For the Fourth Sunday conclusion of this year’s Adult Christian Education reading program, “Waiting for the Prince of Peace: An Advent Poetry Experience,” some brave readers agreed to become writers and share poems with us as a Christmas gift. Thanks to ACE Committee member Sarah Trites for proposing this gift of poetry and making it happen.

Glimpsing Hope

Ahh, sweet mystery of Christmas

Slow to unfold, always surprising.

How can it be a pregnant peasant virgin

Could give birth to one who would redeem us all?

How can it be in a scratchy straw bed

smelly shepherds and wise magi would

show up to acclaim his lordship?

Am I the first to think this is a joke?

I ponder with Mary these strange things.

This is not rational, not reasonable.

But here he is.

His name is Jesus.

A great mystery to behold.

Then, I find myself humming

“Fall on your knees and hear the angel voices.”

A lump so large occurs I am unable to swallow;

A mantle of peace shudders through my soul.

Yes,

just say Yes,

and let it be.

By Robert Beaumont

And Here Am I

The warm aroma of chestnuts roasting,

Christmas songs sung around a fire’s glow.

A family makes a toast to its good fortune.

Outside it begins to snow.

A chilling wind blows outside this night,

A family huddles around another fire’s glow.

A loaf of bread is gladly shared.

Someone raises a shaky hand,

A toast is made to being together.

Grateful songs are sung.

Through a window a child sees them,

And she begins to cry.

“Those people seem so cold and hungry!

And here am I!”

Her door is hurriedly opened.

Two families now are one.

There is the warm aroma of chestnuts roasting,

And joyful songs are sung.

A toast is made to these new friends,

New hope and kindness, too.

Inside they’re safe this Christmas Night,

White snow continues to blow.

By Sarah Trites

Hello Moon

Hello moon.

I’ve been wondering.

Did your light shine in that stable?

Through a crack in the door.

Through the small window.

Did your light fall on Joseph’s face?

Did your light soften Mary’s face?

Did your light welcome newborn Jesus’ face?

How about those shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night?

I know about the angels and the singing.

Were you there in the sky,

Shining too?

On the shepherd’s faces?

On their sheep and their lambs?

And then there are the wise men.

Traveling from afar.

Were you high in the sky as they traveled by night?

And did your light create a moonshadow of the men on their camels,

Casting it upon the path as they journeyed to the manger?

So, if the answer is yes, then that means that the same light from the same moon

That has cast its light on my face

Connects me to Bethlehem.

To the shepherds.

To the wisemen.

To Christ.

No words to explain the wonder of that.

By Marty Dome

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This day is born in Bethlehem a tiny infant one.

The Lord of all creation, of all mankind, the son.

So we should thank the Lord, our God,

And we do praise God’s name.

For God did give God’s only son

To show us how to love, to love,

To show us how to love.

We glimpse the wonder of Christ’s birth within a tiny stall,

Yet blinded still, we scarcely see the Ruler over all.

But still we thank the Lord our God,

And still we praise God’s name.

For God did give God’s only son

To show us how to love, to love,

To show us how to love.

By Elizabeth Harmon

An Old Woman’s Christmas Tree

Each year the tree and I

Grow a little shorter and more bent.

These days I have to ask the man at the garden center

To lift it into the stand for me.

No more glamorous big trees that sweep the ceiling.

But the scent of balsam is ever green.

An old woman’s tree is a communion of saints.

There’s no room for fancy ornaments.

Only the dearest come out.

A discolored stuffed duck with glued-on hearts,

That decorated a gift at my bridal shower.

My husband called it The Love Duck.

My father is a silver stag with one leg missing.

My mother is a dancing sequined panda.

My grandmother is a huge plastic snowflake

With spears for spice drops.

Daughters of the heart, grown and moved away,

Two spun-glass angels from the mall,

All they could afford then and precious still.

Cats, dogs, a horse. So many animals.

Lady Bug is now a papier mâché Dalmatian

With a red scarf.

Duke a cookie-dough border collie

Nibbled by attic mice.

But beneath the boughs, there is the current cat,

Sound asleep and dreaming of the day

When he climbed the tree

And touched the Star of Bethlehem.

So untangle the wires once more

And festoon the darkness

With tiny lights and tattered memories of love.

And when Christmas is over and

Fallen needles carpet the rug,

Drag the tree into the forest

To rest among its ancestors,

Bare-branched skeletons of Christmas past,

Now sanctuaries for birds and small creatures

Against the drifting snow.

By Anonymous