Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.
—Matthew 24:42 (KJV)
LOOK: Quote-Unquote, Hyphen, and The Point of Intersection by Kay Sage
There’s a wistful quality to the paintings of the midcentury American surrealist artist Kay Sage [previously], which often feature tenuous, draped structures and a distant light in the vast dark. The first work of hers I saw in person was Quote-Unquote, which shows a ragged, exposed architectonic form—is it fallen into disrepair, or incomplete?—whose vertical wood beams pierce the dreary gray sky.
The museum label at the Wadsworth Atheneum reads in part: “Sage’s later paintings featured vertical architectural structures, such as walls and scaffolding, set in otherwise deserted landscapes. These inanimate forms were often draped with plain fabric, as if to suggest a human presence or absence.” The title Quote-Unquote provides little interpretive help. What is being quoted here? Is irony intended?
Painted the same decade, Sage’s Hyphen shows a towering structure of open doors and windows.
And ThePoint of Intersection shows a series of wooden boards and frames standing, slightly diagonal to the viewer, on a ground that recedes into infinity. In the bottom left corner a rumpled sheet or garment lies on a squat platform.
Is the “intersection” of the title between time and eternity, or . . . ?
LISTEN: “Not Knowing When the Dawn Will Come” | Words by Emily Dickinson, ca. 1884 | Music by Jan Van Outryve, 2018 | Performed by Naomi Beeldens (voice) and Jeroen Malaise (piano) on Elysium, Emily Dickinson Project, 2018
Not knowing when the Dawn will come, I open every Door, Or has it Feathers, like a Bird, Or Billows, like a Shore –
This is one of twelve musical settings of Dickinson poems for piano and voice by the Belgian composer Jan Van Outryve. It’s sung by soprano Naomi Beeldens, with Jeroen Malaise on keys.
I’ve always read “Not knowing” as an Advent poem, as promoting a posture of readiness for the coming of Christ—he who is, as we call out in the O Antiphons of late Advent, our Oriens, Rising Sun, Dayspring. Will he come softly, rustling, avian-like, or will he come crashing onto earth’s shore like a wave?
Expecting Dawn’s imminent arrival, the speaker of the poem opens every door, welcoming its light.
From Augustine (Confessions) to Teresa of Ávila (The Interior Castle), the picture-making nunsof St. Walburga’s Abbey in Eichstätt to C. S. Lewis (Mere Christianity), the human heart has long been compared to a house. To open the windows or doors of the heart to Christ is to invite him to come in and dwell there and to transform the place.
Advent commemorates threecomings of Christ: his coming in “history, mystery, and majesty,” as one priest put it. That is, Christ’s coming (1) as a babe in Bethlehem, (2) in the Spirit, to convert, illuminate, equip, and console, and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and (3) at the end of time.
Have you opened every door to him? Do you eagerly expect him to arrive—this Christmas (are you telling, singing, enacting the story of his nativity?); into your struggles and brokenness, to companion you and to heal and strengthen; and again on earth, to unite it with heaven and establish, fully and finally, his universal reign?
This is the first post in a daily Advent and Christmastide series that will extend to January 6.I hope you follow along!
“One of poetry’s great gifts is to slow us down,” writes Peggy Rosenthal in Praying the Gospels through Poetry. “We’re used to racing ahead as we read, whether it’s a newspaper or an email memo or even an essay: language in these forms propels us forward, urging us to grab up its main points. But poetry doesn’t press ahead so much as hold us still—in the wonder of words crafted to open into another dimension.”
Below are twenty-five poems to “hold us still” this holiday season.
I’ve collected hundreds of Advent and Christmas poems over the past decade, but for this feature one of the selection criteria was that the poem must be freely available online. I chose the number twenty-five because that is standard in most Advent calendars—tools for counting down the days to Christmas. This way, you can choose, if you wish, to bookmark this page and read just one poem a day from December 1 to 25, each one a little treat.
The order progresses, in general, from Advent longing and anticipation to Christmas joy and wonder to post-nativity moments like the presentation in the temple and the visit of the magi.
1. “Advent Madrigal” by Lisa Russ Spaar: I’m not sure I understand this poem, but I like it. A madrigal is a part-song, and this is a song of waiting in simultaneous belief and doubt, of being irresistibly attracted to God’s story while also skeptical of aspects. The speaker compares the moon to a flashlight that a theater usher shines down the aisle to escort folks to their seats. What does it mean that “the treetops sough // & seize with” escape? Escape from what? And that the earth has been purloined? I don’t know, but the final couplet really lands for me—about how in the dark night of our not-knowing, we make our Advent wreaths, decking them with evergreens, their round shape an O of lament and awe before the yet-to-be-seen.
Source: University of Virginia Office of Engagement
2. “Prayer” by John Frederick Nims: The first in a sequence of five poems, “Prayer” expresses a sense of emptiness and desire, beckoning an unnamed one whom I read as Christ to come and fill. “Come to us, conceiver, / You who are all things, held and holder. / . . . / Come, infinite answer to our infinite want.”
3. “how he is coming then” by Lucille Clifton: This poem is part of a sequence on the life of Mary; it appears between “mary’s dream” (on the Annunciation) and “holy night” (on Mary’s ecstatic birthing experience). In answer to the title, Clifton gives three similes.
4. “Advent 2” by Anna A. Friedrich: This poem is the second in a series of Advent villanelles commissioned by the poet’s church in Boston last year to converse with one or more of the lectionary readings for each week of the season. Malachi 3:1–4 is the primary touchstone here, a formidable prophetic passage that compares God in the day of his coming to a blazing fire that refines metal. Stanza 3 references the fiery repentance-preaching of John the Baptist from Luke 3:1–6, and then Friedrich draws in another, unexpected “fire” text: Daniel 3, in which three young Hebrew men are thrown into a furnace by a Babylonian king for their refusal to worship his gods but are preserved from harm when a mysterious fourth person appears with them in the flames. Friedrich connects this story to the promise that the earth and its inhabitants will not be wholly consumed in the fire of God’s judgment—only the impurities, the dross, will be destroyed, so that all may be restored to their truest selves. Hence why, in Friedrich’s words, “We pray for His fire. We trust this flame.”
