First Sunday of Advent
"Exile"
Waiting cracks
the glass,
spiderweb fractures,
spreading branches
of inevitable, prospective failure,
weakening promises
no longer able to carry
the heaviness of hope
and the impatience of generations.
Trust is a fragile thing,
hard to hold together
with stories aging into legend.
Too much time has passed.
Wow! Just preached on this in our Advent in Exile series. The fragility of exile and how waiting turns Christmas into a legend. (I even exegeted Santa as some relief...waiting for a year is doable. A magical person coming on an enchanted sleigh with gifts and joy. Waiting for Jesus to return is tough.
The poem speaks. Thank you Richard. This week is Jeremiah's letter about how to live in exile.
Appreciate this First Sunday of Advent post. It prompted me to write several haikus in response:
our empire’s structure
embraces inequities
nurturing failure
glass overflowing
filled with painful injustice
starts cracking open
And because I'm a person of faith, I also had to write this one:
create spaciousness
with open-heartedness wait
for God’s arrival