On The Twelfth Day of Christmas...

Today, on this last day of the Christmas Season, as we once more consider the multiplying abundance of what we’ve received, may we be the continued multiplying of the season’s Spirit and live perfectly into our created image:

The Divine Image | William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

All pray in their distress;

And to these virtues of delight

Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is God, our father dear,

And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love

Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,

Pity a human face,

And Love, the human form divine,

And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,

That prays in his distress,

Prays to the human form divine,

Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,

In heathen, Turk, or Jew;

Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell

There God is dwelling too.

On The Eleventh Day of Christmas...

Refugee | Malcolm Guite

We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,

Or cosy in a crib beside the font,

But he is with a million displaced people

On the long road of weariness and want.

For even as we sing our final carol

His family is up and on the road,

Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,

Glancing behind and shouldering the load.

Whilst Herod rages still from his dark tower,

Christ clings to Mary, fingers tightly curled,

The lambs are slaughtered by the men of power,

And death squads spread their curse across the world.

But every Herod dies, and comes alone

To stand before the Lamb upon the throne.

On The Tenth Day of Christmas...

On The Edge | Malcolm Guite

Christmas sets the centre on the edge;

The edge of town, out-buildings of an inn,

The fringe of empire, far from privilege

And power, on the edge and outer spin

Of turning worlds, a margin of small stars

That edge a galaxy itself light years

From some unguessed-at cosmic origin.

Christmas sets the centre at the edge.

And from this day our world is re-aligned;

A tiny seed unfolding in the womb

Becomes the source from which we all unfold

And flower into being. We are healed,

The End begins, the tomb becomes a womb,

For now in him all things are re-aligned.

On The Ninth Day of Christmas...

Mary | Malcolm Guite

You bore for me the One who came to bless

And bear for all, to make the broken whole.

You heard his call, and in your open ‘yes’

You spoke aloud for every living soul.

Oh gracious Lady, child of your child,

Whose mother-love still calls the child in me,

Call me again, for I am lost and wild

Waves surround me now. On this dark sea

Shine as a star and call me to the shore.

Open a door that all my sins would close

And hold me in your garden. Let me share

The prayer that fold the petals of the Rose.

Enfold me too in love’s last mystery,

And bring me to the One you bore for me.

On The Eighth Day of Christmas...

Kenosis | Luci Shaw

In sleep his infant mouth works in and out.

He is so new, his silk skin has not yet

been roughed by plane and wooden beam

nor, so far, has he had to deal with human doubt.

He is in the dream of nipple found,

of blue-white milk, of curving skin

and, pulsing in his ear, the inner throb

of a warm heart’s repeated sound.

His only memories float from fluid space.

So new he has not pounded nails, hung a door,

broken bread, felt rebuff, bent to the lash,

wept for the sad heart of the human race.

On The Seventh Day of Christmas...

O Emmanuel | Malcolm Guite

You’ve come, You’ve come, to be our God-with-us,

O long-sought with-ness for a world without,

O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.

You’ve Come to us Wisdom, you’ve come unspoken Name,

O quickened little wick so tightly curled,

You’re folded with us into time and place,

You’ve unfolded for us the mystery of grace

And made a womb of all this wounded world.

O heart of heaven beating in the earth,

O tiny hope within our hopelessness,

You’ve come, born to bear us to our birth,

To touch a dying world with new-made hands

And made these rags of tie our swaddling bands.

On The Sixth Day of Christmas...

O Rex Gentium | Malcolm Guite

O King of our desire whom we despise,

King of the nations never on the throne,

Unfounded foundation, cast-off cornerstone,

Rejected joiner, making many one:

You have no form or beauty for our eyes,

A King who comes to give away his crown,

A King within our rags of flesh and bone.

We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,

For we ourselves are found in you alone.

You’ve Come to us now and found in us your throne,

O King within the child within the clay,

O hidden King who shapes us in the play

Of all creation. Shape us for the day

Your coming Kingdom comes into its own.

On The Fifth Day of Christmas...

O Oriens | Malcolm Guite

First light and then first lines along the east

To touch and brush a sheen on light on water,

As though behind the sky itself they traced

The shift and shimmer of another river

Flowing unbidden from its hidden source;

The Day-Spring, the eternal Prima Vera.

Are bathing in it now, away upstream…

So every trace of light begins a grace

In me, a beckoning. The smallest gleam

Is somehow a beginning and a calling:

‘Sleeper awake, the darkness was a dream

For you will see the Dayspring at your waking,

Beyond your long last line the dawn is breaking.’