5.“Desert Blossoming” by Amit Majmudar: A reflection on the messianic promise of Isaiah 35:1–2, this poem celebrates how, through the deserts of Israel, Jesus “scattered his verses on the secretly gravid ground,” causing the wilderness to blossom. Majmudar mentions red, the color of fire (an image he connects to the light of faith), rhyming it with “bled.” Although he uses this final word in the sense of spreading into or through—oases bleeding into one another as dry land becomes water—one can’t help but think of Jesus’s sacrificial death, his blood extraordinarily fertile, producing life.
Joseph Stella (American, 1877–1946), Tree, Cactus, Moon, ca. 1928. Gouache on paper, 104.1 × 68.6 cm. Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
6.“Name One Thing New”by Seth Wieck: This six-line poem takes the Teacher of Ecclesiastes to task, responding to his cynical claim that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccles. 1:9) with a counterexample.
7.“For My Mother at Advent” by Brian Volck: The poet recalls a simple Advent tradition his mother established in his childhood and reflects on her spiritual legacy, her lifetime of Christ-inspired kindnesses that continue to pillow him. How might we soften the hardness of the world for others?
8. “Advent” by Suzanne Underwood Rhodes: This stunning poem makes unlikely intertextual connections, bringing Matthew 19:24 (one of Jesus’s hard sayings regarding wealth) to bear on John 1. Its unique angle on the Incarnation and its evocative imagery have inspired an experimental jazz composition and several paintings.
9. “An Hymn to Humanity” by Phillis Wheatley: “Lo! for this dark terrestrial ball / Forsakes his azure-pavèd hall / A prince of heav’nly birth!” So begins this poem on the Incarnation by Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753–1784), the first African American to publish a book of poetry. In stanzas 2 and 3, God the Father dispatches the Son to establish his throne on earth, “enlarg[ing] the close contracted mind, / And fill[ing] it with thy fire.” The “languid muse” in stanza 5 refers to Wheatley herself, whereas the “celestial nine” are the ancient Greek inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. The “smiling Graces” is another classical reference.
Michael Wolgemut (German, 1434–1519), The Father sending the Son into the world, 1491. Hand-colored woodcut from the Schatzbehalter (published by Anton Koberger, Nuremberg), 43.7 × 27.5 cm. British Museum, London.
10. “In My Hand” by Sarah Robsdottir: Mary remembers the moment she conceived Jesus, one ordinary day when sitting down to a bowl of lentil stew.
Source: Aleteia, April 9, 2018
11. “The Risk of Birth, Christmas, 1973”by Madeleine L’Engle: Best known for her children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle was also a poet. Here she compares our era to the one in which Jesus was born—both are characterized by violence and hate, and yet Jesus, the embodiment of divine love, willingly entered the peril.
12. “On Another’s Sorrow” by William Blake: Through the Incarnation, God lovingly, humanly, entered the world of human woe to experience it firsthand. “He doth give His joy to all,” Blake writes: “He becomes an infant small, / He becomes a man of woe, / He doth feel the sorrow too.” I featured this poem about Emmanuel, God-with-us, in a musical setting by singer-songwriter David Benjamin Blower in 2023 but was surprised that Blower omitted Blake’s final stanza, whose closing couplet I find striking, as it conveys Jesus’s continued identification with and compassion for humanity, how he moans alongside us in our suffering. For a different musical interpretation, also in an acoustic indie folk mode, see the one by Portland-based artist Michael Blake, from his 2021 album Songs of Innocence and Experience:
Source: Songs of Innocence and Experience (London, 1794). Public Domain.
13.“Missing the Goat”by Lorna Goodison: An immigrant from Kingston, Jamaica, to Toronto, Ontario, Goodison writes of the heightened feeling of exile but also of creative adaptations during the holidays as she tries to carry out the food traditions of her native country on a foreign soil where some of the ingredients are in more limited supply. For the sorrel wine, traditionally made with roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) petals, tropically grown, she has to make do with redbuds. And the local shops have run out of goat meat—“the host of yardies” (people of Jamaican origin) who’ve moved to the area have already bought it all up—so “we’ll feast then on curried some-other-flesh.” Despite the differences from home, Christmas is still Christmas, and she raises her “hybridized wassail cup” to her new place, her new neighbors (many of them, like her, also recent arrivals from the Caribbean), and the creation of new rituals in multicultural Toronto.
Source: Controlling the Silver (University of Illinois Press, 2010); compiled in Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2017)
14. “Word Made Flesh”by Kathleen Raine: Awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) for her significant contributions to literature and culture, Raine has been described as a mystical and visionary poet. Here is her revoicing of John 1. What a powerful last two lines!
15.“Nativity”by Barbara Crooker: In the heavy dark, in the windy cold, “love is born in the world again” every December when we retell the story of Christ’s birth.
Gary Kuehn (American, 1939–), Straw Pillow, 1963. Straw, plaster. Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, Inv. ML/SK 5185. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones.
16. “First Miracle”by A. E. Stallings: The first miracle Jesus performed, according to the Gospel of John, was turning water into wine. Stallings reflects on an earlier miracle performed by his mother’s body, and all birth-giving mothers’: turning nutrients from her blood into milk.
17.“What Sweeter Music Can We Bring” (or “A Christmas Carol, sung to the King in the Presence at Whitehall”)by Robert Herrick: “The Darling of the world is come”! Originally written as a song for soloists (each number corresponds to a different singer) and chorus, this poem reverses the typical seasonal imagery of Christmas, remarking how, at Jesus’s birth, “chilling Winter’s morn / Smile[s] like a field beset with corn” and “all the patient ground [is turned] to flowers.” The original music by Henry Lawes is lost, but many contemporary composers have written settings of the text, most famously John Rutter.
Source: Hesperides: Or, Works Both Human and Divine (London, 1648). Public Domain.
18.“Sharon’s Christmas Prayer”by John Shea: A five-year-old recounts the Christmas story, and when she reaches the clincher, she can’t hold back her glee.
19.“God”by D. A. Cooper: Riffing on Williams Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” this spare poem attends to the birth and death of the incarnate God, upon which so much depends.
Source: Reformed Journal, September 3, 2024
Katarzyna Malinowska (Polish, 1989–), Juxtapose (diptych), 2021. Digital painting, 20 × 30 cm.
