This Mortal Life

When near the end of day, life has drained

Out of light, and it is too soon

For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline

Makes everything look strangely in-between,

Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.

In a while it will be night, but nothing

Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.

You are in this time of the interim

Where everything seems withheld. . . .

This passage from the late Irish poet John O'Donohue’s For the Interim Time has been much on my mind these last few weeks. It’s been adopted as an Advent poem, though it’s not clear that O’Donohue wrote it for that particular purpose. I encountered it again -I read it years ago but had forgotten about it – at the beginning of this liturgical season, but I will admit that it wasn’t Advent with which I immediately associated it. It was, though, St. Paul’s that sprang up to me from O’Donohue’s words. 

We have lost so many outlines this year – the outlines of people who have shaped this community. Stan, Joan, Debbie, Alice, Barbara – they’ve left this earthly habitation. Others have left this Vermont habitation. Other very dear ones – Bobby, Lisa, Woody and Denver – have left this St. Paul’s habitation. Every one of these losses has brought with it a feeling of “strange in-betweenness” that makes us ponder what we have been, and what we will become.

Which is, of course, what Advent is. And it is just what we need because it carries with it whisper of the relief that lies on the other side of the strangeness, a reminder that “this mortal life” – a phrase from the Collect from the First Sunday of Advent – which is so full of loss and in-betweenness, so full of uncertainty, is always also the place that – again from the Collect – “Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.” Talk about nothing being withheld.

Lisa Schnell

Lisa.Schnell@uvm.edu