December 24, 2013
The Fourth Week in Advent

Here it is.  Christmas Eve at last.   The merchants' associations say that it has been a good year, and that millions of people have been doing their share to give the economy a boost.    It looks like lots of children will be happy when Santa Claus delivers the goods on Christmas morning.     Lights blink on outdoor displays up and down the streets of town, and there is a general feeling of good will in the air.   Over at the hardware store today, they will gather around the popcorn machine and remember old friends who aren't here this time around.      I will take a few minutes, sometime during the day, to read Paul Engle's nostalgic memory of an old Iowa Christmas, that starts,   "Every Christmas should begin with the sound of bells, and when I was a child mine always did. But they were sleigh bells, not church bells."

There are no sleigh bells this Christmas.   The snow that came a week or two ago is gone.   Christmas will come anyway, ready or not.  Tonight we will gather late in the darkness of this late moment of the year to remember a birth.   There will be candles to light, and some words to be said.   But what words can we say to add to this old tale, this one that still touches our hearts?    It is enough just to remember that once God came into the world, a raw baby nestled in a mother's arms.   It is enough to hope, even just a little, that he still comes. 

Hold Him

I am late for Christmas, again.
I am not ready
as the world wheels once more
to a new season.
The clock of history races forward
at a steady pace,
and I am caught sometimes
in a room of long ago,
where those I love have dwelt.
I linger just a bit too long,
listen for the echo of a voice,
or a wisp of laughter in the night.
I am a person of unfinished tasks,
my life strewn behind me
like blowing leaves.
I am not sure where I am going,
but this place of candles and old songs
still draws me toward a destiny
that haunts our world,
and it is Bethlehem.
So In my dreams, this silent night,
I race in to the stable, breathless.
By the time I arrive
the shepherds have gone,
the moon has set,
and there are no angels that I can see.
Then, just before I turn to go
I catch sight of the sleeping ones
in the shadows,
and something in me aches.
Quietly, I hear a voice, beckoning:
"Don't leave.
You can hold the child," it says.
"You can hold me."

 --Timothy Haut, December 24, 2013

December 23, 2013
The Fourth Week in Advent

Yesterday Phyllis and I got into the car and made a few Christmas shopping stops before getting back home in time for our church's Christmas Pageant dress rehearsal.   I usually do the narration--the Christmas story from Luke and the prologue of John--but by 5 p.m. yesterday I was coughing with the symptoms of a Christmas cold and my voice was wearing out, so Phyllis did the narration for me as I sat in the back and watched the tangle of shepherds, kings, and angels sort themselves into the nativity story.    There is a considerable amount of energy being expended by American children in these last days before Christmas, but there is also something good about having that energy filling the church.  This pageant has been performed here since 1942 on Christmas Eve, and so these kids will also someday look back on this activity as an important part of their own Christmas memory.

Of course, the nativity described in the Bible probably wasn't like this version of it.  There was no rehearsal, no warm sanctuary decked with greens and bows, no crowd gathering promptly at 5:30 on Christmas Eve to snap photos and watch the story unfold with adoration.   Among those who were present back then, there were no visions of sugarplums dancing in anybody's heads.    Jesus came into darkness and exhaustion, bearing an unlikely promise in a furious and desperate world.   Some of those who showed up in the stable that night were shepherds, simple men of the hillsides whose night had been interrupted by a startling visitation that left them "sore afraid." 

I think that you and I are the shepherds in this drama, not just an audience to an ancient pageant.   We tremble when our world is threatened with some change we cannot understand.  We are wary of fate's fickle twists and turns, because most of us feel like we are just barely hanging on as it is.    When angels enter the scene, we usually don't recognize them as benevolent--perhaps until long after our encounters with them we discover that the One who sent them has bigger, better purposes than we can understand.    We head off to Bethlehem, leaving our sheep--and our familiar life--back in the field.  After I watch the young shepherds traipse barefoot up the center aisle of the church, I will walk into the night and head for Bethlehem, too.

Just a Shepherd

When they come,
those angels I have imagined,
I would wear a white linen shirt,
and offer them a place to sit
before they had time to take wing,
all flame and flashing light
and wild words I could not understand,
breaking the wine glasses
on the well-set table,
setting the chandelier to rocking,
interrupting my peaceful world.
I am just a shepherd,
at home in a small corner
of a world too large for me.
You would come,
Mysterious Messenger,
before I could dress for the occasion.
You would find me out back of the barn,
or  at the drugstore buying cough medicine,
or in my safe bed, as I dream fitfully
and wait for morning.
You would say,
"Be not afraid."
And I would repeat that to myself,
even though I would be afraid,
as I high-tailed it to Bethlehem.

--Timothy Haut, December 23, 2013

December 22, 2013
The Fourth Sunday in Advent

"What's your sermon going to be about this week?"   Phyllis usually asks me this question about the middle of the week, thinking that I certainly will have my thoughts organized by then.   Surely there must be a plan, anyway, she thinks.   But sometimes not.    So my answer is always the same.  "I'm preaching about love."

