Four Tree Lieder for Waiting with Creation - Advent Week 2

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Four Tree Lieder for Waiting with Creation

An Advent Song Cycle for Sarah Holman

Poetry by Tiffany Eberle Kriner

Music by Xavier Beteta

Sarah Holman, mezzo-soprano

Mary Hopper, piano

Nathaniel Holman, percussion

Timothy Holman, viola

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Romans 8: 20-25

Second Week of Advent: The Tree in Snow

One of the reasons deciduous trees lose their leaves, scientists conjecture, is to limit the amount of snow weight and wind force that they must bear come winter. Without the leaves—snow catchers and windsocks in their own right-- the tree can better hold up the heavy snow, and keep strength to stay rooted in the wind.

And then fall cold

stars on branches--

who can bear that

much beauty now

their own stars are

dimmed to dust, ash.

Stars fall on stripped

tongues too--snow blooms

into good news,

bright and morning

taste of wet star,

water, light. Is

glory heavy?

Bear it on ash

cleaned tongues, on bare,

brown, lifted arms.

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