As the days have grown darker, and colder, I’ve been thinking about Advent, and hope. Traditionally, Hope is the theme of the first Sunday of the season, the first Sunday of the Church year too. Autumn seems to have been long, and restorative, and I’m not quite ready for winter. But here we are, nonetheless. And winter has its consolations.
I think there is wisdom in the old practices of having Advent as a time of quiet, reflective, waiting – a little like Lent before Easter. It’s so at odds with the flashing lights and loud shops and busyness, that understanding, but we can perhaps catch moments where those wintering practices are possible, and might help us….. pools of quiet light where we can breathe and think.
I’m also intrigued by the more medieval practice of putting yourself in the place of the people of Israel as they waited, not quite knowing what they were waiting for. Of not naming Jesus and Christmas, but instead allowing what we long for to be recognised and owned and prayed and worked for. In our context we join so many people throughout history who have felt the future to be shifting and uncertain, and who have longed for a kinder, gentler and more beautiful world. Taking some time to know and feel what we lack, what kind of world and lives we desire, might help us too face a troubling future with some courage and determination.
So Hope is a good place to begin.
Ah, hope. I’ve been turning over in my mind what it means to nurture hope in a world which seems increasingly unstable in climate and economics and culture. I’ve settled, for now, on making a distiction between hope and optimism. So, for me, I’m thinking of optimism as an opinion that things will work out. Something tied to outcomes. I see hope as a stance, an attitude of the heart and spirit, that it’s always worth looking for what brings life, for what is good. It does not require us to be naive about the dangers and difficulties around and within us. We are called to be as wise as serpents, and as gentle as doves – Matthew’s gospel.
Nonetheless, it’s worth working as if the world-as-it-could/should-be is here, emerging amongst us, small as the signs and growth may be. Not a glib avoidance strategy that it’s all fine, really, it’s all going to be fine…. but as a deliberate and courageous stance, holding on to a vision of how things could be. With the cost of living crisis bringing fear and hardship, and with the climate noticiably more unstable, we need courageous hope that’s prepared to work to refashion things around us in defiance of what we see. There is real power in such acts.
The picture of the bulbs and the bookmark at the top of this post relates to an action I took with some friends in our local high street to coincide with last year’s COP. We handed out bulbs and bookmarks, and encouraged people to think about ways they could plant hope. You can read more about that here.
As Advent begins, we re-read the words of the prophets together. They often spoke into desperate, unpromising circumstances with a mixture of a vision to hold in our hearts, and actions for our hands to do. Those actions can be prophetic themselves, speaking out and making plain God’s dream for the world – a beautiful, hopeful vision strong enough to withstand hard times – brave enough to choose to be born to a poor family, who sheltered in a stable, and had to run from a murderous tyrant. This is how hope was offered to the world, in the infant Jesus.
During this Advent series, I’ll share with you some extracts from my books. Here’s something from The Bible Retold , as the retelling of the Hebrew scriptures comes to an end, and we look forward..
As the walls were rebuild, so were the people. For God was building them into a new kind of kingdom. Isaiah the prophet wrote: “This is how to truly serve me: unbind people who are trapped by injustice, and lift up those who are ground down. Share your food with the hungry, and clothe the cold – that is how to live in the light!”
The people listened to his words of bright hope. “There is much darkness in the world, but your light is coming! All nations will be drawn to you, and they, too, will shine!” ….
“A child is born to us, a son is given. Authority will rest on his shoulders, and his names will be Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His kingdom, his peace, will roll across the lands, and he will reign on the throne of David for ever.”
We give thanks for the work that is being done right now, in our communities, to clothe, and feed, and seek justice. May we have the courageous vision to join with that work of light.
The days are dark, Dear God, give us your true light.
The days are dark, Dear God, give us your true life.
The days are dark. Dear God, give us your true love.
