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