Fr Peter Helman

Dear Friends in Christ,

In this next to last week of the season of Advent, we wait. We are at the threshold. Our fires are lit. As watchers watch for the morning, so we watch for God’s appearing, lest we be found sleeping when God comes.

Beloved, I share with you two poems for Advent by Scott Cairns, whose work I love.

Bless you today,
Fr. Peter

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"Christmas Green"
Just now the earth recalls His stunning visitation. Now
the earth and scattered habitants attend to what is possible: that He
of a morning entered this, our meagered circumstance, and so
relit the fuse igniting life in them, igniting life in all the dim
surround. And look, the earth adopts a kindly áffect. Look,
we almost see our long estrangement from it overcome.
The air is scented with the prayer of pines, the earth is softened
for our brief embrace, the fuse continues bearing to all elements
a curative despite the grave, and here within our winter this,
the rising pulse, bears still the promise of our quickening.

+

"Overshadowing"
Deep within the clay, and O my people
very deep within the wholly earthen
compound of our kind arrives of one clear,
star-illumined evening a spark igniting
once again the ember of our lately
banked noetic fire. She burns but she
is not consumed. The dew falls gently,
suffusing the pure fleece. Her human flesh
adorns its Lord, and lo, the wall comes down.
And -- do you feel the pulse? -- we all become
the kindled kindred of a King whose birth
thereafter bears to all a bright nativity.