After all, love is at the heart of the Scripture’s witness, at the core of anything we can possibly understand about the creator of the universe.   Some physicists even postulate, in a huge use of scientific metaphor, that love is what holds star systems, planets, moons, and constellations together.   Love is the gravity that binds the worlds of our own human constellations as well.      But the love we proclaim in this Christmas season is a power of a different sort.   It is not simply a gravitational force that pulls everything together, a warm feeling of attraction to those who appeal to us.   It is an act of will.   The divine will chooses to love what is unlovable, rebellious, distant.   It reaches out to us not at our best, but at our worst.

This weekend I performed a wedding.   The reception hall was decked out in garland and twinkling white lights, and on the wall the bridal couple's initials were formed out of pine cones.   They were a lovely pair who have been together eight years, and as they said their vows they looked at each other with that romantic gaze which says, "You are the most wonderful person I have ever known.   I love you."   I hope that they will always remember that moment.   But when the difficult times come and the romance fades a bit in some weary winter of their marriage, I hope that they will still choose to love each other, to be just and kind and humble to each other anyway.   I hope that love will still surprise them  in the dark corner of a stable or a wintry shepherds' field.     I pray that love will never let them go, no matter where their journey may take them.    Love is the greatest gift we can ever receive, the greatest thing we can ever give.  Love is what we must choose.  Love is what God chooses.    Always.

Love the Gift

Tune: Von Himmel Hoch
From Heaven Above to Earth I Come

Now is the year's festivity
The time of berried branch and tree
Of feast and gift and candle light
To mark a birth one holy night.

For this small child there seems no place
As humans venture into space
And probe the atom's mystery
Or search the secrets of the sea.

But still we come, from all the earth
To marvel at this manger birth,
And bend our hearts in quietness
As we our tender love confess.

O love, the gift on us bestowed,
The light upon our wintry road,
Be child and star and angel song
To guide us through our whole life long.

--Timothy Haut, December 22, 2013

December 21, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

My grandmother's parents came to this country from Germany at the end of the 19th Century and settled in the low hills of eastern Iowa, where there was rich farmland on which to build a new life.   But  that new life included some of the old traditions they carried with them from Europe.   Always, at Christmas, they cut down a pine or cedar tree that had grown on their own land and decorated it with candles clipped onto the branches.   After dark on Christmas Eve those candles were lit with great ceremony and with gasps from wide-eyed children, one of whom stood nearby with a bucket of water "just in case."

We no longer use candles on our tree.  Hundreds of little electric lights do the job instead.   Our grandchildren like colored lights, so that's what we have on ours.   Sometimes I sit quietly in the room with the tree at night, still something of a wide-eyed child who feels the wonder of Christmas.    We light the dark with  lights and candles at this darkest time of the year as a sign to ourselves that "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."

Today is the Winter Solstice--the shortest day of the year.   I have been getting up in the darkness for many weeks now.    My morning walk is on dark streets, illuminated by an occasional street light.  Today my heart felt lighter as I looked up at the moon over Rogers Pond, shining through the fog.   I cannot tell it yet by looking around.   But I know that the change is happening.   The days will now get longer.   I remind myself that we can't always tell the difference when the balance shifts in our lives.   But the hope is sure.    God's light shines.

Solstice

Winter comes,
and earth's long rest.
We gather
in candled darkness
to sing of a birth
hidden before memory--
a tale of a stable,
and the scent of straw,
and cattle restless, aware
of an unsettling in the old order.
In our darkest times
we sense it, too,
that though the placid moon
and unchanging stars
fill the night again and again,
there is another force
bending time, calling light
to favor the earth,
to stir us all to life once more.
Lord of the dark,
come.
Be solstice to our short days.
Turn the clock of the world again
when we are tired and lost.
Help us to believe—
in forgotten stable and shepherd's field,
in lonely rooms and fearful streets,
in beds of sickness and haunts of war—
the stirring of some promise
that glitters in us like a star,
like a candle on a tree,
like a winter moon's reflection
in our waiting hearts.

 

--Timothy Haut, December 21, 2013

December 20, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

 My wife Phyllis is a licensed rehabilitator of small mammals.  She has specialized almost exclusively in Eastern gray squirrels, of which there are a multitude around our house.   When she takes in small pink baby squirrels and tenderly nurses them to adulthood, they are released in the woods behind our house.   It is a joy to watch the excitement of these little creatures as they exit their cage door and begin to explore treetop playgrounds and a world of freedom.    For a while they come around, and while we are outdoors they may even jump on a lap or climb onto a shoulder.    Eventually they learn a healthier caution around humans.    But we still put out for them morning peanuts and corn, and we find joy in watching "our" squirrels throughout the year.

 It is said that the Eastern forest in the United States, from Maine to Georgia, was planted by squirrels.   I believe that could be true.  I am constantly finding peanuts growing in my garden--and walnut and hickory trees sprouting where I did not plant them.   It is the squirrels nature to spend much of its waking hours burying seeds that they can find in leaner times.   Squirrels can locate some of their buried treasures even under a foot of snow.   Others become trees.