20. “Lullaby after Christmas”by Vassar Miller: The speaker wishes sweet sleep for the newborn Christ child, wishes to keep him innocent of his fate for as long as possible—for “even God has right to / Peace before His pain.” Consisting of four sestets whose second, fourth, and sixth lines rhyme, the poem has a sing-songy quality that is jarring for the juxtaposition of words like “soft,” “warm,” and “tinkling” with the likes of “blood,” “gore,” and “die.”
21. “Journey of the Magi”by T. S. Eliot: Eliot wrote this poem shortly after his conversion to Christianity in 1927. Opening with a passage from a Christmas sermon by the seventeenth-century Anglican bishop Lancelot Andrewes, it is from the perspective of one of the magi, who made a long, toilsome journey in search of the meaning of a mysterious guiding star. After the magi’s encounter with the Christ child, they would never be the same; their paganism would no longer satisfy. The poem is about the transformative impact Christ has on those with humility enough to see him for who he is (having followed the light of revelation) and to worship him accordingly. And that transformation is in some ways painful, as it involves giving up some of the things one once held dear.
“Were we led all that way for / Birth or Death?” the magus asks. Jesus’s wasn’t the only birth they witnessed; they, too, were (re)born in Bethlehem. But spiritual rebirth is also a sort of death—the magi died to their old selves and false loves and loyalties. Thus, when they returned to Babylon, they felt like strangers in a strange land. They were now citizens of a different kingdom, and filled with a longing for its consummation.
Source: Journey of the Magi (Ariel Poems) (Faber & Gwyer, 1927). Public Domain.
Jörg Länger (German, 1964–), The Three Kings, 2013. Linocut and gesso on aluminum dibond, 38 × 38 cm. The linocut is after a 12th-century illumination from the St Albans Psalter, held at the Dombibliothek, Hildesheim, Germany.
22. “Twelfth Night”by Sally Thomas: (Scroll to second poem.) As the Christmas season draws to a close, holly berries shrivel and drop, the “candles drown themselves in waxen lakes,” “the tree’s a staring corpse,” and a spider has built a web across the mantel nativity. Thomas uses the passing of the season to reflect more broadly on the passing of time and our own dustiness and desiccation—and by contrast, the unchangeability of God.
23. Untitled poemby S. E. Reid: Most reflections on the New Year are full of enthusiastic goal-setting and go-getting, but Reid, gardening in her greenhouse in the crisp cold of January, describes a “fall[ing] backwards,” “dropping into the dark,” “shivering,” herself a seed, latent in the soil, trusting God that growth will come.
24. “Anna the Prophetess” by Tania Runyan: Forty days after Jesus’s birth, Maryand Joseph presented him in the Jerusalem temple. Runyan imagines this event from the perspective of Anna, a woman who was widowed young and thenceforth lived at the temple into old age, devoted to prayer, fasting, praise, and prophecy.
25. “The Work of Christmas”by Howard Thurman: Drawing on Jesus’s mission statement in Luke 4, the great African American theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman urges us to continue the work of Christmas—finding, healing, feeding, etc.—throughout the year. Listen to the simple yet vigorous choral setting by Elizabeth Alexander.
ADVENT SERIES: Restful Advent by Tamara Hill Murphy:Tamara Hill Murphy [previously] is one of my favorite spiritual writers, her thoughtful words and curation of resources having served as a well of inspiration for me over the years. Each year, similar to Art & Theology but with the sensibilities and expertise of an Anglican spiritual director, she publishes a new daily Advent and Christmastide guide through her Substack, Restful, running this year from November 30 to January 5. Each post in the series includes lectionary readings, art, music, a prayer, and a simple practice to help us notice God’s presence during these waiting days. This time around, the Daybook will feature excerpts from Claude Atcho’s new book Rhythms of Faith along with ideas from The Liturgical Home by Ashley Tumlin Wallace and some of my own formerly published art commentaries.
“The Daybook is a way to pay attention to Christ’s three arrivals—then, now, and still to come—and to walk through December with a quieter heart and a stronger hope,” Murphy writes.
Murphy is offering Art & Theology readers a 50% discount to Restful using this link, which brings the subscription cost down to $4/month (let it run for two months if you want to receive the full Christmastide Daybook) or $32/year, which will give you access to her year-round content. The offer expires January 5, 2026.
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BLOG POST: “The Sacred Journey of Advent” by Ashley Tumlin Wallace, The Liturgical Home: “Advent,” writes Wallace, “is a season of preparation, for the coming of Christ at Christmas, and also for His return in glory at the end of time.” This is a great introduction to the season that kicks off the new church year.
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SONGS:
One of the scripture texts of Advent is Isaiah 40:3–5:
A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”
The Gospel-writers Matthew (3:3), Mark (1:3), and Luke (3:4) all see this exclamatory figure as John the Baptist, who told people to prepare for God’s coming by repenting of sin, since holding on tightly to ways of unlove erects barriers to God’s entry into one’s life. Here are two songs based on this Advent passage.
>> “Prepare the Way” by Maverick City Music and Tribl, feat. Chandler Moore and Siri Worku, on Tribl I (2021): This song repeats, again and again, the Advent mantra “Prepare the way,” embedding John the Baptist’s invitation deeply into hearts and minds. Its tag beseeches Christ to come with the fire of purging, the rain of refreshment, and the oil of blessing. To welcome this coming, this transformation and growth, we need to decenter ourselves, ceding to God the place of primacy, from which he works our good and his glory.
>> “Prepare the Way” by Christopher Walker, on Rise Up and Sing, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (2009): This 1991 song is by Christopher Walker, a church music composer, lecturer, and choral conductor originally from the UK but now living in Santa Monica, California. Published by OCP (Oregon Catholic Press), it would make a great song for a children’s Advent choir.
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2018 SERIES: Advent Caravan: Walking with the Holy Family by Sarah Quezada: I learned about Sarah Quezada’s work at the intersection of faith, justice, and culture through Tamara Hill Murphy (see first roundup item) in 2018, when Quezada published a five-part series reflecting on the likelihood that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem for the census not alone but in a caravan. Interweaving personal story, biblical interpretation, and current events, Quezada considers how the holy couple’s experience in the final months of Mary’s pregnancy connects to the reality of people on the move seeking hope, peace, joy, and love today.
