This is advent
Isaiah 11 offers a peculiar vision of wolves and lambs and leopards and goats frolicking together on God’s mountain of peculiar peace. All of this year’s Advent lectionary texts turn expectations upside down. Sprigs grow from dead stumps. Crocuses blossom in desert places. And a little child leads God’s people into a peace-land of radical love. That is a gift of Advent—God invites us to see life in new ways, and I, for one, am eager to encounter the new way of God’s upside down, inside out peace and love.
The shortest distance
between two points?
a straight line—
begin here;
end there.
But the straight way?
Not the only way.
Beginnings cradle endings—
first drop of rain
page one of a favorite novel
hello
Endings are the womb of beginnings—
last line of a poem
one lingering summer tomato
amen
This is incarnation.
Sharp sword edges
learn to plow fertile soil.
Lions and lambs
choreograph a dance of peace.
Green sprigs grow from
axe-worn roots.
Tender crocus shoulders push
up through winter ground—
This is Advent.
We begin at the end—
Or do we end at the beginning?
Or do we pause just now
held in a promise—
God with us.
Salt 