 Faith is like that, too, I suspect.   Much of what we do is just planting seeds.   Raising our children, nurturing friendships, offering compassion to strangers, doing our little things to make a more just and peaceful world--all seeds.    Some of them actually grow.

A Squirrel’s Faith

You love small things, Lord.
We are coming close again
to that little stable,
where there must have been
a mouse in the straw,
a sparrow in the rafters,
a wee child helpless
in a young mother's arms.
It is an unfinished tale,
the germ of a truth
that would grow
and fill the universe.
So we take that kernel
and plant it, bury it somewhere,
in the ones we love,
or in a stranger, even,
anywhere there is fallow ground.
We tuck it deep inside
the folds of our own hungry hearts,
and wait
for the tree to grow.
Give us a squirrels' faith,
Lord.
Let the tiny thing we plant
be a seed
of your love.

--Timothy Haut, December 20, 2013

December 19, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

You can look out the kitchen window almost any time of day and see them--the other family we feed.   Earliest are the blue jays;  then a host of sparrows, chickadees, cardinals, and titmice fly to and from the feeder.  Underneath, on the ground, are the puffed up little snowbirds, and the mourning doves hungry on a cold morning.    And then come the occasional visits of the nuthatches and downy woodpeckers, and, my favorite, the wrens.    They are busy filling their little bellies, stoking their anatomical furnaces to help them get through these winter nights.   The only things that interrupt this constant feast are the invasion of  squirrels from time to time and the specter of a hawk who comes to inspect the situation, also looking to stoke its furnace.   And, of course, me.  

Open the door, no matter how gently, and they erupt in a flurry of wings, high-tailing it into the treetops and bushes until all is quiet again.   I want to plead with them, "Don't go.   I will not hurt you.   I am the founder of your feast!"   Or, in the  beautiful King James Version words of Luke 12, "Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom!"   But this little flock, outside the window, does nothing but eat and be afraid.   Perhaps, come Spring, other urges will kick in.   But for now, these creatures cannot be aware of the good things that I could offer them.   For instance, they have no appreciation at all of the tenor singing his haunting solo from Handel’s Messiah which is, at the moment, filling my living room.

It is that beautiful moment at the beginning, when the lone voice cries from the wilderness to a lonely, fearful flock of a world,  "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, says your God!"   Every time I hear it, I hold my breath, feel a sense of hope and wonder, trust that the promise is true.    To all of us in exile, to all who ever are afraid, to every little flock, let the first word, and the final word, be "Comfort ye!"

Comfort Me

They are not much,
these little creatures
of feather and bone,
holding out against the cold.
So they gather together
for this simple feast,
peck at the sunflower seeds
and millet and corn
as if they were all the world,
as if they were the kingdom's treasure.
And then a sound:
a door creaks, slams,
a hawk cries somewhere,
the wind fells a branch,
and they are gone.
Today they are ruled
by hunger and fear,
and sometimes I am no different.
But somewhere is a song,
a message of consolation, tender joy,
in this wilderness of ours
where birds, and sheep, and we poor souls--
all flocks abiding in the fields of winter--
miss hearing the glory of it.
Lord, open our ears,
open our hearts
to the comfort of your kingdom.
Comfort me.

--Timothy Haut, December 19, 2013

December 18, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

Today syndicated advice columnist Amy Dickinson repeated her annual Christmas challenge to put “A Book on Every Bed.”    This project was inspired by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough, who recalled that every Christmas morning during his childhood, he and his siblings awoke to the gift of a wrapped book on their beds, delivered in the night by Santa.   Ms. Dickinson believes that a book is one of the most precious and enduring gifts that any child can receive.    So do I.

I remember the earliest books of my childhood, like Dr. Seuss's classic  The King's Stilts.   I read all of the Hardy Boys mysteries I could get my hands on.   And my adolescent mind was transformed by a dog-eared library copy of the Science Fiction Omnibus.    I remember the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 because there were books on my shelf that I hadn't read yet, and the threat of nuclear war might mean I would never get to read them.    So I stayed up half the night with a flashlight reading!       The words on the printed page still have the ability to challenge and inspire me, to transport me to other cultures and universes, to stretch me to deeper understanding, even to bring me to tears.    I want this gift for my granddaughters, for all the children of the world.

Novelist Sarah Smith once said, “I believe God is a librarian. I believe that literature is holy...it is that best part of our souls that we break off and give each other, and God has a special dispensation for it, angels to guard its making and its preservation.”     Perhaps so.  No wonder that John the evangelist, grasping for a way to explain the birth of Jesus, asks us to imagine a book, or a story, or a song, or a poem.   "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,"  he muses.     It is a reminder of how worlds are made by every author, including the Divine One, a story to be written on our hearts--and how, when that happens, it comes to life.