From Prayers and Verses
The Advent Candle Ring is from the good people at The Chapel in the Fields It gives me great pleasure to know that the oak at the base was once a lectern, and the lighter wood on top a dining table. The words written around it are from the ancient chants, the “O” Antiphons. These chants came into being when people did not call for Jesus to come at Christmas, but instead used names from the Prophets – like Emmanuel, God with us – to name their hopes. The first few centuries of the Christian Era saw these great prayers, the “O” Antiphons, sung during Advent, calling on Christ to come now, and to come again. You can listen to the old chant, and read Malcolm Guite’s sonnet, and much more, here.
This coming week, let’s hold on to hope, look for signs of the life of God breaking through, and see where we can be part of that move towards a more beautiful, loving, hopeful world.
From the top photo…..
I made my bookmark with a stamp by the lovely Noolibird.
I’m really pleased to be part of Transition Woodbridge’s Wildlife Corridors project. You can read more about Transition Woodbrige here, and Wildlife Corridors here.
We’re a group of all sorts of people from about the town who are seeking to make it a bit more wildlife friendly, and learning and sharing as we go. So below, you’ll find a little story about one of our hedges which I wrote for the group’s newsletter. We’re beginning to do more of this – passing on our often falterning steps towards a different way of thinking about our gardens. Here, our hedge had a beetle problem, and we tried a gentler and more natural approach to the plague of viburnum beetles than we might have done in the past. We’re delighted that the hedgeline is gradually becoming much more beautiful, diverse, and better for a wider range of creatures than simply the dreaded viburnum beetle!
After the account, you will find a poem drawing on this same hedge, and its story of renewal.
A hedge story – from pest control to native beauty.
It was a thin strip of dark green, between drives and walls. Our viburnum hedge joins what’s left of the original roadside hedgerow with holm oak and wild cherry plums to the network of gardens and trees behind. A narrow corridor of life, but with precious winter flowers for the bees, and just occasionally, a wren or a bluetit nested there. It was part of the planting we inherited.
A few years ago, it began to sicken dramatically. Viburnum beetle. It looked devastated, and I had my doubts if it would recover. We consulted the RHS website, cut away the worst of it, and scraped out some of the soil underneath where the grubs overwinter. As I did so, I felt the poverty of the soil – it was grey, had no structure, with no visible worms or other minibeasts. So we piled on the homemade compost and autumn leaves. We also decided to enrich it more permanently with native plants – for as it was, it could not renew itself, and the long strip of monoculture was an easy target for the dreaded beetle.
I bought some bare rooted spindle from Botanica and interspersed these with hazel that the squirrels had kindly planted around the garden. In the autumns to come, I’m hoping for a blaze of butter yellow hazel, with bright red leaves and pink/orange berries from the spindle. All to fall to the ground and feed it.
It’s limped through this year’s drought, but we’re getting there. It’s drawn in so many more creatures already. The insects are returning. The soil has worms, and frogs and mice make their way along it. At night bats hunt over it, and by day, the dragonflies. Many plants are finding their way there, each making their own contribution. At first, it was mustard garlic. Now, there’s purple toadflax, birdsfoot trefoil, various bedstraws and all manner of other plants. Butterflies and caterpillars, bees and hoverflies, and a healthy range of beetles are making a home here.
There’s a trellis separating our neighbour’s drive from this hedge and, in consultation with them, we’ve planted garden seeds and cuttings – vetch and perpetual sweet peas to improve the soil, honeysuckle, roses and jasmine. Again, I hope that next year it will be truly beautiful.
And as for the beetle attack… there have been a few nibbled leaves in the last two years, but nothing more than that. And, if some of the original plants die, there is plenty of life to take advantage of the light and air they leave. We have moved from a dark monoculture to a diverse and increasingly native abundance, with so much more food for all life. The viburnum still gives flower at a time of year when the natives are quiet, and deep cover too for plants and animals and birds. But the natives are making their presence felt now, and bringing so much beauty, diversity and abundance. It’s becoming a joy, and an example of how gentle care can slowly move a garden to something far more alive. I’m watching what it’s doing with real delight. What will be next?
