By Georgia McKee
Happy New Year! Well, sort of. Today marks the first day of the Christian year — the beginning of Advent. The liturgical calendar is the cycle that orients us to God. Year after year, we travel through sacred time, letting ancient stories speak something fresh for our modern faith, and we always begin with God coming down to dwell among us as a fellow human. And so here we are again at the threshold that brings us to where our journey with Christ started.
You might wonder: Why not start our year with Christmas, with Christ already here? Why begin with four weeks of watching and waiting? Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book Learning to Walk in the Dark, reminds us: “New life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” Advent is the season where we pay attention to that holy darkness. We open ourselves to longing, to hope and to the prayer that light will come and guide us.
This year, we’ll anchor our Advent reflections in Wendell Berry’s “Sabbath Poem: 1986, I.” In his words, we find ourselves standing quietly in the woods on what I imagine is a cold December morning. And if you’ve ever been somewhere cold and quiet like this, you might have found that the remnants of light and glimmers of life are, in fact, more profound and precious among bare branches and short days than in the easy bright fullness of summer.
This is why we start in the dark. This is why we must wait for Christ. So as the light around us dims and we anticipate new life, let us quiet our hearts and call out: “O light come down to earth.”
“Sabbath Poem: 1986, I”
By Wendell Berry
Slowly, slowly, they return
To the small woodland let alone:
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.
Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.
They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Downcomings of the distant light;
They are the advent they await.
Receiving sun and giving shade,
Their life’s a benefaction made,
And is a benediction said
Over the living and the dead.
In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind, and we are pleased
To walk on radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!