Words

"In those days
a decree went out
from Caesar Augustus"
the story begins.
And the words
give birth
to this story I know,
that I have told over and over
so that it is now written
in the most secret place in me
where worlds dwell.
It is by heart
that I tell this story,
and in words they live again:
a Galileean carpenter and his betrothed,
a babe in swaddling clothes,
those poor shepherds face-down
on the earth, sore afraid
of wild-winged angels overhead.
Lord, you are the Word I hear,
the Word that burns in me,
the Word I must repeat.
But of all the words
that you may speak, sing, be,
I hear these:
Yes.
I love you.
Amen.

--Timothy Haut, December 18, 2013

December 17, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

Today it is snowing again here in Connecticut.  Our grandchildren will be dismissed early from school, and they will head out into this winter day with joy.  For us who fear slips and the falls on hidden pavement, snow is not such a pleasure any more.   For children, it is still magic.   They will come over to our house, and instead of sitting in front of the fire, they will want to go outside and build a snow queen!

A few nights ago we stopped at a small local pizza place for an easy dinner.   Outside on the walk, someone had already constructed the first snowman of the season.    Armless, he still met us with a big smile.  He seemed to say, "There are reasons for gladness, even in our New England winter."     I smiled, too.   And I thought of another creator who decided to make a likeness out of the stuff of earth.   The great story of the world's beginning in Genesis 2 describes God walking through the fields on a misty morning, then kneeling down and scooping up the wet dirt.   Forming the mud into the shape of a human being--little arms and legs, a face, a heart--God breathes into that new creature the breath of life.   I am told that the human's name, Adam,  means "mud creature."   If it does mean that, I think God uttered the name without a bit of condescension, but instead said it with overwhelming, tender love.    For Adam was made in God's image, which means that something about Adam-- and every blessed one of us--is holy, wondrous, loving and beloved. 

Maybe instead of "Mud Creature," our name should be "Star Creature," to reflect our awesome cosmic beginning.   Carl Sagan, the astronomer and author of Cosmos, reminds us that our DNA, our teeth and blood--every physical bit of us--was formed out of the matter of collapsing stars.   "We are made of starstuff," he says.   And so is that snowman outside the pizza place.   Made in our image, and, in a sense, in God’s image, too: smiling, joyful, happy to be alive.   That's why we make snowmen:  to practice making the world in our image.    And while we do that, we can believe that something that was shining over a stable in
Bethlehem in still in us.

Snowman

Smile at me tonight,
funny man,
your face staring out
at a world you will inhabit
just for a moment.
You and I are made
of stars and earth,
and I would give you arms
to hold it all,
or to give some kind of blessing
to the ones who pass you by
too busy to feel joy.
I would give you a heart
to love your bit of time,
to wonder at the loveliness
of this deep and star-struck night,
dusted with snow.
I would give you a heart
and pray that it would not be broken.
But this could not be so.
For if we are all made
in the Creator's image,
then a broken heart
must be yours and mine as well.
It comes with love.
But tonight we smile,
for goodness' sake,
and for the heart that loves us
even when our time is done.

--Timothy Haut, December 17, 2013

December 16, 2013
The Third Week in Advent

Saints lurk among us, hiding from view mostly because they themselves don't even know how holy they are.   And then comes a day of cold and misery, of "rude wind's wild lament and bitter weather,” when we need a Wenceslas to step into the snow before us and help us find a way through.   "Heat was in the very sod  which the saint had printed," the song tells us.  So we walk in those footprints, better for his courage and compassion.

The Christmas story is full of saints, like Joseph, who believed an impossible tale and took Mary as his wife, perhaps later fashioning a remarkable son into a man in his small-town carpenter's shop.   And Mary, blue-gowned saint whose "let it be" welcomed God into the world.  "Ave Maria!," the world still sings.  And there were the shepherds, too, unnamed saints, who raced to worship the Lord in a stable, and who gave him a name--Good Shepherd. 

This weekend I conducted a memorial service for one of our saints, here in this town far from Bethlehem.   He sat in the same pew in church each week, near the back on the left.  He told me recently that he was reading the Bible straight through for the seventh time, still finding new things.  He was a good and gentle friend to many.   Sitting in his back yard, chipmunks would scamper into his lap for treats.  One spring day his daughter found him cutting bits of string to put out so that the birds could have extra material for their nests.    Kindness marked his life, and we are still walking in his footsteps.  Ave, Vern!

Saints Among Us

There is always bitter weather,
and wind's wild lament,
a cry in the night when it seems
we are not fit for this place--
this world too cold, too dark,
for poor creatures like us.
We spend long days and years
in a wilderness,
get lost in the desert or forest,
come at last to an inn
where there is no room.
But sometimes there is a light,
a living sign, a gift:
we find him out there,
cutting string,
hanging bits of it on branches
where sparrows may find
something strong and soft
to make a nest.
God, be with us
in our winters.
Send to us your bright ones,
Christmas saints,
to help make this world
into a finer nest.