While the series is not hosted online, I received permission from Quezada to reproduce it here.
On Instagram, Quezada also shared a photo of her friend’s Advent mantel, where she combined figurines from her various nativity sets to form a “caravan” of travelers.
Photo via @sarahquezada
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YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: Jouluradion Hoosianna: Jouluradio is a Finnish radio station that broadcasts annually from November 1 to January 6, playing all Advent and Christmas music. Since 2012, every year they premiere a new arrangement and video performance of the popular Scandinavian Advent hymn “Hoosianna” (Hosanna, an Aramaic expression meaning “Save now!”), which Lutheran and Catholic churches in Finland sing on the first Sunday of the season. Based on Matthew 21:9, its lyrics greet the approaching Christ, affirming his identity and craving the deliverance only he can bring:
Hoosianna, Daavidin Poika, kiitetty olkoon hän! Kiitetty Daavidin Poika, joka tulee Herran nimeen. Hoosianna, hoosianna, hoosianna, hoosianna! Kiitetty Daavidin Poika, joka tulee Herran nimeen.
Hosanna, Son of David, Most blessed Holy One, Hosanna, Son of David, Who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna In the highest! Hosanna, Son of David, Who comes in the name of the Lord!
This hymn was written by the German composer, educator, and piano and organ virtuoso Georg Joseph Vogler in 1795 while working in Sweden as court conductor as well as tutor to the crown prince Gustav IV Adolf.
The Jouluradio commissions, which the station has compiled in a YouTube playlist, encompass a range of genres, including jazz, hip-hop, choral, pop, and electronic. Below is a list of previous years’, of which I’ve embedded the two asterisked ones on this page. Jouluradio typically releases their annual “Hoosianna” the day before Advent, so 2025’s will likely be posted this Saturday. [HT: Gracia Grindal]
*2015: Sointi Jazz Orchestra, arr. Jukka Perko (I don’t really understand the narrative in the video. I think the man is remembering a time in his childhood when he got lost in the woods, and then was found by his mother?)
BLOG SERIES: Three excellent, brief musings on the season of Advent by W. David O. Taylor, published last year on his blog:
“Advent is for singing not-Christmas songs”: “This is, of course, easier said than done. Hymnals fail to supply a decent list of options and congregants often clamor for the ‘traditional’ carols, the songs of triumphant appearance and glorious coming. Yet this insistence fights against the dominant concern of the Gospels. Luke especially spends the bulk of his story anticipating Christ’s birth rather than narrating his arrival. The dramatic tension lies in what’s to come—not in what’s happened already . . .”
“Advent is about the goodness of divine interruptions”: “The entire story of Advent is a story of interruptions. . . . May we, like the actors in God’s divine nativity drama, have eyes to see and hearts to welcome his interrupting work in our lives. May we trust that he wills our deepest good in these interruptions. May we be blessed in our trust in him.”
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ESSAY: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel: Dark Good News” by Linda Gregerson, Image: Poet Linda Gregerson reflects, in prose, on the quintessential Advent hymn, which dates back to the Middle Ages. She grew up singing it in her Methodist church every December. “It’s ironic, really—it quite betrays me—to realize that I must have loved this hymn for its whiff of the monastery: chalice and incense smuggled in by way of the minor chord. There’s a moment, a breathtaking moment, when the meter defies expectation. Everything has been steady-as-you-go, four-four time, all quarter notes and dotted halves. But during that remarkable refrain, just when you expect to dwell on the last syllable of the holy name for a count of three, as every verse before this has prepared you to do, the hymn leaps forward and anticipates itself by half a measure. No breath, no stately pause: Emmanuel / Shall come to thee, as though rushing to arrival. Those missed beats never fail to stop my heart.”
I didn’t know what Gregerson was talking about until I looked up the notation in TheUnited Methodist Hymnal no. 211, and sure enough, in measure 15 there are two extra beats. In all the other hymnals I have (and all the recordings of the song I’ve heard), that measure is divided into two and the regular meter sustained, with “el” held out for three beats. Interesting! It does feel unnatural to me to sing it the way she suggests, but she offers a compelling theological reason for why the arranger made that decision.
This is the standard way (as far as I’m concerned) of singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Sheet music excerpt from Majesty Hymns, the hymnal of my youth.Sheet music excerpt from The United Methodist Hymnal, showing the unusual (but significant, Gregerson claims) shift from 4/4 meter to 6/4 in one of the measures of the refrain
Here’s an example of a congregation (First United Methodist Houston) singing the refrain the way Gregerson so fondly remembers:
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NEW BOOKS:
>> The Art of Living in Advent: 28 Days of Joyful Waiting by Sylvie Vanhoozer: A retired French teacher and a botanical artist, Sylvie Vanhoozer was born and grew up in Provence and now lives in Illinois with her husband, the theologian Kevin Vanhoozer. In this little illustrated book, she introduces readers to the tradition of Provençal crèches, localized nativity scenes populated by santons (“little saints”). Made from the land’s clay, the santons resemble nineteenth-century villagers, who offer up gifts from their vocations—olives, bread, wine, wood, sheep, hurdy-gurdy music, herbal remedies. (Reminds me of the presepe from southern Italy that I encountered some years ago!) The crèches are also traditionally decorated with native vegetation, such as thyme, juniper, lavender, and rosemary, freshly harvested on the first weekend of Advent. This is one of the ways in which Provençals embrace Christ’s presence in their own time and place.
“I am not inviting readers to leave their place and go to some distant land in a distant past,” Vanhoozer writes. “The invitation is rather to transpose this Provençal scene into one’s own place, to live the same story in a different context. . . . The question is not ‘Did Jesus really come to Provence?’ but rather ‘Could Jesus really come here, to me?’ Could my home, my neighborhood, my church, become a crèche scene, with Christ right here beside me, in me?”
I think this book would have worked better as a literary essay, as it feels padded out to make its ninety-page count, with redundancies and somewhat arbitrary divisions. But I love how Vanhoozer draws us into this cherished and still-living tradition from her childhood and calls us to see and participate in the story of God’s coming where we live, in all its particularities.
