In This Cold Darkening of Time and Place

In this cold darkening of time and place, this sharp season stripping bare the once full splendor of leaf and petal, you come to us in smallness, in weakness, with only a child's inchoate cry toward trust and hope, toward love, those gifts for which we also cry.

Little child, as you make your birth with ours this day, so make your life and death as well, that our cries may rise with yours, our hearts lift in yours, that we shall happily find those gifts you come to voice for us and all the world, thus joy resounding!

As the Day-World Emerges

Most loving and merciful God, ever desirous to wake and greet us, to take us to that place so true and fair: as the day-world emerges from dark to light, by your grace may we as well, in heart and mind, in body and spirit; thus to know the gladdening hour you charge with splendor and hope, and all things made new and bright. Amen.

Stained Concrete

Here where I pass
late in the day, late in the year,
trees overhang the walk
with branches all but bare,
the concrete stained
from wet-fall of leaves,
crumpled remainders
of the protean hour
when photosynthesis
surged in cell and vein,
as if things in motion
could counter gravity
then, and even now,
here where I pass.

Keep Us, Lord, Toward Bethlehem: A Prayer in Advent

On this rough back of time, we plod the days toward Bethlehem. How long, Lord, until we get there? What will we find when we arrive? In the aging of the year, daylight pales and stoops before the cold and dark. And the ride jars and coarsens after so many, many miles. We long for welcome, for kindness, for some sort of rest. Will you be there, Lord? How will we know? A child leads us, but to what and for what? We bear our many wanderings, our fears, and, yes, our fervent hopes. Keep us, Lord, toward Bethlehem, toward a tender dawn and a mercy incarnate. Amen.