Christmas Hymn

Sung to the tune Paedia, by Johann Abraham Peter Schulz
Adapted from the Danish carol Thy Little Ones, Dear Lord, Are We
by Hans Adolf Brorson

Your creatures, all, dear Lord, are we,
And come your manger bed to see:
So kneeling in this humble stall
Let love be given to one and all.

Our humble songs this night we raise,
Our hearts in joyous wonder praise
The One Creator of our earth
Now come to us in Jesus' birth.

The wren, the jay, the hawk in flight
All join their songs in true delight
With angels brighter than the sun
Proclaiming peace to everyone.

And so the squirrel, the fox, the deer
Shall one day live without a fear
And all creation, made anew,
Shall live with glory shining through.

All praise now Bethlehem’s holy One,
God with us here, bright shining Sun,
The Light that brings us hope again,
Our highest joy, God’s great Amen.

Joseph

He stands for a moment,
Around his feet the curled shavings
Of sweet pine,
Runs his calloused hand
Along the smooth grain
Of a board which is ready
To be cut and fit
Into a table or cabinet,
Or maybe into a cradle.
He sighs
At the thought of it.
A journey lies ahead,
Long, difficult.
Not just the tiring trip down dusty roads,
But the life beyond:
This caring, this ache in his heart,
For the young wife
Full of child,
The tending of a son
Who will never have a carpenter’s hands.
He, too, is full of child,
Something struggling to be born
In him.
He looks out of the window,
Sees the sun brimming over the trees.
“Good weather, at least” he thinks,
And slings his pack over a shoulder.
This he can do,
Get them to Bethlehem.
The rest will have to come later,
The cutting and fitting
That will make him into a father.
He closes the door behind,
Steps out into the morning.

Solstice

It is just barely morning
And high up in a grandfather oak
A blackbird watches for
The sun
Maybe hoping to catch
That brightest, shining thing,
Bring it home
To its cache of treasures.
This is solstice,
The darkest day,
The turning of the year.
We breathe deeply,
Prepare to bide our time,
Wait for a softer morning.
It does not seem to us
That we are truly tiny beings,
Riding on a wet bit of cosmic rock
As it twirls around a star,
Which itself is streaking away
From a wondrous explosion
At the birth of time.
Someday this little world
Will end,
Gone in a great galactic collision
Or a burst of starfire.
But today we live
For another spring,
Look not for an ending
But a birth.
In the night
We listen for the whispers, echoes
Of the first Word,
Which is something like a song,
And in our morning
Reach as high as we can
For that brightest, shining thing
Which is treasure,
Which is life.

Shepherd

Someone must have stayed
Out in Bethlehem’s fields
While those bedazzled shepherds
High-tailed it into town
To find a manger.
Someone must have chosen
To stay on duty,
Clambering over windswept ledges
To find a bleating lamb,
Or bending under a thicket
To be midwife at a creature’s birth.
Theirs was a sad fate,
To be shepherds on the holiest night
But to have nothing to tell
Lapfuls of grandchildren
Who would ask about the shimmering glory
When the starry sky was filled
With wild wings and song,
Who would want to know what
The Savior of the world looked like,
Splayed out there on the hay.
Still, they had kept another kind of faith.
They had done their duty,
And duty, too, is a thing
That holds the world together,
Another name for love itself.
Of course, the restless sheep
Would not be grateful,
Would not care about the aching bodies,
The bone-weariness,
Of those who kept watch,
Who kept the terrors of the dark at bay.
But perhaps there was One
Who took notice, remembered,
Cherished those forgotten ones,
One who later taught a Son
What it meant to be a
Shepherd.

Afraid

They must know me after all these years,
The squirrels of this wooded hill
Who watch from their high perches
Each day at dawn
As I come bringing gifts.
Of peanuts, sunflower seeds, and corn.
Always they keep a wary watch,
Chattering from a distance
And scurrying away
When I come upon them unawares.
I still wish for a warmer greeting,
Some kinder acknowledgement
Of our long familiarity.
They are wild ones,
Their hearts and ears tuned
To the footsteps of foxes
And the high cries of hawks.
It is fear that keeps them alive,
The same barrier that distances them
From me, a good man, benevolent,
The founder of their feast.
I, too, know this thing--fear.
It stirs in me, and in us all.
It is the great darkness,
The yawning terror beneath all ills--
All anger, all resentment, all hate,
All that shadows and shames our world.
It is what prisons us in loneliness,
What holds us back from utter joy.
I read again this ancient story
Of heaven’s angels coming face to face
With a holy maiden,
Or showing themselves to shepherds one starry night.
The first word is always the same,
God’s word to us, the saving Word
To all who are frightened
Even by good and gracious news,
It is my word to my brothers and sisters
Flicking their tales overhead, waiting:
Be not afraid. Be not afraid.

