It's already the second Sunday of Advent. Find a sermon from Hugh Valentine at St James's Piccadilly who talks about the need for galvanising action and change - moving from darkness into light. He quotes Romans 11:
'The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.'And American poet Mary Oliver: 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'
Advent: the coming of light.
Mary Oliver's poem doesn't resonate with me. But I do like Carol Ann Duffy's poem on prayer. I remember Phillip Douglass, then vicar of Crowan, reading this one very cold winter night in the church one Sunday evening, prior to 20 minutes of meditation, by candle light.
Prayer
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.
Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.
Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer -
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.
Carol Ann Duffy
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