And now the poem…..
Green ink 1 Hedge
And the garden now is my poem. So this hedge, this long line of joy and work, rhymes its meanings back and forth, carries them through seasons, through drought and cold by bird and frog and bee. Carries deep memory of the land, of wood and hedgerow, orchard and field, and deep hope too, for what may be, and what is becoming. And growing.
For joy and work wrought it, and renewed it, planted these saplings of spindle and hazel that will be red and gold as leaves fade in late sun, fade to such an illuminated brightness.
And I see what may be, what are, sweet rose cuttings unfolding, and growing, as honeysuckle twines, and jasmine – tiny, with tiny leaves – grows now in warmth, and sweet peas begin their work of rising up from hard coiled seeds.
All this abundance given freely by the garden and gathered, and tended, and shared, as she freely gives more – wind-blown seeds and bird- carried berries filling the earth to overflowing, as together we make a line of such richness and beauty, thought and imagining, sibilant as the wind whips through it, sounding like words spilling on the page. These words. This page.
I would write in green, I have written in green, working with all this life. Patient, resting in its waiting, and growing, and fading, ending, and beginning again. And again. This long line of green.
This is a poem, in two parts, drawing on my morning practice of yoga in the garden. It’s patchy at this time of year, depending on rain, and sometimes cold, but there are some mornings where you catch a break in the changing weather, and know why this is a good way to begin.
I took no photos at the time, being lost – or found – in the moment, and so I include for you here some other pictures filled with light, and dark, hoping they will fill your eyes with something good. This morning, as I breathed in the light and the air, I was aware of gratitude rising within me, gifted to me. I know that American friends are turning their attention to Thanksgiving at this time of year, and so, even as winter begins its approach, I am reminded to hold on to the practice of gratitude in darkening days.
I wasn’t sure quite where to go with this poem. There were two things – the experience of suddenly becoming aware of the beauty of the sky – and that beauty itself. So I’ve noodled around with it until it sits in two parts. So, this is where it is at the moment.
On looking up
So this is how it was, this morning: Early, feet bare on cold grass, I raised my head, stretched my arms, and as I did so, I remembered to look up – to open my eyes wide. I remembered to took up and breathe in deep and full, breathe in that cool morning air, early, before the smell of road runs through it.
Or maybe, it was more like this: Raising my head, stretching my arms, breathing deep of the cold clear air, my mind beginning to steady and settle, my eyes opened – all at once – to the strange dazzling luminosity of the sky. And that sight filled me as surely as the cold air. For a moment, hands high, my smile broke open as wide as my gaze, open as it was to this sky.
Sky as dizzying, vertiginous depth, and falling. Sky, too, as ever-present wonder, and catching. I do not know which it was, but I know that the beauty of it fills me, nourishes me, changes me. And I am thankful.
******
For in looking up, I saw the sky’s unknowable dizzying depths, its many layers, its films of light moving across each other, and for a moment I held a cool breath in wonder, and in looking, and what felt like falling.
Highest, or deepest, the moon, partial and pale, and floating beyond the crumpled white-blue linen of high clouds and new sky. And below, moving fast across them, hurried and bright, the rapid soft pink and orange of clouds blowing in from the north.
And holding up my gaze with each deepening breath I see, below the clouds, how the dark lines of birds begin their overflight. Gulls, risen from their night-roost on the river, coming inland to forage in harrowed field, overflowing bins, wherever they find what they need. And below them, the crowd of starlings, chattering, still holding a loose shape of past murmurations, trailing after from their hushing reedbeds.
Each layer of sky lower, closer, faster, sliding against each other in wild reckless beauty as my body fills with north wind, lungs as cool as fresh water on a summers day. The morning beginning at one with these things, with joy in these things, with yes to these things, with thankfulness for all these daily wondrous things.
Andrea Skevington 