Advent is a time for dreams: nighttimes filled with angelic visitors, hopes marked by candles lit on the darkest nights, and stark realities disrupted by the powerful words of the prophets.

Amidst the political upheavals of 2024, I found refuge in the idea that the widespread breaking down and rebuilding of systems can be necessary and helpful. A mentor, the Rev. Heidi Neumark, shared this from Brazilian theologian Ruben Alves: “Hope is that presentiment that the imagination is more real, and reality less real, than we had thought. It is the sensation that the last word does not belong to the brutality of facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is far more complex than realism would have us believe, that the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will open the way to freedom and resurrection.”

This Advent text is set to the familiar tune WEXFORD CAROL, in a wonderful arrangement by Bex Gaunt (you can hear her version here with a great text by Chris Shelton). You can preview or purchase the piece here.