Music for November 30

Sunday’s anthem “Advent Calendar” by composer David Ogden sets a poem by Dr. Rowan Williams written during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury. The poem was published in Williams’ first poetry collection, After Silent Centuries (1994). Click here if you would like a preview. Here is the text: 

He will come like last leaf's fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to the bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud's folding.
He will come like frost.

One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.
He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Please also mark your calendars for our annual Service of Advent Lessons & Carols on Sunday, December 7 at 6pm.