The
is the last of the four 'Advent at Home' posts - to see posts from the other
participants, go to Angela Almond's blog Tracing
Rainbows
I've
been using poems from the Advent Book group I joined, taken from Carys Walsh's
Advent book 'Frequencies of God'
This
week's theme is 'Birthing', starting with the poem 'The Un-born' by R S Thomas;
The Un-Born – R S Thomas
I have seen the child in the womb,
neither asking to be born
or not to be born, biding
its time
without the knowledge of
time,
model for the sculptor who would depict
the tranquillity that
inheres
before thought, or the
purity of thought
without language. Its
smile forgave
the anachronism of the nomenclature
that would keep it foetal.
Its hands
opened delicately as
flowers
in innocency’s garden,
ignorant
of the hands growing to
gather them
for innocency’s grave.
Was its part written? I
have seen
it waiting breathlessly in
the wings
to come forth on to a
stage
of soil or concrete, where
wings
are a memory only or an
aspiration.
I too, have seen a child in the womb, my own, twice, back in the 1980s. We were given polaroid pictures of what looked like stars in the night sky. It took faith and determination to form the curled outline out of the baby from the apparently random shapes in the picture. Scans are much clearer these days...
This evening I looked out to see if I could see ‘the Advent Star’; formed by the conjunction of Saturn and Venus, lined up together to make a brighter spark in the darkness. (Look for the moon, track right, and down a bit, and there it is!) I was lucky this evening, and there were even radiant lines shooting out from the star.
In a time like this, when so many hopes, dreams and plans have been disrupted by the pandemic, going back to the small centre of things is a way of getting through. I saw this posted on Twitter this morning...
(written by Christian Aid Scotland) |
Thank you for this. I am so conscious of the recurring theme of Emmanuel - God with us in posts and Facebook etc this year. Nothing can separate us from his love. Whatever else is lacking, his presence remains
ReplyDeleteThat was a lovely post to read. I've found it hard to write anything profound this year for my Advent posts with Ang but I'm glad to have done them.
ReplyDeleteEmmanuel, God IS with us!
Oops, Saturn sand Jupiter, not Venus!
ReplyDelete