Advent: First Fulfillment

O shut your bright eyes that mine must endanger

With their watchfulness; protected by its shade

Escape from my care: what can you discover

From my tender look but how to be afraid?

Love can but confirm the more it would deny.

Close your bright eye.

Sleep. What have you learned from the womb that bore you

But an anxiety your Father cannot feel?

Sleep. What will the flesh that I gave do for you,

Or my mother love, but tempt you from His will?

Why was I chosen to teach His Son to weep?

Little One, sleep.

Dream. In human dreams earth ascends to Heaven

Where no one need pray nor ever feel alone.

In your first few hours of life here, O have you

Chosen already what death must be your own?

How soon will you start on the Sorrowful Way?

Dream while you may.

- Mary's lullaby to Jesus in W.H. Auden's For the Time Being

Advent 4.5: Eve

It is the day before the day before Christmas, and I am watching snow fall outside the windows, listening to carols, sitting still, taking a rest from preparing for tomorrow's journey.

Journeying is the theme of the fourth week of Advent in some traditions. Mary and Joseph journeyed to Bethlehem. We journey to see family. We journey, in our hearts, toward preparation for the One Who Comes. (For the past few days I have posted the O Antiphons, which help my own journey toward readiness--though are we ever ready? Check out the surprisingly helpful Wikipedia entry on the O Antiphons if, like for me, liturgical traditions aren't so familiar for you.)

Solstice has passed; the days are growing longer again. I spent that darkest of days, this year, studying and then baking cookies and simmering chili on the stove and then sitting and reflecting with a number of delightful women, the scent of citrus on our hands, the weight of waiting on our shoulders.

Light is coming.

advent 4.4

O Emmanuel, God with us, our King and Lawgiver, the expected of the nations and their Savior: Come to save us, O Lord our God.

advent 4.3

O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one: Come, and deliver humankind, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.

advent 4.2

O Dawn of the East, brightness of the light eternal, and Sun of Justice: Come, and enlighten them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

(Photo credit: my dad)

advent 4.1

O key of David, and Scepter of the House of Israel, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens: Come, and bring forth the captives from their prisons, they who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

advent 3.7

O Root of Jesse, who stands for an ensign of the people, before whom kings shall keep silence and unto whom the Gentiles shall make supplication: Come to deliver us, and tarry not.

(photo credit: my dad)