Here is an Advent poem for your prayerful pondering. It is by Rowan Williams, Welsh theologian, priest, and former Archbishop of Canterbury. Later commissioned to be set to music as a carol, the poem captures a wintry spirituality. Using four familiar images to evoke the passing of time and the coming of Christ, he moves us through the four weeks of Advent. The language is as stark and sparse as the season, revealing its pain and alluding to its promise. The ache and the hope of longing become the hard labor of giving birth which is accompanied and encouraged by an incantation of conviction and anticipation: “He will come, will come, will come.” O earth, toss us free as well.

Advent Calendar

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

© Rowan Williams