--Timothy Haut, December 16, 2013

December 15, 2013
The Third Sunday in Advent

Joy is a pink candle in a blue season.    All of the other candles on the Advent Wreath are purple, the traditional color of penitence.   Long before people got ready for Christmas by heading out to the shopping mall and singing about dancing snowmen, the season of Advent was a solemn time to reflect on life and make the changes necessary to prepare for Christ's coming.  But there was a moment in Advent, the third Sunday, when the responsive antiphon for the day was the familiar passage from Philippians:  " Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice."

It seems strange to command anyone to be joyful.   Yet many of the prayers and anthems we use in churches contain words telling us to "be joyful" or "rejoice greatly."  The truth is that you can't experience joy by an act of will, or by trying harder.   In fact, it seems that the harder you try to acquire it, the more elusive it becomes.   Instead, joy appears unexpectedly, when you are doing something else.    When you love fully and deeply,  joy dawns.    Or it blossoms when you receive a gift or a kindness you neither deserved or expected.   And I believe that if you live in the moment, as if it were a holy wonder or a sublime joke, you may suddenly be surprised by joy.  It is, in itself, a gift--like a present,  tossed into our lives from outside.    My dog teaches me about joy as we take a walk in the snow.   In a big field I throw the ball and watch him turn himself inside out with excitement.  "Do it again!" he seems to say.  When this beautiful thing called joy appears in your heart, you want to chase the ball over and over again, or maybe sing, or dance, or hug somebody.   Gaudete!

Joy

Joy is the flying tongue
and the wild tail,
the leap as the ball is thrown,
and the unfettered chase.
This small creature's heart
is full
of this one moment,
alive in a world covered with snow
with a ball to chase.
I would be a child of such joy,
today.
I would see you
at the end of this tether
of flesh and bone,
and feel my heart dance
in expectation, trust, gratitude,
and love, too.
I would sing carols,
light candles,
embrace the world,
hoping that you would
reach into your pocket
and fling your gift,
your ball of joy.

--Timothy Haut, December 15, 2013

December 14, 2013
The Second Week in Advent

A year ago today the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School took place not very far from here.   The horror and pain of that event still reverberate among us.   In the numbness of shock and sadness, we lit candles and gathered to pray as a community.  And it helped a little, as it always does, to hold each other when tragedy visits us.   On Christmas Eve,  after our traditional Pageant, we went out into the field across the street from the church and released sky lanterns.  It was one way to remember all of those victims of the day--the children, the teachers, even the shooter and the mother who also died.    All of them, all of us, are victims in a world where violence prospers, where healing is essential, where each of us is vulnerable to the ravages of hate and fear.

We all need to be saved.   We cry out to the mysterious Spirit at the heart of the universe to help us make some sense of the senselessness, to do something, to fix what is horribly broken.  And then we gather around a manger to remember a dark night centuries ago when a baby was born.   Love came down at Christmas, we sing.   "The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it," we say, to make ourselves understand, maybe to believe.

The Swing

Out on the empty playground,
a swing still moves,
back and forth,
after they have all run away.
The fading giggles and shouts
echo down the streets,
and the nearby school is quiet.
We remember the innocents,
held in love
by proud, doting mothers and dads,
shining, shining, once, with hope.
They have held us, too,
shown us sweet kindness,
laughed wide-eyed with wonder
at bubbles and butterflies,
sung silly songs with joyful abandon,
curled in our laps,
made us fierce, determined,
made us wild with worry
and with grief beyond comforting,
made us better, too.
O God beyond our understanding,
we come to you
when there is nowhere else to go,
and pray for all the children,
for all whom we would encircle
with aching, empty arms.
Let there be an inn
at the end of the journey.
When they come--
When we come--
let there be room.
And outside, in the green grass,
let there be a swing
that goes higher, higher.

--Timothy Haut, December 14, 2013

December 13, 2013
The Second Week in Advent

Each week during Advent, we invite people to gather before worship to sing the old Christmas carols that tell of Jesus' birth.   Last week little Aiden asked for Jingle Bells, even though there is nothing religious  about it.   It rises from childhood's wonder, though, and perhaps that isn't a spirit to be ignored.   And sometime during Advent we will sing Irving Berlin's  White Christmas, too. 

The wish for a white Christmas reflects our deep yearning for all that is beautiful and peaceful in our lives.    It is nostalgia for a world "I used to know, where the treetops glisten and children listen to hear sleigh bells in the snow."    Not all snowstorms are lovely, of course.   I remember reading Willa Cather's tales of the terrible winters she experienced out on the Nebraska prairie.   In the midst of these storms, you could see nothing but white in every direction.  She describes it this way in My Antonia:  "The snow did not fall . . . it simply spilled out of heaven, like thousands of featherbeds being emptied."

But for us at Christmas time, it is all loveliness.   Snow covers the earth, and all the impurities, for a moment, are forgotten.  Like heaven, where there is no need for sun or moon, because all is light, a snowy landscape is a world where all our days are merry and bright.   And today is Saint Lucia's Day, the day of light.   Tomorrow, it snows!

