Advent Poems 2011 Part I


If, like me, you find poetry a vital spiritual doorway that opens up into ways of expressing prayer and reflecting on faith
I hope you find these useful.













Last year I managed to find several Advent poems and it will be a big challenge to find new ones I like for this year but wonderful serendipity and time spent on google searches (!) brought me to this wonderful gift of a blog by Charlie Lowell completely devoted to daily poetry posts on the theme of Advent which he began on November 28th during the year 2008. 

There are lots of superb poems Charlie- Thank you so much !! 

Sadly Charlie has not continued the exercise past 2008 but there are plenty here that are timeless.

These are two examples . Hope you enjoy them 

The God We Hardly Knew
by Oscar Romero

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.


Christmas Dream
by Eugene Peterson

“...an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.”

Amiably at home with virtue and evil -
The righteousness of Joseph and Herod’s
Wickedness – I’m ever and always a stranger to grace.
I need this annual angel visitation.

- this sudden drive by dream into reality -
to know the virgin conceives and God is with us.
The dream powers its way through winter weather
and gives me vision to see the Jesus gift.

Light from the dream lasts a year. Through
Equinox and solstice I am given twelve months

Of daylight by which to build the crèche where my
Redeemer lives. The fetus of praise grows

deep in my spirit. As autumn wanes I count
the days until I bear the dream again. 

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