Wreath

On every street lamp in town,
A fresh wreath, ribboned in red,
Proclaims something,
Though in this flat and secular time
We cannot be sure
Just what we are called to celebrate.
A car rolls by,
The driver staring fixedly ahead,
Grim-faced though he wears a Santa hat,
As if by doing so
He might stumble into joy.
Nearby a house, decked in lights,
Blinks in colored cheerfulness
As a faceless neighbor walks by, head down,
Hands pocketed against the cold,
Oblivious to the decorations.
In the church, the pink candle
Of the Advent Wreath
Is set to flame,
Sending a wisp of joy into the morning.
This, and every Christmas wreath,
Shape our imagination,
Eternal circles with no beginning, no end--
Images of the force that binds the universe,
The irresistible power that brings us back
Over and over again to love.
Joy can not be bought,
Can not be had by sheer will or determination.
It may appear in the darkest times,
Like a candle’s fire,
And even when we are most alone
Joy may come unbidden.
But it will never allow us to stay alone.
When joy appears,
It asks us to wreath the world,
To make a circle so big
That all may be gathered in
To celebrate, together, a wonder,
A holy wonder.

A Boy and a Candle

There I am--
A faded photo
On a home-made card,
A child of two or three
Blowing out a candle.
Over sixty Christmases
Have come and gone,
And in that chasm of time
The simple dreams and prayers
Of a little boy
In footed pajamas
Have changed, too.
Never could he have known
The life, the world
That was to come.
Yet somewhere deep
In this blessed and broken heart
That child still blows his candle,
This child still hopes for goodness, joy.
I am father, grandfather now,
Guarding hopes for other little ones,
Fearing for them in a world
Which will take their innocence away,
Leave them longing to be
So beautiful, so tender, so loved again.
But in this sacred journey
Where always we come as children
Back to the place where we began,
Where we travel on roads
That disappear beyond our candlelight,
We will be found by love.
We will be found by love.
We will be children of Christmas.

St. Lucia's Day

She was blinded
By the cruelty of the world,
Left sightless
In a world of dancing light,
Lost to a myriad of colors arrayed
In splendor across creation’s glory.
Yet she could still see
One face above all worlds,
Could see with heart and soul
All that could be loved.
We who are blind to beauty,
We who walk unseeing
Through a panoply of wonders
And stumble through our days
Without looking up,
Pray for such a miracle of light.
It may not be a crown of candles
That awakens us,
That tears the blinders from our eyes,
But grace that comes from pain,
Or some other holy surprise.
Tonight the heavens will blaze
With celestial fireworks,
Gemini’s meteors burning above us.
But they may be, in truth,
St. Lucia’s candles in the sky,
Calling us who walk in darkness
To see a greater light.
Like the ancient magi
Scanning the sky for guidance,
We are invited to journey
Through the world’s midnight
With stars in our eyes.

Cat

In this season
Of unexpected visitors,
A gray and white cat has come,
Lurking in the barn,
Peering through the bushes,
And, at last, waiting at the back door.
It may be a neighbor's pet,
Out for a stroll.
But I have heard that stray cats
Will go quietly from house to house
For weeks or months before they choose
That single, best place
To say, "Here I am.
This is home.
Let me in."
We are all wanderers,
Searching through our years
To find a place where we belong.
This is our Advent yearning,
The call of candle, hearth, and table,
Of arms outstretched, and laughter,
Of kindness, warmth, and rest,
Of love that welcomes most of all
The lost son, the wounded daughter,
The weary traveler at the end of the road,
The cat with no place else to go.
For a while, here,
We make a place to belong,
A lodging with our pictures on the wall,
A place to lay our head.
But like Mary, Joseph,
We are always summoned
To leave familiar dwellings,
To take some stranger road
To an unknown destination
Where there is a manger waiting,
Filled with holy light
Streaming through a crack in the wall
Of the world.
In that brightness we may see,
For a moment,
With cow and dove, donkey and cat,
Our one true home.

