#adventapertures2025: Christmas Day

Arise, shine, for the rays of God’s glory touch the earth.  We welcome the light that burns in the rising sun.  We welcome the light that dawns through the Holy Child of God.  We welcome the light that gleams through the growing earth.  We welcome the light that shines through saints and signs.  We welcomeContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Christmas Day”

#adventapertures2025: day 25

Remembering that it happened once,We cannot turn away the thought,As we go out, cold, to our barnsToward the long night’s end, that weOurselves are living in the worldIt happened in when it first happened,That we ourselves, opening a stall(A latch thrown open countless timesBefore), might find them breathing there,Foreknown: the Child bedded in straw,The motherContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 25”

#adventapertures2025: day 24

On the first day of Christmas, they hauled you from me  with the forceps while a crimson Santa blinked outside  and made the rain new blood. The second day, I washed with frankincense, fed you  thin gold, summoned by the high star of your cry. The third day,  milk came swaddling-pale, shepherd’s flock white. TheContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 24”

#adventapertures2025: day 21

Silence has its own notation: dark Jottings of duration, but not pitch,  A long black box, or little feathered hitch  Like a new Greek letter or diacritical mark  Silence is a function of Time, the lark  In flight but not in song. A nothing which  Keeps secrets or confesses. Pregnant, rich,  Or awkward, cold, theContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 21”

#adventapertures2025: day 18

Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, who knew a thing about maps, by which life moves somewhere or other used to tell this story from the war, through which history moves somewhere or other. ‘The young lieutenant of a small Hungarian detachment in the Alps sent out a reconnaissance unit into the icy wastes. At once it began toContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 18”

#adventapertures2025: day 17

To reach the place just ahead of you, what do you do?             The shortest way between two points- that straight line, the most straight of greatest renown. You put one foot in  front of the other and carry on, repeating yourself. Until you  reach the point ahead, assuming initialContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 17”

#adventapertures2025: day 9

I have begun, when I’m weary and can’t decide an answer to a bewildering question to ask my dead friends for their opinion and the answer is often immediate and clear. Should I take the job? Move to the city? Should I try to conceive a child in my middle age? They stand in unisonContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 9”

#adventapertures2025: Sunday 2

It is not by chance that both words consideration and desire (from Latin desiderium)-make reference to the stars (sidera in Latin). Stars played a role in medieval cosmology that might surprise us: seeds were thought to grow into different plants as their response to different stars – a special star for oak trees and aContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: Sunday 2”

#adventapertures2025: day 4

They tell me he is a refiner, that he cleanses from spots; he has washed me in his precious blood, and to that extent I know him. They tell me that he clothes the naked; he has covered me with a garment of righteousness, and to that extent I know him. They tell me thatContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 4”

#adventapertures2025: day 3

To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim. Mark Nepo from Christine Valters Paintner, The Love Of Thousands, (65) Why begin a journey, especially when one has no idea of whereContinue reading “#adventapertures2025: day 3”