Advent Dismissal

Celebrant

A star is shining. 

Angels are busy. 

Mary is pregnant. 

Joseph is packing. 

Advent is coming. 

It’s time to carry Christ’s light into the world. 

May God bless us with hope and wonder as we go forth.

All 

Thanks be to God!

If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking

 

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

 

-- Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), American poet

When Giving Is All We Have

   

                                                 One river gives
                                                    Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.

 

 --Alberto Rios (1954- ), poet laureate of Arizona

Scripture Reference: Psalm 112:1-9 (10), 5th Sunday After Epiphany A

The Owl

Downhill I came, hungry, and yet not starved;
Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof
Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest
Had seemed the sweetest thing under a roof.

Then at the inn I had food, fire, and rest,
Knowing how hungry, cold, and tired was I.
All of the night was quite barred out except
An owl's cry, a most melancholy cry

Shaken our long and clear upon the hill,
No merry note, nor cute of merriment,
But one telling me what I escaped
And others could not, that night, as in I went.

And salted was my food, and my repose,
Salted and sobered, too, by the bird's voice
Speaking for all who lay under the stars,
Soldiers and poor, unable to rejoice.


--Edward Thomas (1878-1917), English biographer, critic, poet and soldier, killed in the Battle of Arras, Easter Monday, 1917.