Advent ~ Embodiment

First Week of Advent

Sometimes in the contemplative writing experience, metaphors and events line up just right to let you know you’re on the right path. Today is December 1, 2019, and in contemplating a theme for the month’s blessing send,* I woke with the idea of “embodiment.” It seemed confirmed as I participated in a morning reading of the The Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, then headed to a reading of The Five Mindfulness Trainings with Lake Tahoe Mindfulness Community. The trainings reflect very deeply the practice (versus the perfection) of living a life embodying service by practicing the ideals of compassion and gratitude. Then, I arrived home to set a date on my calendar and discovered that today, December 1, 2019, is the first Sunday in Advent. A very old and dear friend has inspired in me the practice of observing each Sunday in Advent together and this poem made its way to me in celebration. I wished to share the poem in a spirit of awe—that sometimes life comes together and almost sings its “yes!” that indeed we have embodied what is good and true. Alas, I am rambling.

Poets often say in far better and more concise ways, what the many words above only hint at. Please enjoy Denise Levertov’s beautiful offering encapsulating December’s writing theme—Embodiment:

Poem: Denise Levertov's "Annunciation" (Full Version)

First appearing in her book "A  Door in the Hive." 

 Annunciation

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, 

Greece, VIc 

We know the scene: the room, variously furnished,
almost always a lectern, a book; always
the tall lily.

       Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings,
the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering,
whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions
courage.

       The engendering Spirit
did not enter her without consent.

         God waited.

She was free
to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

                  ____________________

Aren’t there annunciations
of one sort or another
in most lives?

         Some unwillingly
undertake great destinies,
enact them in sullen pride,
uncomprehending.

More often
those moments
      when roads of light and storm
      open from darkness in a man or woman,
are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair
and with relief.
Ordinary lives continue.
                                 God does not smite them.
But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

                  ____________________

She had been a child who played, ate, slept
like any other child–but unlike others,
wept only for pity, laughed
in joy not triumph.
Compassion and intelligence
fused in her, indivisible.

Called to a destiny more momentous
than any in all of Time,
she did not quail,

  only asked

a simple, ‘How can this be?’
and gravely, courteously,
took to heart the angel’s reply,
the astounding ministry she was offered:

to bear in her womb
Infinite weight and lightness; to carry
in hidden, finite inwardness,
nine months of Eternity; to contain
in slender vase of being,
the sum of power–
in narrow flesh,
the sum of light.

                     Then bring to birth,
push out into air, a Man-child
needing, like any other,
milk and love–

but who was God. 

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

                  ____________________

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

              courage unparalleled,

opened her utterly.