent is more productive than Christmas - a variant on the travelling hopefully idea?

The disappointment that the nave lights were left on at the Midnight Mass. Despite the fact that we were all holding candles, the relentlessly bleak lights killed any magic for most of us in the pews, and I was distracted right up to the Peace by wondering if someone had just forgotten to put them off. Big mistake. Probably someone complained about darkness.

This last thought so irritated me that I got up well before it was light. I'm glad now, as it's a glorious morning and I may well go out. Feel better now ...