Advent.

I've been thinking a lot about Advent lately. I've grown a new appreciation for Advent as a church season. I might even say that I have come to love it. This season of waiting that precedes Christmas where we anticipate the coming of Christ; the word manifest. It is a season of hope. Hope that no matter how gray and dark things may seem to be... the trees bare, cold wind, the sky a bit overcast and perhaps you feel alone this holiday season, perhaps you are alone. Then the holidays that are meant to be a joyful time to be with those that we love, are sad for those of us that have lost...and I would reckon that would describe more people than you know. Please don't mistake this for some exposing of emo bs, and I am not saying you need to believe what I do, beleive what you want and read another blog... but, for me, Advent...the coupling of love and sadness is beautiful... it is breathtaking and it is hope and sadness together. Because as soon as we anticipate Christ's birth, we know that death is around the corner, as it is for each one of us.

No wonder I seem to want to read poetry all through advent... poetry reminds me that there is a living word right now. In the words of poems, in you. in me and in the hope that after winter, there is the coming spring... there is new life. So I start off this Advent (a bit late, I know) with a poem from one of my favorites, Mary Oliver:

Spring

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

~ Mary Oliver ~