Snow

Make it soft, Lord,
this snow that comes
from heaven.
Let it settle gently
on the earth,
as it rests
and waits
for a faraway Spring.
Let me rest, too,
amid this blanket of light
which covers everything--
the unraked leaves,
the ugly litter and debris,
all flaws and imperfections--
like a holy promise.
Make it beautiful, Lord,
this world I love,
which sometimes breaks my heart.
Remind me of how lovely
it can be again.
Let it snow.

--Timothy Haut, December 13, 2013

 

 

December 12, 2013
The Second Week in Advent

In my first years as a pastor, I did not always know what my day would bring  (I still don't).     My office at the time was near the custodian's room.  I could often hear him belting out Frank Sinatra songs in the hall.  This meant sermon preparation to the tune of  "I did it my way."    One Advent season a Christmas carol serenade was going on outside my door as  a young woman appeared in my office.   She obviously was confused, desperate, and alone.   I tried to calm her in the midst of her somewhat erratic and agitated pleading.   Finally she leaned close and told me her important secret.   "I'm going to have a baby," she said, "and it's going to be Jesus.  I have marks on my body that prove it. "    I chose not to check out her claim;  I remember calling an ambulance, hoping that she might find help in a hospital or treatment center.

But I think of her, sometimes, when I read the familiar story of the Annunciation--when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary of Nazareth and told her that she would give birth to the mighty Son of God.     Perhaps those who knew Mary feared that she suffered from some delusion, too.   The difference, perhaps, was Mary's simple humility, her willingness to see this promise play out until the story ended on a cross.    "Let it be," she said simply.   My guess is that she never saw that angel again.    But perhaps Gabriel stayed close by, watching, keeping an eye on things.   Smiling at her faithfulness.  Perhaps there are angels all around us, doing the same thing.

Annunciation

It must have been a Spring day,
a day of green grass, and lilies,
birds in full throat, singing,
and apple blossoms swirling like snow.
The great angel would smile
at such a time,
flex shining wings in the sun,
think, "What a fine world
for God to visit!"
Mary was not so sure
about this strange visitation,
but felt some goodness there.
The bright one must have sung his promise,
rejoiced at her assent,
and then was gone.
I don't know if he has come again
to see this fine world
thralled, blind, and broken.
But, once,  I woke from sleep
and glimpsed a face
I did not know,
just at the edge of sight.
There was no troubling message,
no holy annunciation,
just a knowing smile,
a wink from him
before I slept again,
and dreamed.
Was it him, Lord,
wings furled in plaid shirt,
watching me, waiting?

--Timothy Haut, December 12, 2013

December 11, 2013
The Second Week in Advent

During our time of sharing joys and concerns during worship on Sunday, a woman I shall call Mary asked for prayers for one of her closest friends, who had just died.   After the service, I had an opportunity to talk with her privately.   She told me that her friend had been struggling with cancer for a long time.   In fact, the two of them had spent last Christmas Eve together.   She recalled that evening as being one of the strangest, and most wonderful, Christmas Eves of her life.   She was spending the night at her apartment in the city, but her normal Christmas plans had fallen through.   As she was alone, she invited her friend, who was Jewish, to come and have a simple Christmas dinner with her.  
 
The friend came, even though she was weary from the effects of her medical treatments.   As they sat together in the warm living room before dinner, the friend fell asleep.    Mary covered her with an afghan to allow her these moments of healing rest, then sat down nearby to read for the next few hours.   Quietly, Christmas Eve was celebrated in the peaceful presence of two people of different faiths who did not speak a word but experienced a different kind of holy birth.       “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift  is given,” the great carol proclaims.  “No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him,  still the dear Christ enters in.”   So it is that simple presence, and holy silence, can be the greatest gift.

An Ancient Stable Now We Seek

(tune Her Kommer Dine Arme Smaa
“Thy Little Ones, Dear Lord, Are We”)

An ancient stable now we seek,
While noisy voices often speak,
And worldly troubles never cease
To keep our hearts from heaven’s peace.

We need your calming spirit here,
A healing presence in our fear,
Let love be comfort, strength and rest,
And every troubled heart be blessed.

Come, Lord, to us this quiet night
And fill our darkness with your light,
Let gentle silence be the space
Where we may find your birthing place.

--Timothy Haut, December 11, 2013

 

December 10, 2013
The Second Week in Advent

 

It is just before daybreak, and the streets are quiet.   My dogs are interested in something up ahead as we climb a little hill, where Lord’s Lane bends  as it skirts a small copse of trees.    Then I see it--a coyote up ahead in the road, nose in the air, sensing us.     Before I can pull the camera out of my pocket to take its picture, it lopes off into the woods.   But there, where he was, is another sight:   a majestic old maple tree, sillhouetted against the brightening sky.  Sheltered beneath its branches is a house, its early morning lights yellow and warm in the cold dawn.

