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.