Where is the beauty of Advent in the midst of the world’s pain?
The Christmas story insists that God is born in the rubble, under the shadow of empire, into the deepest places of human oppression, suffering, and trauma.
On this final Saturday in Advent, this Cottage window opens to a shocking visual image and a choral rendition of an equally shocking ancient promise from the prophet Isaiah.
Make sure to gaze deeply at the photograph, as if it were an icon. And then immediately listen to the song. The two are meant go together and speak to each other.
This is a spiritual exercise in Visio-Auditory Divina.
Let whatever questions arise come. Let the season’s prophetic power — a kind of poignant beauty in itself — sweep over you.
And may the image and accompanying music speak to your heart as you need in this holy season.
Diana’s note, an aside: By highlighting this image from the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, my intention is to point toward the horror and suffering of all the world’s children, indeed, all the victims of violence, the “rubble” that human quests for vengeance and power shower down upon the Earth. The iconography of the Prince of Peace in his very birthplace in the midst of war, a war caught in the tides of complex history and conflicts between three great religious traditions, is both particular to current conflicts and universal to a world without peace. As it speaks to me, this is an image of God’s continual rebirth into a broken world and in NO WAY implicates Jews in the death of Christ (which is antisemitism of the worst sort - and a reprehensible sin of Christian theology).
Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
leopards will join with the lambs as they play,
wolves will be pastured with cows in the glade,
blood will not darken the earth that God made.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
life redeemed from fang and claw.
Peace will pervade more than forest and field:
God will transfigure the Violence concealed
deep in the heart and in systems of gain,
ripe for the judgement the Lord will ordain.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Justice purifying law.
Nature reordered to match God′s intent,
nations obeying the call to repent,
all of creation completely restored,
filled with the knowledge
and love of the Lord.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.
Little child whose bed is straw,
take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.
— "The Dream Isaiah Saw" is a contemporary classical Christmas choral piece, commissioned by the Bach Choir of Pittsburgh and composed in 2001 by Glenn L. Rudolph to the lyrics of Thomas H. Troeger's 1994 hymn "Lions and Oxen Will Feed in the Hay."
It was a time like this,
War & tumult of war,
a horror in the air.
Hungry yawned the abyss –
and yet there came the star
and the child most wonderfully there.
— Madeleine L’Engle
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Thank you. I had seen the image but not the music, and the music reallly helped make meaning of the image. There is a powerful yearning to keep finding ways to build with the rubble, see around the shards and find each other, work towards the dream Isaiah saw. And keeping in mind the connection with Isaiah really helps me see Christmas differently... It's not just this one day's magic, this (advertised) feeling of joy we're supposed to have sparkling within each of us for a day once a year. It's this ancient vision that is so much bigger and stronger than any of us. May it be so.
The line "take new lodgings in my heart" immediately reminded me of Randall Thompson's choral work "The Best of Rooms", based on a text by 17th century Anglican Robert Herrick: "Christ, He requires still, wheresoe'er He comes, To feed, or lodge, to have the best of rooms; Give Him the choice; grant Him the nobler part Of all the house: the best of all's the heart.". It's a beautiful piece and I think you can find it on youtube and such.
The Dream Isaiah Saw is a beautiful piece I had never heard. I am not sure how I interpret Isaiah's vision these days but it is a wonderful dream to reflect on.