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

December 4

The First Week in Advent

We have parakeets in the kitchen.   Sometimes they are quiet.   Sometimes they make a racket.   But in the last few days we have started playing a Christmas music radio station, and they seem very attentive.  They like it.  I wonder:  do birds actually appreciate music?  

And why do we, human beings, fill our lives with it?   Music is certainly is something primal, touching  us all at a deep place.   Expectant mothers play Mozart so that their in utero babies can hear it.   Supposedly it makes them smarter.   I imagine, also, that it makes them more peaceful.     I think maybe that there is something about rhythm and meter that mimic the sound of our mother's heart.     And song touches a part of the brain other than the logical, analytical gray matter.   Music is memory.  It carries us home, gives us joy, a sense of well-being.  It touches our better angels, gives our heart wings.   We sing to love, to praise, to lament, to proclaim.   We sing because we can’t keep ourselves from it.  That's why it doesn't matter what you preach on Christmas Eve, as long as you sing "Silent Night."  

This morning I wrote these words, sang them to the parakeets.

Advent Hymn
(sung to the tune Hyfrydol,
“Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus)

God of morning, Lord of wonder,
Hope is born in day's first light.
With the sun, the hills ascending,
Raise us from the bonds of night.
Waken all our human senses,
Give us bright, expectant eyes
That in simple, daily living
Love may work its great surprise.

God of noontime, Lord of laughter,
Sing a tune of joy and grace.
Keep us faithful in our labors
Blessing every common place.
Let your music raise our spirits,
Turn our life into a song,
Bringing order into chaos,
Spreading harmony all day long.

God of evening, Lord of starlight,
Call our weary hearts to rest.
Gather all who bear life's burdens,
In your peaceful presence blessed.
Let our busy hearts remember
Gifts of grace and joy we share.
Let our sleep be hopeful, healing,
In your strong and tender care.

--Timothy Haut, December 4, 2013

December 3

The First Week in Advent

 

It was mild, for December, and there were plenty of little jobs left undone from our fall clean-up.   Haul the lawnmower into the shed.   Rake the flowerbeds by the front steps.  Get the clippers out as weapon against the scraggly bittersweet vines and sumac forcing its way among the roses.   Pick up the branches scattered in the driveway from the last storm.     Carry Halloween's mushy pumpkins, with their grotesque sunken faces, out to the compost pile. 

And then there was the mess of our  garden, still untended after the killing frosts.   I poked through the weeds, the dead vines, and the rattling pods of beans left unpicked before their untimely demise.  Carcasses of a few rotten tomatoes lay bloated where they had fallen, and skeletons of sunflowers and marigolds, once tall and bright, swayed ghost-like in the breeze.   Some parsley was still hanging on; and a little Swiss chard, its smallest, lowest leaves purple and green, seemed to smile at me, defying winter.   Nearby I stick a shovel into the now-empty row where I had planted beets in the Spring, and underneath the frozen crust was the day's treasure:  a handful of Detroit Reds, a gift for dinner.    

 This is what we have to do to when we despair of this broken world of ours.   Dig deep, when it seems like there is nothing for us but remnants of another season.   Dig deep, when we see no redeeming grace in the people we encounter.   Dig deep, even when we despair about ourselves.   Look for what may be growing where nobody can see it.    That's an Advent task for sure.

 

Beets in December

The garden is in ruins

Desolated by a late November freeze
Which took everything that was left,
except for a brave patch of parsley,
something like the old Yankees
who once tilled this soil,
too stubborn to give up.
But I stick a spade into the dirt,
among the debris of blackened vegetation,
and I find life:
roots, blood-red as hearts,
beets planted once on an April day.
We will roast them for dinner,
savor this unexpected sweetness,
give thanks to you, Lord,
for such surprises secreted away,
blood-red and blessed.
Teach us this truth,
amid the ruins and desolation:
Sometimes the treasure is where it can't be seen,
Hidden in the frozen earth.
You have to dig for it.

--Timothy Haut, December 3, 2013

December 2
The First Week in Advent

              Yesterday Phyllis was outside when she heard a strange thumping noise coming from the window high up in the barn.    She climbed the steps into the loft and discovered a female cardinal, desperately throwing herself against the glass, trying to get out.   This frantic bird, following its instincts to fly toward the light, could not do the calculations that would require her to fly down through the opening in the floor to find her freedom.   In the end, Phyllis cornered the frightened creature, scooped her up in her hands,  cradled her against her body and carried her down the steps and out into the bright December morning.   Phyllis could feel the wild beating of the bird's heart.  The terrified creature could not know that the hands around her meant no harm, but only good. 
            We, too, often bump into the windows of our own limited vision, repetitive and self-destructive habits, and futile stubbornness.    And sometimes it is grace itself that hears the thumping of our hearts, enfolds us in kind and fearsome hands, and offers us some freedom that we can barely understand.     That is, of course, our Advent hope.

CARDINAL IN THE BARN

Lord of wings and feathers,
you who knows when a sparrow falls
and takes joy at the morning song of a wren,
Shall I dare to let you
gather up the bright bird of my heart
in your great hands
and set it free?
I am caught, frustrated, and afraid.
I can not find my way out,
though I may perish in trying.
And you, so great and fearsome a stranger,
may carry me in a direction
I do not understand.
But I am weary of struggling
toward the light I can not reach.
Come.
Take me.

--Timothy Haut, Dec. 2, 2013

Unready

This is the bleak season
  of long nights and heartless cold,
  when all creatures lean
  toward some warming light.
December's sky hangs low,
  threatens some morning surprise--
  a haunted moon, a flitter of snow--
  and we move closer to the fire,
  slide sleepily under soft covers,
  waiting, waiting for a Spring.
We are unready, now,
  for unplanned adventure,
  turn back if our hands are required
  for some impossible mission.
But one night we see a star,
  or stir at a song
  somewhere in the winter silence.
It is the Advent yearning,
  the prophet's voice, the heart's unfolding.
There is a change in the air, in us.
We hoist the greens, light a candle,
  and pray again, and again,
  for your warming light:
"Come, Lord Jesus.”

-Timothy Haut, 2013