Dark Waiting

As the world grew darker today, our world, not just because we're almost at the solstice but also with the ever-worsening news in which commerce, quality of life, religious worship and the virus are all bound up in a hideous dance - as all that happened, we lit candles in our darkened church, heard words of hope, and took our lit candles out, symbolically, into the darkness of the moonlit evening. 

It was dramatic, moving and cathartic for the small congregation that is all we are able to have just now. The service was beautiful, with poems and prayers marking the lighting of each of the purple and pink candles in the Advent wreath. But as always for those making things happen, there were moments of unintentional drama - such as when I as one of the two positioned to light the candles on and beside the altar at the appropriate junctures had a dire struggle with my first batch of candles. They were set in an old, home-made wooden candle stand which modern candles just don't fit without either shaving or padding out with paper - and one of them fell out as I was lighting it with my taper. I rescued it with as much sang-froid as I could muster in the growing heat of many candles and my own angst, and by the end of the service there were 28 candles burning on or beside the altar. (Coincidentally for me, that was the number of candles that were lit in the Cathedral of The Isles when I was confirmed on my 28th birthday - and that too was coincidence).

Himself played one of my favourite of his closing voluntaries, his own variations on an Arabic psalm tune (https://youtu.be/I-gA4QersoU) and I got to read one of my own poems - one of many I've written around this time of the year, which has always seemed extra special for people living in our neck of the woods. 

Dark Waiting

As the months slide towards
the winter dark, the first pang
of longing stirs, like the
quickening of the unborn child –
the sudden recognition, yet again, 
of waiting and of need.

This deep-felt urge was surely felt
each winter, on the darkest fringe
where small fires flickered in the gloom
and men looked east, towards the rim
where every morning brought the sun
a little fainter, lower, cold –
and now we wait another dawn,
a birth of hope and love and trust.
And do we long to see the Son,
or long for longing, long to kiss
the wind of love, its passing felt
by all who light their candles here?
The child stirs in the womb of dark.
We stretch our hands in hope, and wait.

C.M.M. 10/10

By the end of the hour or so, when we all took our candles outside, I felt immensely lucky to have been able to take part in such a service at this time. Blipping the view from the same corner as I've stood, frozen, to rehearse, but a view now filled with people and candlelight. 

The dark waiting is almost over.