Slideshow image
Isaiah 9:1-3
Madeleine L’Engle, “Into the Darkest Hour”
 
It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss-
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.
 
It was time like this
of fear & lust for power,
license & greed and blight-
and yet the Prince of bliss
came into the darkest hour
in quiet & silent light.
 
And in a time like this
how celebrate his birth
when all things fall apart?
Ah! Wonderful it is
with no room on the earth
the stable is our heart.
 
L’Engle’s poem reminds me of the phrase used during World War II, 'the darkest hour,’ to describe the period of 1940-1941, widely attributed to Winston Churchill. With this context, the poem draws a parallel between when Christ came to earth and our current lived reality. In his historical birth, Christ comes into a broken world. Today, into sickness, polarized communities, unemployment, Christ comes.
 
With all the sentimentality and consumerism of the season, it’s easy for me to forget the intense violent world that Christ was born into. There’s a film from South Africa called “Son of Man” that re-imagines what it would look like if Christ was born not 2000 years ago, but in present day Sub-Sahara Africa. Its depiction of the Annunciation and the Nativity is raw and difficult, but it is, I think, one of the best, evoking the emotions that are tied up when we witness injustice, violence, and chaos.
 
This poem, like the film, pushes against the exclusively cozy feelings of Christmas. That, I think, is one of the great benefits of Advent. We take time to recognize and name that our world is hurting, how we have been hurt, experienced pain, felt betrayed, confused, taken advantage of. Because it is precisely in those areas of fear, in those areas of shame, that Christ enters in. His light pierces the darkness. His peace brings silence to the noise. His love comforts and binds up the broken.
 
Peace,
Rachel
 
ART: 'Let Heaven Come,' by Diane Fairfield