“This chaotic world was actually expected…”
Advent reflections and Sabbath poetry from Wendell Berry.
This is the fifth of seven pieces meant to introduce our readers to participants in our ordination preparation course at The Seminary of the Christian Community in North America. Each one will contemplate a work – or works – of art that speak to their path and Christ’s working in the world in some way. We have heard from Victoria Capon, Jeana Lee, Mimi Coleman and Lesley Waite. Today we introduce you to Elizabeth Majoros.
This past Sunday, gathered on the back porch of my fellow Atlanta affiliate member Sara, a small group of youth in confirmation preparation and parents and a sweet dog and I lit the first Advent candle and sang Advent songs. “O Darkness, O tree, You are like Advent. My companion ’til light I see’” and “O come O come, Emanuel, and ransom captive Israel” surrounded us in Advent mood preparing for the story and artistic expression. As we sang “People Look East, the time is near” in closing, I recalled how Sara taught me that song when she was my 28 year old’s kindergarten teacher. Being a Waldorf mom opened me up to a world that changed my life and led me into a path that has guided me to this moment. We looked into each other’s faces and into the trees and gardens of her backyard, and (in the absence of a Christian Community congregation) I felt this was the perfect place to be on the first Sunday of Advent.
Advent has always been one of my favorite seasons. The rituals lend themselves so easily to pausing from the everyday and gathering as a family. However, the idyll of Advent has always been set against the pain of human life in this world. As a Minister of Word and Sacrament in the Presbyterian Church, I often felt the pain and grief of the community members who were grieving loved ones, who were experiencing broken relationships, or who were struggling with health issues that weighed them down. And nearly all of us were struggling with the truth that just as we were wanting to pause and go inwards, the cares of the world, the activities of the season, and the preparations for Christmas itself threatened our sense of peace. The best I have ever been able to offer has been to acknowledge that this suffering world is the one into which the holy child was born and is continually born anew, and to help bring these two worlds together: the world of suffering, and the world of Christ’s peace. And so too, this year, we as a world are experiencing grief, frustration, even fear. Sacramental services are limited where there are existing congregations, and priest trips to those of us in the outlying affiliates are cancelled. Where is the church? Where is the sacrament?
The writer and poet Wendell Berry wrote, “It gets darker and darker, and then Jesus is born” (quoted by Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith, p. 39). Wendell Berry is a poet who has made Kentucky his home, first as a child, then as a graduate student, and later, teaching at several well-known colleges and universities, as a professor. He is also a farmer, living on a large piece of land. In the introduction to his book entitled This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, he writes that while he often goes to church where he often sits with various family members and where his wife plays the piano, he is a “bad-weather church-goer.” He explains,
When the weather is good, sometimes when it is only tolerable, I am drawn to the woods on the local hillsides or along the streams….In such places, on the best of such sabbath days, I experience a lovely freedom from expectations – other people’s and also my own. I go free from the tasks and intensions of my workdays, and so my mind becomes hospitable to unintended thoughts: to what I am very willing to call inspiration. The poems come incidentally or they do not come at all. If the Muse leaves me alone, I leave her alone. To be quiet, even wordless, in a good place is a better gift than poetry.
This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, p.xxi
He tells a bit about his process of inspiration in this stanza:
From the window of his small room
The lowdown poet looks out. He watches
the river for ripples, flashes, signs
of beings rising in the undersurface dark,
or lightly swimming upon the flow,
or, for a minnow, descending the deeps
of the air to enter and shatter
forever their momentary reflections,
for the river is a place passing
through a passing place.
- from Preface: From Sabbaths 2013
This feels like a modern Advent poem to me, with his watching but also with his stillness. To be able to be in stillness, observing the flowing stream of time with its transience and its churning activity and becoming aware of the beings going in and out of this present moment is an Advent activity. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” says Christ Jesus in Luke’s gospel. When we read this Advent lectionary passage from Luke 21:25-36, we might even find some comfort – this chaotic world was actually expected. But if we lift up our heads, we can see our redemption coming to us. We see our lives and all that is happening as part of a bigger story, one that is not finished but which includes the transcendence of Spirit into the earthly. Our present moment becomes, like the river, a place passing through a passing place. And in this present moment we bring together the two worlds: the world of suffering and the world of peace.
Wendell Berry often writes about nature and invites us to share in his contemplations, perhaps in our own settings. Like Berry’s Kentucky home, the Atlanta area has beautiful trees that remind us constantly to lift our heads and look up. During this pandemic, the trees on our land have connected me with spirit as I’ve watched them move from spring to summer, and now to fall, releasing their leaves as I write, allowing the light to shine through. They stood over our outdoor chapel as the eucharistic sacrament was celebrated twice in one morning by our visiting priest, as they have over our outdoor family dinners, gardening, recreation, and relaxation.
The author with her family
In one of my very favorite poems, Wendell Berry takes us outside and illustrates how what happens inside our churches can also happen in the cathedral of nature. In this poem, he describes the trees as I see them, and how they are my Advent companions. I will not be at a Christian Community Church this Advent or Christmas, as travel restrictions have made the coming of a priest or my going elsewhere exceedingly complicated. But nevertheless, rest assured that our heads are lifted to receive Christ as the trees do.
Slowly, slowly, they return
To the small woodland let alone:
Great trees, outspreading and upright,
Apostles of the living light.
Patient as stars, they build in air
Tier after tier a timbered choir,
Stout beams upholding weightless grace
Of song, a blessing on this place.
They stand in waiting all around,
Uprisings of their native ground,
Downcomings of the distant light;
They are the advent they await.
Receiving sun and giving shade,
Their life’s a benefaction made,
And is a benediction said
Over the living and the dead.
In fall their brightened leaves, released,
Fly down the wind, and we are pleased
To walk on radiance, amazed.
O light come down to earth, be praised!
- “Slowly, slowly they return” from “Sabbaths” by Wendell Berry
Here is a beautiful choral setting of these words, a favorite of our Atlanta Waldorf and Christian Community, performed here by another group: https://alongthebeam.com/2016/10/09/slowly-slowly-they-return-from-sabbaths-by-wendell-berry/
Elizabeth Majoros, whom many know informally as Lisa, is a founding member of the Atlanta affiliate of the Christian Community. Recently retired from ordained ministry in the Presbyterian Church, USA, she has served churches in the Atlanta area and directed a non-profit that engaged members of churches and civic organizations nationally in friendship with international students. She was led to Waldorf education in 1993 for her first child and began studying anthroposophy a few years later around the time she was ordained, 1996. She has been married for 30 years and has two adult children, and while she loves the US South, she is looking forward to being able to attend Christian Community services again when she returns to the seminary in January.
This is the ‘Arts Wednesday Blog’ of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. To learn more about what we are doing at the Seminary of The Christian Community, visit our patreon site for more content: The Light in Every Thing.
