There is always something in me that is eager about Advent. Every year, a promise stirs inside me. I trace this back to my childhood. As a child, I got a conscious taste of transcendence and a hunger always for a more transparent gossamer-like threshold between my life Here, and the Christ Child There...

Reflecting on this transcendence, I came away with this prose:

The boy pulled his stocking cap over his ears
and found the pre-dawn Christmas snow
waiting for him.

The snow on the streets and sidewalk
was glistening like the star that
guided the three wise men through
the supernatural night.
The boy's ambition was to walk the snow
without leaving tracks,
to know everything it was
yet leave it unmarked.
He failed wonderfully
across the town's white lawn.
A short block away
the brightly lit church
invited him into the magic darkness
where ears tuned to the bells
and nose took in pine and incense
and eyes saturated, the crimson red
of the poinsettias and the brilliant gold
of the chalices.

As was his host's custom
he surprised him,
like a gift under the tree,
and took him up past the stained-glass saints
to the vaulted, wood carved heaven.
He told the boy he would not fall
then dropped him into Christmas.

Strike the flint of the gossamer past
That it might fire and stir the cold embers
of soul and once again embrace
the evening star of Christmas.


Fr David
Originally journaled in Dec 1990