Lighting The Dark

an Advent calendar for tender times

✨ Welcome and thank you for joining me on this journey to find glimpses of light in dark times. If this is your first email, you can read an introduction to the project here and find links to catch up with the earlier days of Advent at the end of this email. ✨

It is traditional to light four candles on the four Sundays of Advent: the first for hope, the second for peace, the third for joy and the fourth for love.

Today we light the candle for peace while the candle for hope continues to burn. And my offering to you is a poem called Making Peace by Denise Levertov.

In this poem, Levertov says it is not enough just to want an end to war; peace needs its own visioning and crafting. It is made of the grammar of justice and the syntax of mutual aid. And poets, with their capacity for imagining new worlds with language, can help us to forge it.

Levertov was a passionate pacifist. Many of her poems were written in response to the Vietnam War, but she also spoke out against nuclear weaponry, American aid to El Salvador, and the Persian Gulf War. She had a ferocious poetic and political mind wrapped in a persona of gentleness and grace. I hope her poem speaks to you.

MAKING PEACE

A voice from the dark called out,
             ‘The poets must give us
imagination of peace, to oust the intense, familiar
imagination of disaster. Peace, not only
the absence of war.’
                               But peace, like a poem,
is not there ahead of itself,
can’t be imagined before it is made,
can’t be known except
in the words of its making,
grammar of justice,
syntax of mutual aid.
                                  A feeling towards it,
dimly sensing a rhythm, is all we have
until we begin to utter its metaphors,
learning them as we speak.
                                         A line of peace might appear
if we restructured the sentence our lives are making,
revoked its reaffirmation of profit and power,
questioned our needs, allowed
long pauses…
           A cadence of peace might balance its weight
on that different fulcrum; peace, a presence,
an energy field more intense than war,
might pulse then,
stanza by stanza into the world,
each act of living
one of its words, each word
a vibration of light—facets
of the forming crystal.

Denise Levertov

I was introduced to this poem by my dear friend Liz Slade, Chief Officer of the UK Unitarians, who shared it on Remembrance Day. What she wrote really resonated for me, and she has generously given me permission to share it with you here.

In witnessing - from this safe distance, through screens - what’s going on in Israel and Palestine, it’s hard to know what to do… I do not have expertise in politics, terrorism, war, peace negotiations, trauma medicine, international aid. My voice is not one that can influence those who hold responsibility for what plays out. I have had a sense that I should stay silent rather than add ill-informed noise to the arena.

… What I can speak out on is what I do know - that the practice of peace in our own lives matters. If we cause harm to our neighbours or loved ones even as we are calling for peace far away, we are not helping.

… In feeling helpless in the face of unimaginable horror, it helps me to remember that I do have control over the choices I make in my own life. In how I show up, in how I speak to those around me, in how I write the email, in where I spend my energy and share my power; in how I make the small peace of my daily life.

In the absence of insight or influence that can ease the horrors that so many find themselves in, I can remember to practice peace here and now.

Peacemaking is not biting my tongue or gritting my teeth, passively accepting the unacceptable for the sake of avoiding conflict. It is a creative act - to listen for the loving course of action and be bold enough to follow it to the peace that lies on the far side of discomfort.

However we feel called to address injustices in the wider world, we can each create tiny specks of peace in our own homes, communities, workplaces, and know that these will ripple out; each word of peace creating the possibility of the next.

If you’re curious to read more of Denise Levertov’s work, can I recommend two short poems I particularly love - A Gift and Witness - both of which offer wisdom for tender times.

Thank you for being here, making peace by candlelight with me.

Sophie ✨

If you would like to invite family and friends to join you in receiving this daily Advent calendar, the sign-up link is here.

If you have just arrived, welcome and thank you for sharing in the mystery and possibility of Advent with me. You can find an introduction to the project on December 1 and catch up with posts sent on December 2, December 3, December 4, December 5th, December 6th, December 7th, December 8th and December 9th.