>> Advent: 24 Kunstwerke zur Bibel aus aller Welt by Christian Weber: Rev. Dr. Christian Weber [previously] is the director of studies for Mission 21, an international mission agency of the Protestant Reformed Churches in Switzerland. His work brings him into contact with religious art from diverse parts of the globe. I’m delighted by this new (German-language) book of his, whose title translates to Advent: 24 Bible-Inspired Artworks from Around the World. Organized into four parts (“Words of Prophecy,” “Parables of Jesus,” “John the Baptist,” and “Mary”) and printed in full color, the book features twenty-four primary artworks (plus some supplementary) from twenty-two countries, providing background on and interpretations of each, as well as information about the artists and a bibliography.
Sample page spread from Advent: 24 Kunstwerke zur Bibel aus aller Welt, showing a woodcut by the Ghanaian artist Kwabena (Emmanuel) Addo-Osafo
A church mural from Zimbabwe, a kalamkari from South India, a gourd carving from Peru, a manuscript illumination from Armenia—these are among the artworks Weber highlights. Some of the works are of higher quality than others, but the emphasis is on how the scripture texts of the Advent season have prompted artistic responses in a variety of places outside Europe, which is the continent that has most shaped the popular imagination when it comes to the biblical story. Weber’s Advent encourages us to widen those imaginations. Despite my fifteen or so years spent researching global Christian art, Weber is always bringing new artists to my attention! You can view sample pages from the book on the publisher’s website.
The cover image is a detail of For Those in Darkness by the American artist Lauren Wright Pittman.
Weber is looking for a North American publisher to release an English-language edition of the book.
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ARTICLE/VIDEO: “Five Films to Help You Observe Advent” by Abby Olcese, Think Christian: Abby Olcese, author of Films for All Seasons: Experiencing the Church Year at the Movies, provides five movie suggestions for Advent, corresponding to the themes of Hope, Faith, Joy, Peace, and Christ. (Other churches and families, like mine, substitute “Faith” with “Love” on their Advent wreaths; Olcese’s fifth pick, for Christmas Eve, would fit the “Love” theme perfectly, but see also my suggestion below.) You can read the content as an article or watch it in video format, which includes a few film clips:
ALSO: Allow me to add one of my own suggestions: American Symphony, a 2023 documentary about musical artist Jon Batiste, whose meteoric rise to fame coincided with the return of his partner Suleika Jaouad’s leukemia. Directed by Matthew Heineman, the film follows a year in the life of the married couple, as Batiste prepared for the premiere of his boundary-breaking American Symphony composition at Carnegie Hall in September 2022 while Jaouad endured chemotherapy. It has a very Advent-y feel, by which I mean its calling on God in the darkness (Batiste is a devout Christian) and its orientation around faith, hope, and love. It’s a beautiful, intimate portrait of a marriage, of creativity, courage, and care.
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ART: Advent Wreath by Beach4Art: Beach4Art is a family of four who create beach art inspired by beautiful nature in Devon, UK. (Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, and see their Etsy shop.) Below are some photos of the Advent wreath they made out of twigs, stones, and shellson Sandymere beach for the first Sunday of Advent in 2023.
Standing at the threshold of another Advent, we hear the invitation of Christ: ‘Come away to a deserted place and rest a while.’ And so we begin our season of growth and expectation—a time to secret ourselves with Mary, to join our hearts with hers, and to grow pregnant with God together. God invites us to a quiet place of reflection and bounty. This Advent, choose some time for silence. Make space within yourself to grow large with the abundance of God’s favor. Make this a time to fill your lungs deeply with God so that you can breathe Christ into the world.
Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don’t see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy.
Want to receive a daily pairing of art and music in your inbox during this Advent and Christmas season? Sign up here. (If you already subscribe to the blog, you’re all set.) Posts will run from November 29, the day before the first Sunday of Advent, to Epiphany on January 6. I have also planned a few poems and roundups to go out during that time.
Advent is my favorite season of the church year because it taps into the deep yearning I feel for this world to be set right, for God’s beauty to burst into it with an irrefutable finality—no more sin, no more sorrow. The season is a chance to practice hope, something I sometimes struggle with, as I tend to lean more cynical.
The readings, art, and music of Advent sweep me up into the grand narrative of scripture, attuning me to the ways God has always been coming to us, but fixing me especially on how in Bethlehem of Judea, he came in a very special way—as a human being—and nurturing my excitement for his imminent return to earth to wed it to heaven.
Advent themes include:
Lament and longing
Hope, peace, joy, love
Promise
John the Baptist, especially his call to repentance in preparation for the coming kingdom
The second coming of Christ (individual judgment, cosmic renewal)
The parable of the ten bridesmaids
The new heavens and the new earth
Isaiah’s messianic prophecies: a virgin conceiving, swords into plowshares, a peaceable kingdom, a great light shining on a people in darkness, a flowering branch from the root of Jesse, etc.
Pregnancy
Mary’s song
God with us
Based on these, I’ve curated dozens of visual and musical selections that I hope will make God’s story come alive to you in fresh ways. A thread installation, a soil-based performance, quilted detritus, a photograph from a war zone, confetti skies, stained glass oracles, a sixth-century apsidal mosaic from a Roman basilica, a medieval German New Year’s greeting by and for nuns, a Jemez Pueblo nativity in clay, a site-specific dance before a mural in Atlanta . . . these are some of the artworks that will be featured.
As for music, you’ll hear a classical setting of an Emily Dickinson poem, an adaptation of Psalm 27 by a Ugandan worship collective, a contemporary “Mass for Peace,” a Latin American song of the Annunciation, a dialogue between Mary and the infant Christ from Renaissance England, a responsory by the medieval polymath Hildegard of Bingen, offerings from many different singer-songwriters, and more.
Many of the songs will be drawn from my Advent playlist on Spotify, which I first published in 2020 but have been adding to each year:
If you know of anyone else who might be interested in an arts-based approach to Advent and Christmas devotions, please share with them the link to this post. You can peruse previous years’ entries to get a flavor:
I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve curated for the start of this new liturgical year, as time unfolds across four hallowed weeks of expectant waiting and then Twelve Days of festivity and wonder.
. . . each day a misery and a marvel, each person also.
