Hope

This week is the first week of advent, the season of the church year where we practice waiting for Jesus.  Part of the theology around advent is training ourselves to see Christ coming to the world. While we remember the historic events in Bethlehem all those years ago we also think about Christ returning. Some churches focus on the end times, on the idea that Jesus Christ will return to earth and trigger the day of judgement. And so for them advent is about getting your soul ready for that day.  For us advent is about all the times God in Christ breaks in to the world.  Advent is practice for noticing God all around us and for being ready to participate in Christ coming in to the world.

Hope is the theme for the first week of advent.  Hope is the glimmer of light in the darkness. On Sunday to help us reflect on hope we read Black Rook in Rainy Weather by Sylvia Plath.

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, not seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can’t honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Leap incandescent

Out of the kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then —
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait’s begun again,
The long wait for the angel.
For that rare, random descent.

May you reflect on hope this week and find it in the most unexpected of moments.

-Eilidh

image by David Stead