Advent Devotional for December 2nd

Interior of the Rosaire Chapel - Ville de Vence, France

[The devotional entries for the remainder of time leading up to Christmas Day (with the exception of Sundays) will come from a devotional prepared for London's St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in 2005.  These entries take as a theme, 'Hope to the ends of the earth,' a belief echoed in T.S. Eliot's poem, The Journey of the Magi.  Advent is about a journey: what and/or who do you hope to find on Christmas morning?]

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.  I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." - Isaiah 43:18-19)
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To Vence - small, on a sun warmed hill, uncommercial, slow, peaceful.  Walked to the Matisse cathedral - small, pure, clean-cut.  White, with blue tile roof sparkling in the sun.  But shut!  Only open to the public two days a week... I was desolate and wandered to the back of the walled nunnery, where I could see a corner of the chapel and sketched it, feeling like Alice outside the garden, watching the white doves and orange trees... I began to cry.  I knew it was so lovely inside, pure white with the sun through blue, yellow and green stained windows.


Then I heard a voice.  "Ne pleurez plus, entrez," (cry no more, enter) and the Mother Superior let me in, after denying all the wealthy people in cars.  I just knelt in the sun and the colours of sky, sea and sun, in the pure white heart of the chapel.  "Vous êtes si gentil," (You are so nice) I stammered.  The nun smiled.  "C'est la miséricorde de Dieu" (It is the mercy of God).  It was.


- A postcard to her mother from the poet Sylvia Plath

(2005 Advent Devotional from St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London)