Four Tree Lieder for Waiting with Creation - Advent Week 4

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

Fourth Week of Advent: The Green Stump

European tree researcher Peter Wohlleben once came upon a ring of mossy stones in a very old forest. Digging down, he realized that those stones were not actually stones but the remains of a tree dead 500 years or more. And more, he found they were still alive, deep down, having been fed by the surrounding roots for centuries.

Here, now, this round

of frozen stones dug

down’s a stump. Dead

centuries now,

supposed dissolved,

cut down, gone, but,

wonder, though hollow

is green. What time

has scooped out is

wombwood for shoot,

sawed off gold rings

of gains cut down

to sod, the rod

of God. What was

forgotten he’s

now begotten.