On The Fourth Day of Christmas...

O Clavis | Malcolm Guite

Even in the darkness where I sit

And huddle in the midst of misery

I can remember freedom, but forget

That every lock must answer to a key,

That each dark clasp, sharp and intimate,

Must find a counter-clasp to meet its guard.

Particular, exact and intricate,

The clutch and catch that meshes with its ward.

I cried out for the key I threw away

That turned and over turned with certain touch

And with the lovely lifting of a latch

Opened my darkness to the light of day.

You’ve come again, come quickly, have set me free,

Cut to the quick to fit, the master key.

On The Third Day of Christmas...

O Radix | Malcolm Guite

All of us sprung from one deep-hidden seed,

Rose from a root invisible to all.

We knew the virtues once of every weed,

But, severed form the roots of ritual,

We surf the surface of a wide-screen world

And find no virtue in the virtual.

We shrivel on the edges of the wood

Whose heart we once inhabited in love,

Now we have need of you, forgotten Root,

The stock and stem of every living thing

Whom once we worshipped in the sacred grove,

For now is winter, now is withering

Unless we let you root us deep within,

Under the ground of being, you’ve grafted us in.

On The Third Day of Christmas...

“If Advent is the season of waiting, Christmas is the season of wonder,” so may this poem and the ones to follow aid us in our wondering at heaven’s answer to our heart's deepest pleas.

O Adonai | Malcolm Guite

Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue;

Unseeable, you gave yourself away;

The Adonai, the Tetragrammaton*

Grew by a wayside in the light of day.

O you who dared to be a tribal God,

To own a language, people, and place,

Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,

If so you might be met with face to face:

You’ve Come to us here, who would not find you there,

Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,

Who heard no more than thunder in the air,

Who marked the mere events and not the myth;

You’ve Touched the bare branches of our unbelief

And blazed again like fire in every leaf.

*the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah.

On The Second Day of Christmas...

“If Advent is the season of waiting, Christmas is the season of wonder,” so may this poem and the ones to follow aid us in our wondering at heaven’s answer to our heart's deepest pleas.

O Adonai | Malcolm Guite

Unsayable, you chose to speak one tongue;

Unseeable, you gave yourself away;

The Adonai, the Tetragrammaton*

Grew by a wayside in the light of day.

O you who dared to be a tribal God,

To own a language, people, and place,

Who chose to be exploited and betrayed,

If so you might be met with face to face:

You’ve Come to us here, who would not find you there,

Who chose to know the skin and not the pith,

Who heard no more than thunder in the air,

Who marked the mere events and not the myth;

You’ve Touched the bare branches of our unbelief

And blazed again like fire in every leaf.

*the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah.

On The First Day of Christmas...

“If Advent is the season of waiting, Christmas is the season of wonder,” so may this poem and the ones to follow aid us in our wondering at heaven’s answer to our heart's deepest pleas.

O Sapientia| Malcolm Guite

I cannot think unless I have been thought,

Nor can I speak unless I have been spoken.

I cannot teach except as I am taught,

Or break the bread except as I am broken.

O Mind behind the mind through which I seek,

O Light within the light by which I see,

O Word beneath the words which I speak,

O founding, unfound Wisdom, finding me,

O sounding Song, whose depth is sounding me,

O Memory of time, reminding me,

My Ground of Being, always grounding me,

My Maker’s Bounding Line, defining me,

Come, hidden Wisdom, come with all you bring.

Come to me now, disguised as everything.

*the Hebrew name of God transliterated in four letters as YHWH or JHVH and articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah.

December 18th | O Adonai

Today we join in the second of our seven O Antiphons. Prayers that have been sung by our faith family for centuries. Sung so that the quickening pace of Christmas is not just all the things on our calendars but the longing in our hearts.

In case you are interested, the tune which I sing them is from (appropriately!) O Come O Come Emmanuel. Let us rejoice in praying together: we prayerfully sing together the second of our seven O Antiphons.

O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel,
who appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush
and gave him the law on Sinai:
Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm.

December 17th | O Wisdom

This is the first of our seven O Antiphons. Prayers that have been sung by our faith family for centuries. Sung so that the quickening pace of Christmas is not just all the things on our calendars but the longing in our hearts.

In case you are interested, the tune which I sing them is from (appropriately!) O Come O Come Emmanuel. Let us rejoice in praying together:

O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other mightily,
and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.