By Kay Augustine
Connections with friends, more than anything else, are shedding light and spreading love for me during this particular 2024 dark time. One Sunday in November, after I’d sung a parody I’d written for the Raging Grannies of the Civil War Song “Aura Lea” during Worship, Peg Remsen encouraged me to share the lyrics with Shareletter, so here it is, and my thanks to Peg!
The MAKA Song
Make America Kind Again, save democracy!
Teach our children truthfully, the truth will set us free!
Let us be more welcoming, let us be more kind,
For out of many we are one, with loving ties that bind!
We can save our wondrous world from ignorance and greed
If all our hearts and hands unite to serve each other’s need.
Let us be more welcoming, let us be more kind,
For out of many we are one, with loving ties that bind!
After another Worship morning a few weeks ago, Jane Nickodem and I were discussing the communal “I” in worship, and I mentioned that Sister Thea Bowman had written about how, in the Black church, “Sometimes I feel…” was understood to mean “Sometimes we feel…,” and that “We Shall Overcome” had begun as the gospel song “I Shall Overcome.” Then I brought up an Advent poem I’d written in 1981 which identifies the letter “i” with the “I am” as a name for God. Jane encouraged me to send the poem to Shareletter, so, with thanks to Jane, here it is. The story of the Mithra ritual mentioned is from a book, now out of print, by Betty Nickerson called Celebrate the Sun. It is illustrated by children’s art from around the world and describes how we celebrate light in a time of darkness.
Sun Roots
Early
in the time-hung space before the dawn
I wait your rising.
Silently
the horizontal clouds reflect your warming light
setting all the lake ablaze
and as you rise
a column forms the letter “i” between us.
You it was my forbears worshiped: Mithra
Infant Sun God born of the Virgin Queen
the Mother God. At midnight on the solstice eve
her priests emerged with torches from the Inner Sanctum
heralding the waxing sun: Behold! The Virgin
has brought forth! The Light returns!
Augustin
feeding lambs at Hippo
weaned his flock by naming their feast Christmas
for the birth of him whose inner light
has brought me to this place
back toward your shining.
A Book Review: All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings
And finally, a book review, prompted by the kindness of an old friend, Jerry Burns, who played guitar and sang with me at St. Ben’s for many years, and with whom I clashed when he was president of the Parish Council shortly before I came to the Friends. But Jerry clearly doesn’t hold a grudge. I’ve enjoyed seeing his posts on Facebook for some time, and after he saw my post about suspecting I was sad because of SAD, he–wonderfully kind man that he is–turned up on my doorstep (calling first of course) with a marvelous book of Advent meditations which I highly recommend. (There’s both an adult and a children’s version.) All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings is an amazing little book by Gayle Boss, with illustrations by David G. Klein. She has written meditations for the 24 days of Advent, each a beautifully written description of how a particular wild creature protects itself from the dark and cold of winter in order to emerge, come spring, into new life. Did you know, for example, that black bear cubs are born and begin to feed while their mother is still hibernating? I didn’t!
Boss uses no religious language in these stories until the title of the final meditation, for Christmas Day: “Jesus, the Christ.” But even that story is not about the baby in a manger, but about children in her western Michigan neighborhood who put a manger out in their yard in order to watch creatures from the nearby woods feeding on corn and hay. She concludes by asking whether, as they grow, they will “lose the sight that sees light and spirit in other creatures? Or will they, despite the rush and clamor, find irresistible the beauty quietly radiating from everything that is? To the animals it makes all the difference. Their hope, and the hope of all that breathes, is that human ones abandon themselves to the One Great Love. For that, all creation waits.”