 

I am always drawn to this--the lights of a house in the darkness.  Perhaps I am not alone as I travel the unexpected highways of my life.   I yearn to find my way home.   Storms come to all of us, and terrible dark nights.   Sometimes we feel so alone that we long for a facsimile of our safer, more innocent, childhood--even if that childhood was not particularly safe or innocent.   The poet Ralph Seager says that all of us are "homesick for a home we can't remember."     The house by the road, warm with lights, reminds me of Chesterton's lines from "The House of Christmas,"  which ends with a promise. And that is the hope of Christmas.   All of us--kings, shepherds, innkeepers--travel homeward toward an open house in the evening:

                          To the end of the way of the wandering star,
                          To the things that cannot be and are,
                          To the place where God was homeless
                          and all men are at home.

 

Home

 

Bright against the fading night
a window shines
golden as a star.
Someone is home there,
waking to an ordinary morning.
There is coffee to be made, and toast,
and perhaps the babble of a radio.
But I am outside,
walking down this dark road
that everyone knows.
A coyote slinks into the trees,
and the wind sings a lonely song.
I would go in here,
or somewhere like it,
and know that I have found
the place where love dwells,
the place of welcome.
It could be just a stable, Lord,
and I would be content
if you were there.
There are so many of us
trying to find our way
home.
Will you leave the light on for us?
Will you open the door,
and ask us in?

 

--Timothy Haut, December 10, 2013

December 9, 2013

The Second Week in Advent

 

Down the street an abandoned building waits for a new owner to bring it to life again.   Dried leaves pile up around a nearby used car, waiting for someone to buy it or haul it away.   Along the brick wall of the building, once the home of a flower shop, a large Angel's Trumpet plant managed to sprout in a crack in the concrete.   I have watched this determined plant over the months, growing and spreading and eventually erupting in a cascade of  huge white and peach colored blossoms, a testimony to summer's beautiful magic and the opportunism of all living things.

 

Now these beautiful blossoms are gone, and what remains is a sprawling brown remnant of a plant, covered with host of spiny pods containing seeds for another year's growth.   Maybe, come spring, a few of them will find their way into the cracks in the pavement  and work their miracle again.   It is an incidental fact that Angel's Trumpets (also known as Datura) once were used as ingredients in love potions, sometimes causing delirious states or even death.    I don't intend to nibble on them as I pass.    But I think that as we get ready once more to hear the Christmas story,  it is not altogether strange that I hear Angel's Trumpets making  a promise.

 

Angels’ Trumpets

Not so long ago

great blossoms hung--

angel's trumpets white as snow--

celebrating a summer's day.

They are gone now,

and the wasted leaves

and dried pods

rattle in a winter wind,

a solemn souvenir

of a glory that was,

and, perhaps, a plan

for what may be again.

I hear a spirit here, whispering:

You cannot always be flower.

There is a fallow season, too,

a long darkness, and cold,

when seeds must hide within you.

Be quiet.  Rest patiently.

There is a goodness in this.

Wait.

 

--Timothy Haut, December 9, 2013

 

December 8

The Second Week in Advent

 

Today many churches light the second candle on the Advent Wreath, which is often called the Peace Candle.    The reading from Isaiah helps us to imagine a world where  the wolf and the lamb will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like an ox.   And a small child will walk among them unharmed, even lead them to a place we call the peaceable kingdom.     This hope flickers in us like a flame in a dark room.   No matter how bad the world seems, we long for a day when peace will reign.

 

These days we have been reflecting on the life of Nelson Mandela.   A fierce opponent of apartheid in South Africa, he spent 27 years in prison before his release.    By then he was already an older man, gray streaking his head.   He had every reason to be angry, bitter, hateful.  He taught his country a different lesson:   that there was enormous power in forgiveness, hope for all who could live together in peace.   That has been the miracle of South Afirca.  That can be the miracle in each of our lives, too.

 

Peace Wassail

(to the tune of Gloucester Wassail)

Wassail, wassail, here's peace to this house,

To the cat in the chair and the small hiding mouse,

To the folks in their beds and the people they love,

All blest by the One who gives peace from above.

 

Come dream of a world of impossible joy,

A future of peace for each girl and boy,

Where lion and lamb lay asleep in the stall,

And eagle and wren sing a tune for us all.

 

So here's to the spirit of kindness and light,

The peace that enfolds us each cold winter's night,

May gentleness reign, let us heal and forgive,

Light the candle of peace for as long as you live.

 

Wassail, wassail, here's peace to this house,

To the dog in its bed and the scurrying mouse,

To each stranger and friend may our arms open wide

As we welcome our Lord at this bright Christmastide.

 

--Timothy Haut, December 8, 2013

 

December 7

The First Week in Advent

 

The Celtic Tenors came to town last night, an early Christmas gift.   Their singing was a joyous thing, and they even let us sing along through a chorus of "White Christmas."    But the highlight for me was when the bearded, curly-haired one stepped up into a circle of light to sing a haunting love song.      It was the imaginary cry of Galileo, the great Italian astronomer of the 1600's whose scientific discoveries turned the world upside-down.   Perhaps he could be called the forebear of the modern analytic mind, which has little use for mystery or faith.   In this beautiful song, Galileo confesses that love has given him a glimpse of paradise, and he wonders "who in heaven invented such a joy."   Perhaps, even to his blind and dying days, this scientific rationalist cries, "Who puts the rainbow in the sky?   Who lights up the stars at night?  Who dreamt up someone so divine, someone like you?"   

