Kester Brewin

Whenever a gift is given, an invisible cargo is exchanged with it, loaded with semi-conscious messages about power-relations between giver and receiver. Offering an expensive gift to someone can be a power-play: I am rich enough to give you this. Even letting someone out into traffic can carry the same message: I am more gracious [...]

I absolutely love this advent poem by Katherine Venn. She’s currently doing a Masters in poetry at the University of East Anglia, and keeping a blog of the experience over at Minute Particulars.
Brother Hare
Born with your clothes on, trembling in your scrape,
wide eyes open, soft, as new things are, warm;
alone, pressed small into a shallow [...]

Post-Partum
Amniotics spilt, and semiotics rupture;
there are no words, just raw screams and suckles.
Child of God, child of man – no difference:
new life is unmoored emotion,
a wide sea of tears and sick,
and just one desire:
to feed, gather in, be mother-close.
But God won’t stay.
Controlled crying;
separation an immediate fact post-partum:
we must learn to settle ourselves,
become content with occasional [...]

Whenever we engage ‘the other’ we have to overcome our fear of doing so. Engagement that holds no such fear is not engagement with an ‘other’; it is easy to love what is lovely – we are called to overcome our fear and love that which is not.
As we consider the grounds of the divine [...]

Caesarean Sections
The bitter old man stands
at the gates of the earth
waiting, watching,
guarding the only entrance
and exit to this citadel planet.
The babies file in
and the dead file out
and he watches them,
grimly keeping count.
He watches, he waits
he shivers to shake
tired cold from old limbs,
for he must stay awake
for the one they say
will attempt a salvation.
One eye is [...]

The first window on the calendar opens. The scene begins…

As I wrote in the previous post, one of the fascinating things about the Incarnation is that it stands as an actual interruption, a marked moment of time with a before and after. Nothing was the same before, and nothing will be the same again.
It’s been [...]

So the season of Advent comes around again. The waiting, the cold bite of the wind, the familiar carols reheated. Hopes and fears. It’s my favourite time of year, I think, partly because the event of the Incarnation is still just so impregnated with mystery and rich with metaphor. So I’ve decided to write a series [...]

Just to say that I’ve decided to blog a series of ‘Advent[ures] In Incarnation’ throughout December, looking askance at this most profound time of year with some thoughts, poems, links… and whatever else takes my fancy.
Probably be posts every couple of days, so look out for them, spread the word etc. Looking forward to it.