the kinswoman’s story

They arrived in the baking heat of noon, Mary drooping and Joseph frantic with worry over her  They knocked at our door because we were their nearest kin in the town.  Our home was already bursting at the seams, but we wanted to show our best hospitality, and we put them in the only space we had left – the work room which was set a step above the space for the animals to be gathered at night.

As she recovered, we got to know them.  Mary was so intense, so focused; clever, witty, quick thinking, impulsive.

But it is Joseph who sticks most in my mind.  Joseph was quiet, steady, endlessly patient, both with his wife and the baby.  The quietness hid a huge depth of love.  I’ve never seen a young father more passionately intense about his son.  I remember him talking deep into the night, while Mary slept, as I rocked the child to keep him from waking his mother.

‘I will teach him all I know of building.  Of corner stones, and key stones, and of earth turned to rock by the sun.  How to fit door frames and to build hinges.  How to craft wood, and to smooth it to a satin.  I will show him the places I played as a child, and the shady nooks, and the cold vast skies of night.  I will teach him how to skim a stone, and make a whistle or a flute,’ said Joseph, ‘but I want more for this child.  I will teach all I know of the Law – and then find him good teachers for the rest.’  I thought he would teach the child a more valuable lesson.  I thought he would teach how deep a father could love.

Elizabeth’s Story

All the long years of pitying glances rolled away in the glory of this conception. There was an absolute rightness in it. The angel appearing in the holy Temple, in the right place, and at the sacred time. The promise of the holiness of the child.

God had indeed remembered his promises, his old ways of working. I dreamed of a future for this child. He would restore the ancient purity of ways, the law strictly observed, and Israel called back to the true pure path. The comparison which I could not help making was between my husband and myself and the greatest of all our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. We had always tried so hard to live holy lives, Zechariah and I – and now we were to be rewarded. And yes, Zechariah had, to some degree made a bit of a mess of it, but he had surely be forgiven, or my belly would not have been swelling with a baby.

Conceived like this, my child would surely be – well, he HAD to be the long awaited Messiah, didn’t he? As great and greater than Elijah, Moses, Isaac, Israel himself.

So great was my joy that I was generous when word reached me that my young cousin Mary was – well, that she had- well, Mary came to stay for a little.

She stood in the doorway. My heart seemed to stop still. My baby leapt in me like a fish breaking water. Every certainty stood on its head. Purity was swallowed in love. Repentance was engulfed by forgiveness. The reward of virtue went down before the glory of self offering. What I was, what my child was, that too went down. Now, what had been first would be last. And she, who by rights would have been last, she was the first. Impurity had become healing, rebirth.

My child? What could I and he do but spread ourselves out in the service of she and hers.

‘Who am I to see the mother of my Master?’ I cried. Every certainty was lost in a huge hope.

Christ our Advent hope

Christ our Advent hope,

bare brown trees,

etched dark across a winter sky,

leaves fallen, rustling.

ground hard and cold, remind us to prepare for your coming;

remind us to prepare for the time

when the soles of your feet will touch the ground,

when you will become one of us

to be at one with us.

Kate McIlhagga

almost time

Love Blooms Bright will return again for Advent 2008.  Daily posts begin on Sunday, 30 November.

Light in the Dark

The child in me has been caught up with memories of reading, re-reading and re-reading again of Shirley Hughes’ ‘Lucy and Tom’s Christmas’. At 5 am, Lucy and Tom rouse their parents – ‘Christmas has really begun’.

But Christmas is really a festival of night – of light in the darkness – of stars against the dark sky – of warmth against the winter cold. As we welcome the birth of Jesus, some warmth creeps even around cold hearts .. Emmanuel, God with us – no longer alone.

O Emmanuel

Since the time of Boethius in the fifth century, Christian people have been encouraged to think from 16-23 December each year of the coming Messiah using his messianic titles. Before Magnificat was said or sung at Vespers during these days one of those titles would be used as an antiphon.

The Benedictine monks went on to arrange these seven antiphons with a definite purpose. If we start with the last title which we think of on this day and then take the first letter of each of the following ones in order – Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia – the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, Tomorrow, I will come.

Therefore, Jesus of Nazareth, whose coming, the celebration of whose blooming bright in the world we have been trying to prepare for throughout this Advent and whom we may address in these seven holy Messianic titles, now speaks to us, Tomorrow, I will come.

So the “O Antiphons” not only bring intensity to our Advent preparation, but bring it to a joyful conclusion.

O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Saviour of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God.

The Solstice

Heralded by Sirius and Orion,
the Sun is rising.
The longest night is past.
The shortest days of winter are done.
May the coming of the Son of God
warm our souls in the days to come
as the Sun will warm our bodies
and give cheer to our eyes.

Amen.

Alleluia-verse for the Virgin

Alleluia! lightburst from your untouched

womb like a flower

on the farther side

of death. The world-tree

is blossoming. Two

realms become one.

- Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Barbara Newman

And still through cloven skies they come

The thing about angels is that you just don’t know when they will turn up.

There was I leading Choral Evensong on Sunday night it is always a joy. Yet something happened about halfway though – during the gloria at the end of the Nunc to be precise. Something happened to the music and in consequence to the worship. Was it the soaring of the sound or the steady beating of wings as they gathered around the church. I don’t know, but knew we were visited by angels for a time.

They will be back to lead our singing around the crib soon enough, no doubt.

Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus

Today is the 300th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Wesley. As we ‘pass this way but once’ we wistfully think of what we might leave behind. I’d gladly settle for Wesley’s legacy of hymns written on the hearts of generations of people of faith and almost/becoming faith. It seems to me that hymns are the great engines which teach faith and engender hope – to sing our faith in the great hymns is to imprint it on heart and mind and soul.

So as we sing in this Advent season, ‘Come thou long-expected Jesus, born to set thy people free’, we are moving towards, ‘Hark, the Herald Angels sing, Glory to the new-born King.’

+David