—Rachel E. Hicks, from “Accumulated Lessons in Displacement”
A white American born in the foothills of the Himalayas to international school educators, Rachel E. Hicks is a second-generation third-culture kid (TCK) whose writing reflects decades of living as a global nomad, exploring themes of memory, connection, suffering, exile (both physical and spiritual), hospitality, and hope. She grew up in six countries—India, Pakistan, the United States, Jordan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Hong Kong—and spent seven years as an adult in Chengdu, China, where she worked for the relief and development organization Food for the Hungry.
In 2013, she, her husband, and their two kids repatriated to the US, settling in Baltimore, where they live today. Hicks has lived in Baltimore longer than in any other city. But even with this rootedness, “the soil of each place in which I’ve lived still clings,” she says.
In her debut poetry collection, Accumulated Lessons in Displacement (Wipf & Stock / Resource Publications, 2025), Hicks grapples with the experience of being a “perpetual pilgrim”—on her way to a particular place but also attuned to the significance of each moment along the way. “Pilgrims learn to walk a life of paradox: even though their hearts are set on their final destination, they walk through each day alive to its possibilities, people and lessons,” she wrote in a 2014 blog post.
What is “home”? How can we bear to leave home, whether forced to do so by war, famine, or natural disaster, or we choose to for opportunity or ministry? What do we do with feelings of alienation when we find ourselves in a culture not our own or in which we don’t fit well? How do we live cross-culturally? How do we make a home where we’re at? What are our responsibilities to place? Who is our neighbor?
“I believe that many—all?—of us live our lives with some sense of exile,” Hicks writes on her blog. “We experience it and are aware of it to varying degrees, but it’s there. So many of our quests, our longings, our purpose-seeking, and the stories we create and tell are about trying to find our way home. Home being that place—literal or figurative—in which we feel wholeness and true belonging.”
Accumulated Lessons is divided into two parts: “Bright Sadness, Bitter Joy” and “A Deeper Knowing.” The term “bright sadness”—a translation of the Greek word charmolypê—comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, and it describes the paradoxical state of mourning over sin while rejoicing in God’s grace. It can also describe the paradox of living a life of joy amid suffering.
I was trying to learn the word for joy
that settles awkwardly in grief’s nest, an oversized bird. I didn’t want to scare it away.
So says the speaker in the book’s title poem, “Accumulated Lessons in Displacement.” Unfolding over eight sections, this persona poem draws on Hicks’s own experience of abrupt displacement from Kinshasa as a teenager, as well as the experiences of Bosnian refugee friends, and Syrian refugees she had only read about in the news.
It opens with a reflection on “home” in all its ordinariness—the yellow coffee cup, the dusty houseplant, the sunlit window seat—and laments that “no footpath exists leading back to these things,” which, the reader is led to presume, have been destroyed by armed conflict, or its residents blocked from returning by threat of death.
The poem contains several arresting images, like the green threads of a sweater on barbed wire tracing a path across miles. A boy who collects bullet casings to make a necklace for his sister. Charred diary pages dancing around a blown-out living room, “ma[king] a strange poem in my heart.”
Hicks wrestles with the savage violence humans are capable of:
It makes no sense that a soldier can press a button
and somewhere a baby ignites into flame. And he goes home and brushes his teeth.
What we do to each other, to other created souls. Always I carry this burden like a child on my hip.
Another powerful poem in the collection is “Visit to Sarajevo,” where Hicks describes visiting the Bosnian-Herzegovinan capital with her friend Dragan, who was forced to flee it as a young married adult with a child in the 1990s after the city was besieged by Serbian forces. Hicks had met Dragan and his family in 2000 through her husband, Jim, who worked alongside him at a refugee resettlement agency in Phoenix, Arizona, and the families became close. Meeting up years later in Dragan’s hometown, Dragan leads Hicks through the once-familiar streets “in a haze of pride, nostalgia, nightmare,” giving her a tour of sites both historically significant and deeply personal.
Hicks’s passport country too has its national traumas, one of which was precipitated by 9/11, when in 2001, terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing almost three thousand people. In “Disaster Chaplaincy Training,” she describes a course she took, taught by a Ground Zero worker, to become further equipped for her work in China, which was focused on disaster preparedness and response. In the course, she learned how to “loiter with intent” in zones of disaster, “acclimat[ing] to [suffering’s] pungency.” Make sure, said the instructor, to “let them see you cupping a small ball / of hope—toss it up, catch it.”
Nationwide crisis struck the US again when on April 12, 2015, a young Black man from Baltimore, Freddie Gray, died of a spinal cord injury while in police custody, allegedly due to police brutality—though none of the six involved officers was ultimately held responsible. Gray’s death led to civil unrest in Baltimore (which Hicks had recently made her home) and throughout the country, as citizens demanded recognition, in word and practice, that “Black lives matter.”
Hicks wrote “The Morning After Freddie Gray’s Funeral” while Baltimore was on lockdown. Fumbling for words, she tries to explain to her children what’s going on as she, too, tries to educate herself more deeply about the history of racism in America and the longstanding grievances of the Black community she lives in. In the poem, she harvests mint from her garden to brew a gallon of black mint tea to share with her neighbor—
as what? An offering, apology?
A way to say I’m trying—learning about all that fuels these fires still smoldering this hushed morning?
The staining of the clear water as the tea steeps becomes a metaphor.
Accumulated Lessons in Displacement addresses global suffering, more localized suffering, as well as personal and family suffering.
One example of the latter has to do with Hicks’s daughter’s diagnosis, following an ankle sprain, with complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), chronic conditions that cause extreme nerve pain. “Bright Sadness” describes a return car ride from a fruitless medical visit, her daughter crying and gasping in agony in the back seat, when offhandedly, Hicks insists, “Turn your cries into opera!” This unexpected and ridiculous suggestion defuses, if for just a moment, the intense situation, resulting in “joy-laughing” amid plaintive contralto tones all the way home.
“Post-Miracle (I)” celebrates her daughter’s miraculous healing, holds the strange, tentative, empty-handed feeling of a fervent prayer request graciously granted. But then comes “Post-Miracle (II),” written when, after two months of her daughter being pain-free, the CRPS returned. Hicks wrestles with gratitude for the brief reprieve and anger at God’s “undoing” the miracle. She wonders about some of the healings Jesus performed in the Gospels, and whether they stuck.
