A Poem for the Second Week of Advent

 The Clearing

Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your own cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world,
so worthy of rescue.

~ Martha Postlethwaite

© 2008, Martha Postlethwaite. Used with the permission of the author.

THIS POEM by Martha Postlethwaite has caught the imagination and hearts of many, spreading far and wide because of the internet. What might it be about this poem that resonates (echoes) so deeply with people in our world today? That, in and of itself, might be a question worth some serious meditation during this time of year.

Advent is commonly thought of and referred to as a season of waiting. Waiting should not be mistaken for passivity. There is a difference between passivity and contemplative waiting. In Advent, we become aware that it is not for us to “save the whole world,” and that we don’t have control over what is at the end of our waiting.

However, it is each of our responsibility to be responsive in the sphere of our own living. Before we can be responsive in, through, and with our own lives by learning how “to give [ourselves] to the world,” there is something we must do. We must enact our capacity to create a space — “a clearing in the dense forest of [our] life” — where we can give ourselves completely to just one thing: waiting. The previous sentence would essentially say the same thing if I had ended it with the word trusting. What do we do in the clearing? Three things: we learn to trust, we trust, and we deepen our trust. We give ourselves over completely to what our “cupped hands” convey: openness, surrender of control, the desire and readiness to receive. Postlethwaite captures all of this in her evocative poem.

I invite you during this second week of Advent to consciously and intentionally create a space, a clearing in the woods of your daily or weekly life where you can sit or kneel or lie down or stand in the orans position with cupped hands. Just that. No words. Your body will say enough.

+ Here is a link to a choral rendition of Postlethwaite’s poem composed for a women’s choir by Allie Weigh. I recommend the audio version as opposed to the video:

https://allieweigh.com/2018/01/07/4-part-womens-chorus/