People, Look East: verse 2
Advent 3 / Year C
We continue this morning
to reflect on the lyrics of our Advent hymn, People, Look East. I have yet to give you any background on its author,
Eleanor Farjeon. Born in England in
1881, she is the only girl in a family with three brothers. Given to ill health and poor eyesight, she is
educated at home and spends considerable time surrounded by books and reading. Much of her play constitutes imaginative
games and storytelling with her brothers.
Nellie, as she is known, grows up to be a prominent writer of children’s
literature, but is in no means limited just to this genre.
Her most widely
published work is the hymn Morning has Broken, penned in 1931. She publishes People, Look East three
years earlier, in 1928. Her imagination
shines brightly in each. In Morning has Broken she links a gloriously sublime sunrise in
the English countryside with her imagined dawning of the first day ever in the
Garden of Eden. In our Advent hymn she sees
in common objects and occurrences metaphors for a life rooted in the hope the
God of love is breaking into our world in fresh, new ways.
Today, Nellie invites us
to muse on Love, the Rose:
Furrows,
be glad.
Though earth is bare,
one more seed is planted there:
Give up
your strength the seed to nourish,
that in course the flower may flourish.
People,
look east and sing today:
Love, the rose, is on the way.
I have
a vivid memory from our first pilgrimage in Spain walking a portion of the
Camino. It was mid-October and we were
on a dirt path making a gradual climb while circling around a football field
size pasture. Looking down, I saw a
farmer who was planting something, but I could not tell what it was. What I remember about the field was its
furrows. There was easily a four-foot
difference from the bottom of the trench where the earth had been cut open to
top of the brow it made. Now, I am no
expert at farming, but most of the furrows I have seen have only been about a
foot tall or so. This was something
completely different and to this day I wish I had made my way down to ask farmer
what he was planting and why the furrows needed to be constructed so.
In
previous verses of the hymn, we have been cast as a host and a bird. Today we are a furrow; cleaved soil ready to
receive a gift… a heavenly seed that will grow and flourish because we nurture
it in our lives. And what is this
seed? Love, the rose.
Roses grow
best in a specific kind of soil: 1/3 clay, 1/3 coarse sand, and 1/3 decomposed organic
material. This combination provides the right
mixture for stability, drainage, and nutrients.
If we are the soil in which God plants the seed of love, we might want
to ponder what goes into making us most hospitable for it to grow. I suggest it is a mixture of tending to our
spiritual life, our emotional life, our psychological life, our physical life,
and our relational life. The right balance
of these things will make us a fertile place for God’s love to thrive.
Spiritual,
emotional, psychological, physical, and relational… what are you doing to tend
to each? Is there an aspect where you
are over-focused? Might there be a place
where your attention is lacking? Bishop
Susan led a wonderful retreat on Friday evening and Saturday introducing us to
various spiritual disciplines: Lectio Divina (a way of reading and meditating
on Scripture), centering prayer, prayer beads, and walking a labyrinth. She not only taught us about each but
provided us with the opportunity to practice them.
Bishop
Susan began our time together by sharing a quote from Thomas Merton:
In a world of noise, confusion and conflict,
it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and
peace. In such places, love can blossom.
Again, what do you need
to do to make the soil of your life a place where God’s love can bloom and
abound?
One more thought about
furrowing. I’m sure if the packed earth
had the opportunity to weigh in it would opt to be left alone, not to be subjected
to the excruciating process of being cleaved open. Much better to remain a plot of dirt best
suited for weeds and scrubs to grow than to go through the painful process of
furrowing. While we all wish our life
was (as they say) a rose garden, there is something about the experience of being
turned over which makes us better suited for God’s love to break through.
I suspect Nellie wanted us
to play with the idea roses are beautiful in appearance and scent and how they come
in a variety of colors, each one taking on a specific meaning: red representing
love, yellow friendship, white peace, and peach sympathy to name a few. Perhaps Farjeon meant to remind us God’s love
manifests itself in and through each of us in a distinctive way. God’s love blooms in us in a way it can bloom
in no one else. Because you are uniquely
made, you manifest Love, the rose, a way unique to you.
Tend to your soil that
is you and let God’s love thrive in all you say and do.
