SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

We went back to the play. As my son was singing “Bring him home” for a moment, in his look or in his voice or a transitory note, I saw and heard my dead brother. What an extraordinary sensation. Of course it is not unlikely. The genes after all are the same but I had never noticed it before. It was only the emotions of the song that caused the recognition. The song is a prayer for protection of a living person. My fleeting recognition was of a dead person, once so familiar now gone. Who are we? Are we a single entity or part of the part of something else?

MONDAY

I went to the House for tributes to Nelson Mandela. The point is obvious. Like many great men he will be judged by magnanimity in victory, or rather he is one of the few people who fulfilled it.

TUESDAY

Although the poetry comes round every year, it never ceases to astound. Has anyone ever written anything finer than Isaiah?

“Let every valley be filled in, every mountain and hill laid low… then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”

WEDNESDAY

I did a reading in the Order of Malta carol service. Some years I have done, attended five of these. They can be a bit formulaic. This one is made not so much by the beauty of the church or the candlelight but by the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the power of John’s verse, healthily spoken out. For a moment, its power overwhelmed me.

THURSDAY

To another carol service, at Downside Abbey. The king of all carol services. It is the power of the Schola of course but also the fact that it is bookended by plainchant and focused at its centre on the Benediction. Too many carol services are just jaunty tunes interspersed by fairy tales… in the view of many who go to them. How sad.

FRIDAY

Advent to me is about a light. It flickers at first, then grows as the candles do. The response to the psalm then has particular power:

“Anyone who follows you, Lord, will have the light of life.” (Psalm 1:1-4)

These words kept rolling over in my mind. What light, what life, whose, where, how? Is this a general statement or addressed to me? Do I believe it? Yes, listening to it during the Mass I did, then forgot it for the rest of the day.

SATURDAY

As I was walking down off the Wolds at around four o’clock, it was nearly dark. The features of the landscape were fading into each other – trees, bushes, grass were all fading into each other. Each shape was inchoate. There were no longer bright greens, blues, yellows; the last colour of late autumn, only a delightful greyness, some dark some lighter, fading into each other.