Advent (Day 23): His Imprisonment, Our Freedom

I may have saved the best for last.

I never speak in absolutes about favorite books or poems or writers, but I think Luci Shaw’s “Made Flesh” is my favorite poem for Advent.

Of course, I’ve mentioned Luci Shaw a few times before. Advent may be pouring itself out into the glory of the Christmas season, but Shaw’s poetry is an excellent literary companion through the whole year. Might I suggest beginning the new year with her poems close at hand?

This one is worth reading slowly.

And repeatedly.

 

three flames\

 

Made Flesh

 

After

the white-hot beam of annunciation

fused heaven with dark earth,

his searing, sharply focused light

went out for a while,

eclipsed in amniotic gloom:

his cool immensity of splendor,

his universal grace,

small-folded in a warm, dim

female space –

the Word stern-sentenced to be

nine months’ dumb –

infinity walled in a womb,

until the next enormity –

the Mighty One, after submission

to a woman’s pains,

helpless on a barn’s bare floor,

first-tasting bitter earth.

 

Now

I in him surrender

to the crush and cry of birth.

Because eternity

was closeted in time,

he is my open door to forever.

From his imprisonment

my freedoms grow,

find wings. Part of his body,

I transcend this flesh.

From his sweet silence my mouth sings.

Out of his dark I glow.

My life, as his,

slips through death’s mesh,

time’s bars,

joins hands with heaven,

speaks with stars.

 

–          Luci Shaw, from Accompanied by Angels

 

These Farmhouse Bookshelves

Autumn is a time for hoarding books. Like a squirrel and its acorns. Like my children and their Halloween candy.

Winter, the reader’s favorite season, will soon be here. And, yes, despite what we might say, winter is our favorite season. We can admire the beauty of fall, the fresh breezes of spring. We can enjoy mucking about in our gardens come summer. But, as readers, we are always at our happiest curled up with a book.

Short, dark days are welcome because they let us off the hook. What else is there to do but pull the blanket closer and go on reading our book?

 

books

 

Here are a few recommendations to help pad your winter reading list.

The first is welcome throughout the year, but I usually only remember it come fall. The Autumn Board Book, by Gerda Muller, is one of four wordless board books focused on the seasons.

I’m afraid I lost some of you when I wrote board book. But this is no ordinary board book.

As one of my favorite picture book characters would say, board books are the raisins and zeros of the book world. Condemned to be chewed upon. Containing only simplified, shortened versions of classic stories. I like to have a few lying around for the actual baby, but, otherwise, I give them a pass.

Except for these.

Muller’s four books are exquisite. I keep one nestled in with the candles and bowl of acorns on our kitchen table. It’s the kind of book you will want to pick up and enjoy for at least a few minutes every day.

These books make great first gifts for a new baby, but they are wonderful for older children, too. A good friend with grown children recently purchased all four. She told me she’s setting them aside for future grandchildren, but I’m quite sure she’s enjoying them in the meantime.

Autumn … the year’s last, loveliest smile. – William Cullen Bryant

One of my favorite things about this hinge season between summer and winter is the food. No more quick pestos or sauteed garden veggies. Now is the season for slow-simmered curries and meaty sauces and cranking the oven back to high.

Whether or not you care much for food or cooking, you will enjoy Ruth Reichl’s memoir, Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (Random House Reader’s Circle). Reichl, a celebrated food writer and restaurant critic, is the exact right person for memoir. Not only is she a great writer, but she is curious. She collects stories and experiences like I collect books.

This memoir is full of fun and sweetness, but it tells some hard stories, too. I realized while reading it that quite a few of my favorite memoirs are written about girls growing up with mentally ill mothers. I have no idea why this is. I do know that Reichl’s book is an excellent addition to a list that includes memoirs by Mary Karr and Jeannette Walls.

The most powerful things about this book is the way it makes you care. First, for Ruth, and then for her family and friends and even the stray characters who cross her path. Reichl sees the world (and writes about it) through a lens of love. And I believe we only see the world, other people, and our own lives truly when we look with love.

My parents entertained a great deal, and before I was ten I had appointed myself guardian of the guests. My mission was to keep Mom from killing anybody who came to dinner. – Ruth Reichl

Luci Shaw is one of my favorite poets. I’ve mentioned her here before. She is a poet of faith and substance and beauty.

What the Light Was Like: Poems is a perfect collection for this season of shifting light. Reading poetry slows us down, something I always long to do this time of year, and Shaw’s work, especially, calls us to notice the natural world and to listen to its messages.

Light has a peculiar quality of transforming what it touches, like gold foil over wood. In Hebrew the word for glory has the sense of heaviness, as if light adds to the bulk of its significance. When I see the road that runs in front of my house and the bushes along the sidealk touched with sunlight, even the black tarmac and the faded winter leaves look glorious. – Luci Shaw

 

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