Advent Day 1: “And Then?” by Cameron Preece

Today begins Advent, with tradition often necessitating the lighting of the “Prophet’s Candle,” signifying the beginning of the waiting and watching (vigil) that constitutes this period. Si Smith’s illustration from “After the Apocalypse” serves well as a reminder of this. Prophets were not considered future-seers but often spoke out against injustice, challenge authorities and people,

to do justice and to love kindness
    and to walk humbly with [their] God (Mic. 6:8)

“And then?” began as a grapple with the kind of hope that doesn’t sit neatly in the mouth. It grew out of noticing how the nativity story, so often wrapped in softness, lives in the flight, fear, and grasping of a family in a nation under oppression. This poem sits with that tension. It wonders what it means to keep waiting for a form of promised return after 2,000 years, especially when the world still looks so much like the one in this story: harsh, beautiful, unjust, and aching.

It’s an Advent piece for anyone who feels the weight of hoping and the weariness that comes with it; for those who still dare to look for light, even (and especially!) when the darkness feels familiar. It doesn’t offer certainty.

Hold open a space to breathe, to question, and to keep hoping anyway, in whatever means that presents itself…

Waiting, wanting, wanton

and then?

Where is the promised king,

To be crucified on a cross?

Is he robed in gold,

All glamour and glory?

No, he is in naught but a trough,

grime-stained, grisly, gory.

And what of his welcome-party?

Weather-beaten wanderers,

trudging with sheep toward

an infant shepherd.

And star-led pilgrims

seeking solace

in the sight of God’s own son.

And when he grows, will he claim a throne?

No, only the blood-stained silhouette

of a tyrant’s fear,

and the darkness

of genocide.

God, an infant, fleeing government oppression.

". . . ἔρχου, κύριε Ἰησοῦ.” (Rev 22:20)

“What has been is what will be,

    and what has been done is what will be done;

    there is nothing new under the sun.” - Eccl. 1:9