Annunciation

In the leaves
Around the corner of the house
A Christmas rose has bloomed,
An annual miracle
In this bleakest of times,
A sign
To be grasped and understood.
Once angels appeared,
Wings concealed,
Lest fear should overwhelm.
To Mary, the archangel came
Like a salesman at the door:
“Greetings,” he began with a bow,
“Blessed are you among women!”
This was to prepare her
For the impossible news
That would change her forever,
That would fill her
With the holiest of burdens.
I am sent lesser angels,
Humbler visitations,
More mundane burdens.
A flower blooming in the winter cold
Will do for me,
This beautiful thing out of season,
Then a quick flickering in the heart,
And, perhaps, a voice:
“Greetings! The Lord is with you.
Do not be afraid.”
I head out into the day
And look for wings.

Christmas Tree

Near the end of his days
My father would still go out,
Some mid-December day,
Into the Iowa countryside
To find a Christmas tree.
Tongue between his teeth,
He would haul it into the house,
Wrestle it into the metal stand,
And string it with colored lights—
The big ones, scratched with age—
The kind where if one goes out,
They all go out.
In those last years,
No other decorations were necessary:
No tinsel, no strands of beads,
No silvered balls that reflect the world
Like a fun-house mirror.
In the early darkness,
He would sit in his easy chair
Basking in the soft light of the tree,
As he listened to carols on the radio.
Perhaps it was enough
To help him be, for a moment,
The little boy collecting coal
Along the train tracks,
Whose Christmas was just
An orange in a stocking,
And a pair of gloves
For cold-reddened fingers,
A boy whose mother was still alive
Cooking a scrawny goose
And filling a house full of love.
That, of course,
Is the light
Which never goes out,
The evergreen thing
That makes the darkest days
Into a Christmas.

Glory

The glory shall be revealed,
A gift unribboned in gold.
Glory, for the broken-hearted,
For the hope-hobbled, dream-starved,
Song-stricken children of earth.
Glory, for the pain-ridden,
Bed-burdened, death-stalked,
Fear-fettered brothers and sisters.
Glory, for the hard-bitten,
Hate-twisted, Wonder-wounded,
Love-stolen sons and daughters.
Glory, this thing
That shines when all is lost,
The one enduring promise,
The thing God holds out to us--
Flings into the December air,
Sprinkles into our dearest dreams,
Offers to us at the cost of
Everything.
This Advent we remember
What we have almost forgotten:
That the Glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all flesh—
You, me, everybody—
Shall see it, together.
The mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Carol of the Grass

Sung to 'Est Ist Ein Ros' (Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming)

The long grass in the meadow
Once green in golden sun
Will fade in winter’s darkness
When summer’s flowers are done:
So all good things must die,
For every season passes,
And years go swiftly by.

God’s love goes on forever
As green as life can be,
His Word always creating
New possibility,
In darkness light shall spring,
A hope beyond our dreaming,
Redeeming everything.

Come quickly now, Lord Jesus,
And be our summer’s Sun,
Fill all our hearts with gladness,
Our true and faithful One,
Come, Dawn, and give rebirth.
Turn hearts to fragrant flower,
Bring glory to your earth.

Advent Calendar

In the countdown to Christmas,
The Advent doors peel open
One by one.
Here we find an orange or candlestick,
And maybe, tomorrow, a singing dove.
Better would be to find—
Behind some numbered door—
An answered prayer
Or Christmas miracle,
Some wholly holy gift:
Peace to heal the world,
Broken chains for all oppressed,
A cure for every dread disease.
What can a painted orange or candle serve?
Perhaps they give us this,
As we wait for greater things:
They teach us to see,
Behind the door of this new day,
Those tiny, hidden, priceless gifts:
A sparrow coming awake at dawn,
The curl of a finger around a pen,
A breath of sweet December air,
The sound of a giggle through a wall,
A song known by heart.
Love is in these things,
Making a place within us
For something—someone—awesome
To be born.