“Post-Miracle (II)” is one of the few poems in the collection with end rhyme, each quatrain following an abba pattern. Perhaps the choice to work with a rhyme scheme for this particular subject represents, consciously or subconsciously, her attempt to make things rhyme again, to harmonize the reality of chronic pain with a good and loving God, to impose structure on the chaos.
Several of Hicks’s poems engage with biblical stories: the Suffering of Job, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the Massacre of the Innocents, Zacchaeus encountering Jesus, the Walk to Emmaus. She performs poetic midrash, imaginatively interpreting and expanding the texts to connect with them on a deeper level.
Besides the biblical authors, some of her literary conversation partners in this collection are Frederick Buechner, Henri Nouwen, Simone Weil, Czesław Miłosz, Dostoevsky, G. K. Chesterton, Gregory of Nyssa, Paul Kingsnorth, and Karen Blixen.
Although there’s a heaviness to much of the material, it’s not overwhelming, as small graces are woven throughout: complimentary walnuts from a fruit shop owner on a winter Sunday; laughter over language barriers; refreshment from a water hose; the scent of turmeric and cardamom at a Punjab store in Baltimore, reminders of the poet’s birthplace; “the comfort of the priest’s thick thumb / upon my forehead, the signature of / Jesus,” on Ash Wednesday; dandelions and buttercups brushing ankles; a cairn at West Clear Creek; the monks at Great Lavra, Greece, making room for the dispossessed; bundles of sheep ascending limestone slopes at dawn in the Cotswolds; the delightful word cusp; her son’s euphoria upon gliding down a mountain on skis; the slow labor of opening a pomegranate and obtaining its ruby-red seeds for her daughter to eat.
The book is shot through with joy—a joy that coexists with suffering and that is sustained through faith.
“These are poems to live by—to help you stay human, love people, find joy in sorrow, pay attention to the world around you, open yourself to God, welcome mystery, and understand our times at a deeper level,” Hicks wrote in an email announcing the launch of the book. “You’ll journey all around the world and find it—in spite of its sorrow—full of beauty and worth loving.”
One of my favorite poems is “Just Before,” a perfect reading for the upcoming Advent season. It spans four cities of the world—places where people work, play, pray, and rest; places of economic disparity, of spiritual longing as well as mundane concerns—in each imagining the moment just before Jesus returns. In the midst of our threshing corn or lighting a lamp or settling a legal dispute or herding sheep, Jesus will come with a beauty that blossoms all the way out to the horizon, calling all nomads home.
“Just Before” by Rachel E. Hicks
When Jesus comes again in all his glory, somewhere in the Sichuan mountains tires will crackle over corn spread out on the road— easy threshing—while a small child urinates in the gutter, absorbed in watching the car shoot by.
As the first rent opens a fingernail tear in the hazy sky, a woman in the foothills above Rishikesh will lay down her firewood burden and light the clay Diwali lamp in the chilling dusk, circling her cupped hands in blessing.
In the pause before the clamor of heaven’s trumpets, the jurors’ waiting room in Baltimore’s civic court will throb with the quiet turning of pages, a buzzing phone in the hand of a tired man, berating himself for forgetting to bring coffee.
Just before we are aware of him, Jesus will pause to survey the view; two shepherd boys amidst boulders in the Wadi Rum hills south of Amman wipe sleep from their eyes and stand amazed at the blood-red poppies at their feet stretching to the eastern horizon.
Purchase Accumulated Lessons in Displacement here. (Update, 11/14/25: Wipf & Stock is offering a 50% discount through November 30, 2025; use code CONFSHIP at checkout. Media mail shipping is free.)
“Just Before” is reproduced with permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers, www.wipfandstock.com.
LOOK: Genealogy of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi, from a Beatus manuscript
Bifolium with part of the Genealogy of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi, from a Beatus manuscript, Spain, ca. 1180. Tempera, gold, and ink on parchment, each folio 17 1/2 × 11 13/16 in. (44.4 × 30 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
LISTEN: “Christ” by Poor Bishop Hooper, on Firstborn (2018)
Abraham fathered Isaac Isaac fathered Jacob Then Jacob fathered Judah and his brothers Judah, he fathered Perez Who fathered Hezron, who fathered Aram Aram fathered Amminadab Who fathered Nahshon, who fathered Salmon
Salmon fathered Boaz by Rahab Boaz fathered Obed by Ruth And Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse was the father of King David Then David fathered Solomon by Uriah’s own wife
Solomon, he was the father of Rehoboam, who fathered Abijah Who fathered Asa and then Jehoshaphat Jehoram fathered Uzziah Who fathered Jotham Jotham, he fathered Ahaz, who was the father of Hezekiah
Manasseh, he fathered Amon (who fathered Josiah) And Jeconiah (and his brothers) amidst the exile Shealtiel fathered Zerubbabel (who fathered Abihud) Who fathered Eliakim (who fathered Azor), who fathered Zadok Zadok fathered Achim (who fathered Eliud), who fathered Eleazar (Who fathered Matthan) Who fathered Jacob
And Jacob was the father of Joseph And Joseph took a virgin for his wife And Mary was the one who gave birth to the Son of God (Mary was the one who gave birth to the Son of God) Mary was the one who gave birth to the Son of God (Mary was the one who gave birth)
And his name is Jesus And his name is Jesus And his name is Jesus And his name is Jesus Who is called the Christ (Jesus) Wonderful Counselor (And his name is Jesus) Almighty God, the everlasting Father (And his name is Jesus) Prince of Peace, Almighty God (And his name is Jesus) Who is called the Christ
Who knew a sung genealogy could be so captivating? Jesse and Leah Roberts are a married couple from Missouri who write, sing, and record songs together as Poor Bishop Hooper. The lyrics of “Christ”—a list of Jesus’s ancestors—come straight from Matthew 1. This recording from their home studio premiered at the virtual Songs for Hope: A TGC Advent Concert on December 6, 2020.
ART SERIES: Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design by Daniela Améstegui: Daniela Améstegui is a graphic designer from Cochabamba, Bolivia, who holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Regent College in Vancouver, with a specialization in Christianity and the arts. Her work “revolves around exploring faith, social justice, and Christian contextualization through design” and “reflects her commitment to using design as a tool for expressing and exploring theological concepts,” she says. She currently lives in Langley, British Columbia, with her husband and two young children, working as a freelancer.
