Advent on a Quiet Stoop

On held breath.

Photo by Michael Steinman on Unsplash

I’ve been trying to see Advent, the whole season, like a great lung, throwing my mind at the image when I can. I want to understand, to really know with the whole of myself, how it is we can breathe ourselves out during Christmastide and pause, refusing then to draw our own stale selves back in, waiting instead for a wind not our own to reinhabit us—to provide the sweeter inhale we could not. Maybe it’s a posture I can carry outside the season as well.

“The earth is charged with the grandeur of God,” Hopkins tells us, and, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” I see this nowhere better than in snowfall. For all its potential for slick roads, whiteouts, and the stray wad hitting you smack in the face (but we all know there is no such thing as a “stray” snowball), I find nothing more peaceful, calming, deep-down fresh than heavy snow out the window, down the street, sprinkled on the shoulders and the upturned face. As if the spectacle weren’t enough to beg wonder, the stuff itself demands our quietude. Sound waves get trapped in all the little caverns between the flakes as they pile, looking for a way out, finding none. Snow eats sound.

It is in this silent cascade I have always heard God loudest, always felt his calming presence nearest. Or maybe that’s not quite right. Maybe the peace of the snow, for me, allows a more complete exhale with the lung of Advent in anticipation, allows me, like R. S. Thomas, to hold my breath like a cap in the hand as I’m struck again by that dear freshness whispering from deep in this world I so often ignore; echoed whispers. But echoed from where? Can I trace its source?

In those unexpected moments of transfiguration surely there is an advent and Christ comes to us.

— Malcolm Guite, from Waiting on the Word

I do not think Guite is saying we’ll always feel Christ’s nearness in such moments as these. Whether it’s snowfall, a good cheese, or the spark in a friend’s eye just before they smile, we may not be gobsmacked by God himself poking through. Not every time. But why not? I think Guite is saying we can, if only we keep our eyes and hearts peeled to the possibility of seeing him in even these everyday transfigurations.

As I open myself to seeing Christ in new places (for we’re reminded—Hopkins again—he plays in ten thousand), where might I see his fingerprints? Where does the world shimmer with the oils of his hands? If he is the Prime Whisper from which all the echoes come, if he is the breath moving the tops of trees as much as the mouths of babes, then like a tired lung I want to learn to better hale me out, hale him in. Or, to take the words of Carys Walsh in Frequencies of God, become more “surrendered to the divine humming in the wires.” Let it be so.

Advent on a Quiet Stoop

Originally published in the Clayjar Review

I stooped, cut, twisted a wealth 
of snowflakes, heavy in their joy.
This is progress.
The blessings fought, but gave
and tore into the air, 
and spun a dance,
kissed my face, and tuck-tumbled down
to their rest on white earth.

The night sighed.
I let my weapon down.

And now
from this quiet stoop I can see
the aurora’s embrace
of my neighbor-home, can hear
the white welkin’s whispers,
can know the soft peace 
of new winter’s night.

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Over to you, kind reader. Where have you been most surprised—gobsmacked, even—to encounter Christ? If you recognize Advent, what have been some of your favorite ways to do so, to exhale and make new space in yourself? I feel new to the practice (and hope I always will), and would love to learn from you even as we hold our breath together for the season’s fulfillment.