'The cuntre of schadewe of deth': the dark days before Advent

We are in the dark days before Advent. The darkness, the cold, the quiet landscape on the cusp of Winter, with the only liturgical marker being the Stir-up collect: this gives particular character to these days, days when we wait in cold and darkness for Advent. We might even think of it as an ecclesiastical 'microseason', to use a term beautifully explored in Nature's Calendar: The British year in 72 Seasons (2023). Indeed, the book identifies a late November microseason which falls around Stir-up, entitling it 'Even the Light Grows Cold', saying of this microseason:

As November unfurls the light lowers, casting long shadows. This is the moment in the year when the bronze and golden leaf fall comes to its end, and in these conditions our eyes recalibrate ... Our colour vision shifts in late November, when the axis of the earth has shifted so that the sun's rays reach us at oblique angles and the colours of deciduous foliage have first transmuted and then disappeared altogether.

It is deeply fitting that our eyesight recalibrates in this week of Stir-up, in the midst of the darkness of Winter's approach, a sign suggestive of our souls looking for the light of Advent.

When I stopped at The Middle Church in Jeremy Taylor country at 8am on Stir-up Sunday (pictured), the sun had not yet risen. The church stood against a gloomy dawn sky, the leafless trees signalling Winter's arrival. I reached for Wycliffe's deeply resonant rendering of the Prophet's words:

The puple that yede in derknessis ... whanne men dwelliden in the cuntre of schadewe of deth.

Such are these days before Advent, days when cold darkness begins to envelop us, when frosts settle, when the sun rises after 8am and sets at 4pm: "the cuntre of schadewe of deth". They are a sign of our deepest need in heart, mind, and soul for the advent of the Lord. And so they prepare us for the Advent hope, readying us to behold the light of the Advent procession, to pray the great collect of the season with its petition "that we may cast away the works of darkness", to sing with yearning Veni, veni, Emmanuel.

This 'microseason' of the dark days before Advent is to be cherished, for it is in the cold and darkness of these days - the sign of us "dwelliden in the cuntre of schadewe of deth" - that we are turned in heart, mind, and soul towards the Lord's advent, days when we might pray Cranmer's deeply resonant collect:

Lord, we beseche thee, geve eare to our prayers, and by thy gracious visitacion lighten the darkenes of our hearte, by our Lorde Jesus Christe.

Comments

Why I support the ordination of women: a High Church reflection

A number of commenters on this blog have asked about my occasional expressions of support for the ordination of women to all three orders. With some hesitation, I have decided to post a summary of my own views on this matter. The hesitation is because I have sought on this blog to focus on issues and themes which can unify those who identify with or have respect (grudging or otherwise!) for what we might term 'classical' Anglicanism (the Anglicanism of the Formularies and - yes - of the Old High Church tradition). Some oppose the ordination of women (and I have friends and colleagues who do so, Anglo-Catholic, High Church, and Reformed Evangelical). Some of us support it (again, friends and colleagues covering a wide range of theological traditions). Below, I have organised my thinking around 5 points (needless to say, no reference to Dort is implied). 1. The Declaration for Subscription required of clergy in the Church of Ireland states: (6) I promise to submit ...

How the Old High tradition continued

Charles Gore's 1914 letter to the clergy of his diocese, ' The Basis of Anglican Fellowship ', can be regarded as a classical expression of the Prayer Book Catholic tradition. A key part of the letter - entitled 'Romanizing in the Church of England' - addressed the "Catholic movement", questioning beliefs and practices within it which tended to "a position which makes it very difficult for its extremer representatives to give an intelligible reason why they are not Roman Catholics". Gore provides the outlines of an alternative account and experience of catholicity within Anglicanism, defined by three characteristics. What is particularly interesting about these characteristics is their continuity with the older High Church tradition. Indeed, the central characteristic as set out by Gore was integral to High Church claims over centuries: To accept the Anglican position as valid, in any sense, is to appeal behind the Pope and the authority of t...

1928 practices and the 1979 book: unthinking conservatism or popular piety?

Those responsible for Earth & Altar - a new blog emanating from a group within TEC - are to be congratulated for an excellent contribution to wider Anglican discussion and debate. The commitment to "an expansively conceived credal orthodoxy as fully compatible with LGBTQ inclusion, gender equality, and racial justice" is an important part of a wider retrieval of creedal orthodoxy within what we might call the post-liberal generation. It is in this spirit that I want to respond to a recent post on the site by Andrew McGowan , Dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale and Professor of Anglican Studies at Yale Divinity School. Against the background of another round of "ill-defined" liturgical revision in TEC, he understandably urges that a fuller reception of the 1979 BCP should occur before further reforms. In doing so, however, he takes aim at what he describes as "clinging to the ritual structures of 1928" while using the text of 1979. We ...

laudable Practice

Search This Blog