Advent birthday

I love Advent. It's my favourite season of the church year, even as the nights reach their longest and the weather its darkest. Today, actually, the sun shone until some time around 11am, and the third picture in my collage shows the morning as we went into church, where I forgot to take a photo of the Advent Wreath with its first candle lit until it was too late and it had been extinguished. It was a lovely and emotional service, ending with the marvellous "Lo he comes with clouds descending" - a hymn that I sang for the first time when I experienced my first Episcopalian Advent at the end of our first year in Dunoon. My voice held out to sing the Advent Prose, a necessary innovation because Himself's voice had gone awol during yesterday, and I preached about Light and Darkness. 

But the coincidence of my youngest grandchild's birthday with Advent Sunday took me back to twelve years ago when she was born - actually on the Saturday rather than the Sunday. We took Catriona, her sister, to church at St Michael & All Saints while her daddy went to see his day-old daughter; +Kevin was the rector at the time and he and Catriona were well smitten with each other. 

This is the poem I wrote about that day. It's collected in Washed Up.

ADVENT CHILD
for Anna

She came with the first snow,
the Advent child, a small, crumpled flower
opening beneath the hard stars.
The tiny clever hand has minute nails
and closes warm around my soul.
The dark eyes seem serene and filled
with unborn wisdom far beyond
the knowledge born of age.
My world contracts to hold this
shining moment in a timeless breath
as the snow falls and the world stops
and all the Advent waiting seems to end
in this new child, this vulnerable love
melting the frozen darkness
from the winter of my heart.

C.M.M. 12/10