Améstegui’s final Integrative Project in the Arts and Theology for her master’s program was Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design, a series of seven digital illustrations, one for each of the major seasons/feasts of the liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and Ordinary Time. The designs are inspired by Andean textile art and culture. You can view the full series at the link above from Regent College’s Dal Schindell Gallery, where the works were first exhibited in early 2022, but also listen to this wonderful online talk Améstegui gave about Pallay in 2020 for INFEMIT’s Stott-Bediako Forum, where she discusses not only her motivation and influences but also the content of each specific piece:
Whereas those of us in the northern hemisphere associate Advent with cold, darkness, and the onset of winter, in the southern hemisphere Advent falls in early summer, a time when the earth is most fertile and farmers plant their seeds. In her Advent design, Améstegui connects Mary carrying the seed of new life within her with Pachamama (Mother Earth).
Daniela Améstegui (Bolivian, 1990–), Adviento (Advent), 2019–20, from the digital illustration series Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design. Used with permission.
In Bolivia, Christmas takes place during a season of harvest, so in her Christmas design, Améstegui places Jesus in the center between crops of corn and quinoa, the two main agricultural foods cultivated in the country. Mary wears braids and a bowler hat and Joseph plays the zampoña (Andean panflute), and at the bottom three cholitas, Indigenous women from the Bolivian countryside, gather reverently to greet the Christ child.
Daniela Améstegui (Bolivian, 1990–), Navidad (Christmas), 2019–20, from the digital illustration series Pallay: Andean Weaving of Liturgy and Design. Used with permission.
Améstegui does not have a website just yet but tells me she plans to launch one in 2025. If you would like to purchase one or more of her Pallay pieces, you can contact her at daniela@amestegui.com.
Thank you to blog reader Nicole J. for alerting me to this striking series!
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VIDEO COLLECTION: Casa del Catequista (CADECA) chapel paintings: As chance would have it, the same week I learned about Daniela Améstegui’s work, a different blog reader, Mark M., emailed me a link to some videos his Langham Partnership colleague Paul Windsor took during a recent trip to Bolivia. They record the many paintings, most by the late Quechua artist Severino Blanco [previously], inside the chapel of CADECA in Cochabamba, a place where men and women are trained as Christian leaders who then go out to serve their rural communities. They portray scenes from the Old and New Testaments, the parables of Jesus, and Latin American church history, including a remarkable liberation theology–inspired Resurrection, in which Jesus breaks down the doors of death and hell, holding high a cacique’s staff and leading the people of Bolivia into their future. Here’s a 360-degree view captured by Windsor, but visit the boldface link to see additional videos that narrow in on particular portions.
Severino Blanco (Quechua [Bolivian], 1951–2020), Infancy of Christ painting cycle, 1985. Chapel of the Casa del Catequista (CADECA), Cochabamba, Bolivia.
On the west end of the chapel (where people enter the space) is an Infancy of Christ cycle—reproduced here from a scan of a pamphlet, it appears. In the center is a Nativity, the Christ child painted over a pane of glass through which natural light comes gleaming in (see a closer view). The oblong shapes radiating out from the center are also glass, onto which the artist has (I think) etched lambs in various stages of prostration. On the sides, two villagers come with hot water and towels, and at the bottom two shepherds kneel before the Savior, removing their hats as a sign of respect. At the top, a host of angels with rainbow-colored wings and indigenous instruments sing Christ’s praises.
To the left of the Nativity are six scenes: (1) The Annunciation to Mary, (2) The Visitation, (3) The Annunciation to Zechariah, (4) The Journey to Bethlehem, (5) No Room at the Inn, and (6) The Flight to Egypt. To the right are (7) The Annunciation to the Shepherds, (8) The Annunciation to Joseph, (9) The Presentation in the Temple, (10) The Adoration of the Magi, (11) Jesus with the Scholars in the Temple, and (12) The Massacre of the Innocents.
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SONGS:
>> “Admirable Consejero” (Wonderful Counselor) by Santiago Benavides:Santiago Benavides is a Colombian singer-songwriter living in Toronto. On his Facebook page he describes his musical style as “trova-pop-bossa-carranga worship.” This song he wrote is a setting of Isaiah 9:2, 6–7 in Spanish. In the video, he’s the guitarist with the red-tinted glasses.
>> “The Word Became Flesh” by John Millea: John Millea is “a storyteller with a guitar,” singing in the tradition of Americana, folk, and gospel “about life and all of its joys, sorrows, and struggles.” He’s one of the artists I support through Patreon. This was the first song of his I encountered, and it’s one of my favorites, engaging with John 1:1–3, 14 in a wholly unique way!
In contrast to everyone and everything else in the universe, Millea explains, God had no beginning point, and all that is can in some way be traced back to him, the first link in a massive chain of cause and effect. So here Millea playfully traces his guitar all the way back to God—from the store he bought it at in Illinois, to the factory in Pennsylvania they ordered it from, to the mill in Washington that supplied the wood, to the Alaskan forests whence the tree was logged, and so on and so forth, imagining many thousands of years of fallen and dispersed tree seeds that traversed seas and continents, with an ultimate source in a tree planted in Eden by the Word of God.
When he hits on Eden, he starts moving forward again, through the story of creation, fall, and redemption in Christ, the divine beginningless One who graciously and mysteriously entered human history, born of a woman named Mary.
>> “Mary Had a Baby”: Arranged by Roland Carter, this African American spiritual is performed by the Nathaniel Dett Chorale, featuring the amazing mezzo-soprano Melissa Davis. It’s from their 2003 album An Indigo Christmas, the tracks taken from two live concerts given at the Church of St. George the Martyr in Toronto.
>> “Що то за предиво” (Shcho to za predyvo) (Behold a Miracle): This Ukrainian folk carol is performed by Trioda (Тріода), a musical group consisting of Andrii Gambal, Volodymyr Rybak, and Pavel Chervinskyi.
What is this awe-inspiring miracle? There is great news on earth! That the Virgin Mary gave birth to a son. And upon birthing him, she declared, “Jesus—my son!”
And the aging Joseph stands nearby in awe Of Mary having given birth to a son. And he prepares the swaddling for Jesus Christ. And Mary swaddles him, and scoops him to her heart— The pure Virgin Mary!
Art & Theology 