Every Riven Thing: A Blessing for the Second Week of Advent

For Christians, advent particularly highlights the ways that we live in two timelines at once. 2020 has been a dumpster fire (shout out to my son-in-law Craig for finding the perfect ornament to capture what this year’s been like). And yet, Advent is actually the start of the new year in the liturgical calendar. So, if you want to go ahead and start celebrating the end of all things 2020, feel free!

I’ve been learning anew that Advent is more than a countdown to Christmas. It’s an aching, honest look at the depth of our lack, the ways we need the Holy to help and restore us. To save us. If there is anything that’s clear after this deeply hellacious year, it’s that things aren’t as they should be.

We cry out for healing from plagues, we mourn lives lost to Covid-19, we choose to see the homeless and oppressed and lonely in our midst. We lament the division. Come, Lord Jesus.

Christian Wiman’s “Every Riven Thing” is a good word for us in this season. I invite you to sit with his words today:

God goes, belonging to every riven thing he’s made
sing his being simply by being
the thing it is:
stone and tree and sky,
man who sees and sings and wonders why

God goes. Belonging, to every riven thing he’s made,
means a storm of peace.
Think of the atoms inside the stone.
Think of the man who sits alone
trying to will himself into a stillness where

God goes belonging. To every riven thing he’s made
there is given one shade
shaped exactly to the thing itself:
under the tree a darker tree;
under the man the only man to see

God goes belonging to every riven thing. He’s made
the things that bring him near,
made the mind that makes him go.
A part of what man knows,
apart from what man knows,

God goes belonging to every riven thing he’s made.

May it be so with me and with you and with us.