Love, the guest is on the way

By Kathleen Staudt

For the past day I’ve been happily preparing for a party we’re giving for my husband’s co-workers, and humming as I go, the Advent hymn:

People look east, the time is near of the crowning of the year

Make your house fair, as you are able

Trim the hearth and set the table

People look east, and sing today

Love, the Guest is on the way

With two feet of snow on the ground, and our house on a cul de sac, it is now a little unclear when the party will actually happen – probably we’ll need to postpone it. But with the whole family home to chip in, and the house full of good smells and music, the time of preparation, surrounded by falling snow all day yesterday, has been a time of blessing – whenever the party may be. And out of it has come a Advent poem, which I’ll share here. Some readers of the café already know that my new book of poems, Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life is now out and available on Amazon. This poem is in the same vein as many of those poems – but it’s brand new (and likely to be revised beyond this version). I offer it to all of you, on this snowy Advent IV in Washington, when we pray “that our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming may find in us a mansion prepared for himself.”

Make Your House Fair

By Kathleen Staudt

Today I will clean clutter out of rooms

Push sofas up against the wall

Begin the preparations for a feast.

The Christmas tree will glow

We will pull out the outgrown toys

To please our youngest guests

And friends from all over the world

Will fill our modest house

Loading the long table

With food that they will bring

Tomorrow, for a time, we will all be in one place

Greeting one another, noticing together

That once again, the festive time has come.

The darkness of the year is not dispelled

It lingers at the windows,

Weighs on hearts

For some there is no consolation here

But for me,

The welcome task today is to create

In this, our house, a place of warmth and light

To grow cramped space into a gathering place

Where for a time

In glow of fellowship, and whatever we believe

Together, we may celebrate

The crowning of another year of life.

Kathleen Henderson Staudt Advent 2009

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area. She is the author of two books: At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetics and Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture.

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