The Second Week of Advent, Sunday

Today, we’re beginning the second week of Advent with the help of poems that, in some way, shed light on the concept of peace. Today’s poem is by Mary Cornish, and it’s called Restoration.

Restoration

By Mary Cornish

Everyone knew the water would rise,
but nobody knew how much.
The priest at Santa Croce said, God
will not flood the church.
When the Arno broke its banks,
God entered as a river, let His mark high
above the altar.
He left nothing untouched:
stones, plaster, wood.
You are all my children.
The hem of His garment, which was
the river’s bottom sludge,
swept through Florence, filling cars and cradles,
the eyes of marble statues,
even the Doors of Paradise. And the likeness
of His son’s hands, those pierced palms soaked
with water, began to peel like skin.
The Holy Ghost appeared
as clouds of salted crystals
on the faces of saints, until the intonaco
of their painted bodies stood out from the wall as if
they had been resurrected.

This is what I know of restoration:
in a small room near San Marco,
alone on a wooden stool
nearly every day for a year,
I painted squares of blue on gessoed boards—
cobalt blue with madder rose, viridian,
lamp black—pure pigments and the strained yolk
of an egg, then penciled notes about the powders,

the percentages of each. I never asked
to what end I was doing what I did, and now
I’ll never know. Perhaps there was one square
that matched the mantle of a penitent, the stiff
hair of a donkey’s tail, a river calm beneath a bridge.
I don’t even know what I learned,
except the possibilities of blue, and how God enters.

Roundup: The Second Week of Advent

Prayers and Devotions

We are still keeping it simple over here, with the lighting of the Advent candles and the singing of “Oh Come, Emmanuel,” before dinner. This week, we’ll add the second verse to the song—a verse for each lit candle.

For the first time this year, we’ve added an Advent wreath to our morning devotions. That was Chris’s plan. It involves chocolate, so the children are loving it.

I’ve also dug into my box of Christmas books, and we’re reading one at breakfast, and another with hot chocolate, in the afternoon once Toby is home from school. Toby’s favorite book this week was Holly and Ivy by Rumor Godden. Becket’s was The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree. Ellie is mostly in it for the chocolate.

Saints and Feasts

This week, most of Instagram will be celebrating the Feast of St. Lucy on Friday, December 12, by dressing a daughter up in a white gown and a flaming crown. It’s a beautiful (and eminently Instagrammable) tradition, but the thought of letting Ellie anywhere near fire or adding one more thing to our morning strikes fear in my heart. Plus, this is a Swedish tradition, and not a one of us in this house has a drop of Swedish blood. So I plan to leave the flaming crowns to people blonder than the Chapmans. I did add Aldi’s Private Selection Frozen Cinnamon Rolls to the grocery list, though, and will pop those in the oven Friday morning. If you’re looking for lazy liturgical living recommendations, that is mine for the week.

The day before St. Lucy’s day, Thursday, December 12, is the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And since two Chapmans are part Mexican, we do plan to do a bit more for that day. We have an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe that my friend Katie McGrady brought us back from her last trip to the shrine in Mexico, so I will display that front and center on our family altar in the morning, then read the children the story of her appearance to Saint Juan Diego at breakfast. (It’s included in My Golden Book of Mary and the kids love it.). On Thursday night, we’ll go out to dinner at our favorite local Mexican dive restaurant, where the chips are free and the margaritas cheap. This too is lazy liturgical living. Tacos for dinner would be another cheap and liturgically appropriate dinner.

Decorating

Last week was a decorating bust, that mostly involved me packing up all the fall decor, then pulling out a couple strands of garland . We had planned to put up our tree on Friday (Saint Nicholas Day), but forgot that Steubenville’s beautiful lantern parade was that night, so instead, we we headed out into the cold to walk through downtown, singing carols and following Saint Nicholas to the city’s creche. It was just lovely. Now, today, we’ll head out after Mass to get our tree, then bring it home, put it in the stand, and light it up. I hope to also finally get the mantles dressed and wreaths up over the course of the week. If we have any restraint, which I am not sure we do, we’ll hold off on decorating the tree until next Sunday (Gaudete Sunday). I’ll report back next week on how successful our attempts at restraint are.

Thanks, as always, for following along here. Throughout this week, the daily Advent poems will continue to be free for all subscribers. If you would like to receive my Friday reflections on the poems, however, along with special holiday meal and drink recipes from me, I would love it if you joined us as a full subscriber. This retreat and the newsletter itself only exists because of reader support, so I am incredibly grateful for every one of you who is already helping me do this work and for those of you who decide to upgrade your subscription today.