Tag Archives: advent

The Stars Singing: An Advent Meditation

This reflection was written for the 2018 half-day retreat at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Christiansburg, Va. The Ann-Frances Chapter of the Daughters of the King holds this quiet day every Advent and Lent. The first meditation for the retreat, “Voice, Music, Prayer,” can be found here.

Creator of the stars of night,
your people’s everlasting light
O Christ, Redeemer of us all,
we pray you hear us when we call. 

When this old world drew on toward night,
you came, but not in splendor bright,
not as a monarch, but the child
of Mary, blameless mother mild. continue reading.

Voice, Music, Prayer: An Advent Meditation

This reflection was written for the 2018 half-day retreat at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church in Christiansburg, Va. The Ann-Frances Chapter of the Daughters of the King holds this quiet day every Advent and Lent. The second meditation for the retreat, “The Stars Singing,” can be read here.

I have a friend who is an operatic soprano. A few years ago, one Christmas Eve in Memphis, Tennessee, 12 hours’ drive from where I was born and from where my parents and sister and niece and nephew gathered to celebrate Christmas without me, I stood in the side chapel of a darkened, candlelit church, listening to her sing “O Holy Night,” and I wept. That’s what her voice can do.

continue reading.