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