ADVENT’S NEARLY UPON US again which means another whole year has upped and went! Maggi Dawn speaks of Advent’s Beginnings and Endings; Jan Richardson speaks of a door and of blessings; all of us look “for the City of Peace, in whose light we are transfigured, and the earth transformed.”
Advent: the coming of a Light by which we ourselves are first transfigured, a consequence of which is that the earth (and our view of it) becomes transformed. Beginning with transfiguration we end with transformation.
Transfigured and transformed we discover that we have been mightily blessed by the simple event of having walked through a door into a lamplit scene of New Life; we have stumbled upon the great and mighty wonder of a young woman and a man and a baby; we have stumbled upon the breath of God streaming from the nostrils of horses, sheep and cattle, mother and father, shepherds and foreigners, rich and lowly, baby in manger bed, tired, happy, servant tenderness; the transfiguring and transforming Holy beaming in the faces of the recently very worried unwed. There’s resurrection right here in this new beginning just as surely as there’ll be resurrection come the ending.
And having walked through that door and having seen that light we know that this is our beginning and ending; we know that we are breathing Alpha and Omega; we know that all the colour of the good life shines in this scene. As gobsmacked as kings from the Orient and black-clad shepherds from the fields we recognise our deep, deep primal need for the continual transfiguring that alone transforms the world and worlds. There’s no going back. Advent. Coming. Tiny infant lungs are filled with the Very Breath of God. For me. For you. For all.
The door is open at St Michael & All Angels, Bramhall. On Advent Sunday 27th at 8am, 9am, 10.45am & again for Advent Evensong at 6.30pm.