 

And so this is still the thing that haunts us.   That in this broken world, so terrible, so stained with sorrow and death, there can be something so beautiful as a rainbow, a star, a love.   This is what keeps us hunting for what must be a holiness deep within the atoms of creation.  This is what keeps us looking for the secret, the incarnate God, the one true thing that,  once and forever, touched the hearts of shepherds and kings.

 

In Search of God

 

Before light seeps through the windows

I, beneath warm covers,

turn, and reach out gently to touch

this woman's face,

this loveliness beside me,

this one who has borne these years with me.

O Magnum mysterium,

God beyond my understanding,

I ache to believe in you.

I would fathom some little depth

of purpose or truth

in a universe of terrifying dimensions,

of black holes and supernovas,

of suns that will burn out like a match,

or cities washed away in a hurricane,

or the wasting cancer in a child,

or even a moth singed by a candle's flame

I could lose all faith, some days.

But then I am visited by a sudden rainbow in the sky,

a rose holding on through a frost,

a song I cannot forget,

and this morning, the woman by my side.

For these things, Lord,

like the magi of old,

I will chase you down,

find you,

worship you.

 

--Timothy Haut, December 7, 2013

December 6
The First Week in Advent
 
 This is the weekend of our church's annual Christmas fair.  Volunteers spend months getting ready: knitting sweaters, constructing wooden toys, baking pies and cookies, fashioning tree ornaments out of clothespins and pinecones.    But there is always a rush for the room euphemistically known as “the King’s Treasures.”   Tables are full of  unmatched coffee cups, cookie jars, costume jewelry, jigsaw puzzles, tacky Christmas decorations, kitchen gadgets—things sometimes known as rummage.    I confess that I always check out that room, too.   I never intend to buy anything.   Sometimes I vow not to even go in there.   But there is an irresistible draw, a primal quest to find the one thing that will make my life complete, or the fear that if I don't go, I will miss it.   One year I was rewarded by the acquisition of a pink hippopotamus cookie jar;  another year I came home with a four-foot tin snowman;  still better, a necktie decorated with hound dogs that barked "We wish you a merry Christmas."

Of course, none of these things fall under the category of "needed."   Our lives are littered with excess, and the stuff never leaves us satisfied that at last we have enough.    Our world, instead, runs on the demand always to acquire more, newer, better stuff.   Wendell Berry reminds us not to pray for a new heaven or earth, but to be so "quiet in heart, and in eye clear," that we will realize, in the end, that "what we need is here."

What I Need

I am afflicted with desire,
hungering for something
I can not name.
My walls are hung with beauty,
my shelves groan with books,
and I am lulled to senselessness
by magical electronics
that know where I am at all times.
But sometimes I do not know
where I am.
Sometimes I long to find myself
in some quiet place
where love alone dwells.
Give me a star, Lord.
Lead me to Bethlehem.

--Timothy Haut, December 6, 2013

December 5
The First Week in Advent

I find a rag lying in the leaves far back of the house.    In the garage, a plastic penguin is stuffed onto a shelf, next to a wooden crucifix.   A wall beam is lined with jars of nails, windshield washer fluid, a broken oil lamp, and a lone work glove, waiting for its match to be found.   It is the same everywhere.  My desk is littered with ancient artifacts:  a mug full of pens, a dish of horse chestnuts, a handful of heart-shaped stones, a torn photo of my great uncle.  On the radiator lies a barrel-makers tool, passed on to me by my father, who tells me that his grandfather was one of the last and best barrel-makers West of the Mississippi.   But what is it to me?   What can I do with such a thing in my life?

I think of William Butler Yeats' attempt to describe the origin of the poet's greatest visions, or our humanity's best dreams.    We keep going back to the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart."    All of us are a synthesis of old rags and bones:  the fragments of childhood memories and yearnings, the familiar tastes and smells that set our hearts thumping, the filaments of DNA or family stories that go back far beyond our recollection.  Even the foulest pieces of our lives--the old hurts and disappointments, the failures and frustrations--are stirred into the cauldron where something new, hopeful, healing may emerge.
Advent is full of rags and bones, turned into a story of an unplanned homeless child wrapped in swaddling cloth.   I know how that story ended.  But I wait, still, to see what will come of my rags and bones.

Rags and Bones

I am rags and bones,
the remnants of years.
I do not understand why
I keep the drawer of letters,
the pins and stones
gathered like a cairn
on my heart's landscape.
A cooper's tool, rusty with age,
claims my loyalty,
as if a hand from another world
offers it against some unseen need
for some mysterious, holy task.
I am scar and wound,
a creature limping to some fearful destiny.
I am left to lie among the leaves,
a woven cloth, waiting to be found.
And you are the one
who comes--
a wind, a breath, a dream--
to find me, to find us all,
and give a birth.

--Timothy Haut, December 5, 2013