Expectant Birth

O Beloved Spirit,

 In the mystery of this Advent, this expectant time,
we resound with the joy in the coming birth—
the new song. 

In the trough of the animal, 
a spark of the divine child 
seeded into the human experience.
Are we so seeded and expectant 
with this same bloom of the Divine—
in the chronos of swaddling clothes, 
a new birth infused with the kairos of Holy Spirit?
Can it be? Can we re-incarnate this birth? 

In the mystery of this Advent, this expectant time,
we resound with the joy in the coming birth—
the new song. 

In the midst of the watch and the necessities of the flock,
a new song full of myth and madness and imaginativeness.
Can we be so smitten that we will forever change and be changed 
because of its uncontestable beauty? 

The days only seem to march forward 
as they are squeezed tighter and tighter by the shortness of light.
In our frozen darkness, we are taken in by the mystery of the star 
infolding and unfolding, inverting and everting, 
diving deeper, aspiring higher—
the human steeped in divine disclosure.

And we experience first-hand an irrational timelessness, 
yielding unexpected moments of grace—
yields of friendship, of worship, of kinship,
yields of insight, of music, of poetry,
yields of laughter, of tears, of awe-filled wonder. 

In the mystery of this Advent, this expectant time,
we resound with the joy in the coming birth—
the new song.

In Your Image. Amen