Tag: faith

A poem for the second Sunday of Advent 2021

An ink study of Fra Angelico’s The Annunciation

On a note card is written thoughts and themes about the second week of Advent.

  • Love
  • Faith
  • Bethlehem
  • purple candle
  • the prophet, Micah, foretold the birthplace in Bethlehem
  • the city of David
  • preparation for the king

My desire was to compose some meaningful prose to mark the celebration.

But, very early this morning, I watched sleet turn to snow and then to rain. My mind drifted in this irrational season. Eventually, I put the pen down, stuffed the notecard in my pocket and went for a long walk with a friend and brother. This poem by Madeleine L’Engle seems most appropriate for this second week.

After Annunciation

Madeleine L’Engle

This is the irrational season
when love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
there’d have been no room for the child.

//

over the weekend i was asked, on a couple occasions, why people abandon the faith of their childhood. i fidgeted, looked out the window, & offered some anecdotal comments anemic of any real answers. anthony bradley offers a more articulate response to why people move from youth group to agnosticism. but i didn’t have an answer, nor do i have fond memories of youth group.

church youth group, for me, was a dull experience in perseverance. most of the youth attended the church’s christian school. a couple of us attended the public school & were reminded that we were pagans within a cathedral. “why would i want to invite friends from school to youth group?” i asked myself. “to be ostracized like me?”

somewhere in those murky years of high school i turned to books for companionship & writing poetry for private enterprise. maybe not in the way wallace stevens did: “after one has abandoned a belief in God, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.” i felt abandoned, but did not seek to abandon.

perseverance, poetry, & a feeble faith have traveled with me, but members of the youth group seem to be pebbles in a path long ago traversed.