The Fig Tree's Lesson

In winter the fig trees sleep,

replete with dreams of spring,

and within each bare, fragile branch and twig

an unfurled leaf lies waiting in possibility,

here and there, invisible

to our eyes.

Keep watch, the Teacher said,

eyes open. But not 

a dread-draught, like awaiting biopsy results,

the footsteps of the doctor down sanitized halls.

Observe.

Even as the branches tick together 

beneath leaden skies, the last

leaves discarded just weeks ago,

Edenic attire now scattered carelessly underfoot

as if walking into a Black Friday dressing room.

Observe.

Sit in silent, appreciative anticipation,

breathing, in union with the slumbering Earth,

who bears both your body and this fig tree

with gentle, cupped hands.

Keep watch in wonder.

Even before winter’s commencement

the certainty of spring

lies somnolent, expectant,

blossoming forth, even now

just beneath the chilled bark of the fig tree.

Come and sit tomorrow

and you may see some small sign.

You do not know the hour.

But already the burgeoning has begun,

first the buds, then the leaves,

then the inside-out flowers

envy-green to aubergine 

that fill the hand with pregnant, succulent heft,

to bloom on the tongue come Eastertide, 

gritty as honeycomb,

an Advent promise fulfilled.

--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, November 17, 2023

Scripture reference: Mark 13:24-37, Advent 1B

My Father and the Fig Tree

For other fruits, my father was indifferent. 

He'd point at the cherry trees and say, 

"See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evening he sat by my beds 

weaving folktales like vivid little scarves. 

They always involved a fig tree.
Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a fig tree.
Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep. 

Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged. 

"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth – 

gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest, 

sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets. 

"Plant one!" my mother said.
but my father never did.
He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water, 

let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many
things he starts and doesn't finish."

The last time he moved, I got a phone call, 

My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out back to the new yard. 

There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,

a tree with the largest, fattest, 

sweetest fig in the world.
"It's a figtree song!" he said, 

plucking his fruits like ripe tokens, 

emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson-born Palestinian-American poet, translator, and author, from 19 Varieties of Gazelle.

Joha is a trickster in Arab tales.

Scripture reference: Mark 13:24-37 (Advent 1B)

The Path

RUNNING along a bank, a parapet 

That saves from the precipitous wood below
The level road, there is a path. It serves
Children for looking down the long smooth steep,
Between the legs of beech and yew, to where
A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women
Content themselves with the road and what they see
Over the bank, and what the children tell.
The path, winding like silver, trickles on,
Bordered and even invaded by thinnest moss
That tries to cover roots and crumbling chalk
With gold, olive, and emerald, but in vain.
The children wear it. They have flattened the bank
On top, and silvered it between the moss
With the current of their feet, year after year.
But the road is houseless, and leads not to school.
To see a child is rare there, and the eye
Has but the road, the wood that overhangs
And underyawns it, and the path that looks
As if it led on to some legendary
Or fancied place where men have wished to go
And stay; till, sudden, it ends where the wood ends.

-- Edward Thomas (1878-1917), British writer, poet, and critic 

Relevant scripture: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3, Advent 2B

Closed Path

I thought that my voyage had come to its end 

at the last limit of my power,---

that the path before me was closed,
that provisions were exhausted
and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity.

But I find that thy will knows no end in me.
And when old words die out on the tongue,
new melodies break forth from the heart;
and where the old tracks are lost,
new country is revealed with its wonders.

--Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali philosopher, mystic, painter, composer, and poet, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1913.

Scripture references: Isaiah 40:3, Mark 1:2-3 (Advent 2B)

Blessing When the World is Ending: For Advent 1B

Look, the world
is always ending
somewhere.

Somewhere
the sun has come
crashing down.

Somewhere
it has gone
completely dark.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the gun,
the knife,
the fist.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the slammed door,
the shattered hope.

Somewhere
it has ended
with the utter quiet
that follows the news
from the phone,
the television,
the hospital room.

Somewhere
it has ended
with a tenderness
that will break
your heart.

But, listen,
this blessing means
to be anything
but morose.
It has not come
to cause despair.

It is simply here
because there is nothing
a blessing
is better suited for
than an ending,
nothing that cries out more
for a blessing
than when a world
is falling apart.

This blessing
will not fix you,
will not mend you,
will not give you
false comfort;
it will not talk to you
about one door opening
when another one closes.

It will simply
sit itself beside you
among the shards
and gently turn your face
toward the direction
from which the light
will come,
gathering itself
about you
as the world begins
again.

—Jan Richardson, Methodist pastor, poet, teacher, and artist, from her AdventDoor series at janrichardson.com

Advent 1 B, Scripture reference Mark 13:24-37

End and Beginning, © Jan Richardson janrichardson.com