Advent 9 – 9 December 2021
Good morning,
We turn in our St Andrews-themed Advent Calendar to the Annunciation, the account in Luke’s Gospel of the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary with the news that she would be the mother of the Messiah, God’s Son.
This is a poem called ‘The Annunciation’ by Edwin Muir (1887-1959). Muir was born on Orkney, and spent time in Glasgow, Rome and Prague. He and his wife, the writer Willa Muir (a St Andrews graduate) lived for some years in St Andrews, though he didn’t think much of our town, writing in his autobiography: The minds of people seem to grow older more quickly in small towns than in great ones; they get fixed in their place; and the fixity and the steady advance of time between them beget a sanctioned timidity, where no one any longer expects much. We could find no one to talk to.
The Annunciation
The angel and the girl are met.
Earth was the only meeting place.
For the embodied never yet
Travelled beyond the shore of space.
The eternal spirits in freedom go.
See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steady there. He’s come to her
From far beyond the farthest star,
Feathered through time. Immediacy
Of strangest strangeness is the bliss
That from their limbs all movement takes.
Yet the increasing rapture brings
So great a wonder that it makes
Each feather tremble on his wings.
Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way.
Sound’s perpetual roundabout
Rolls its numbered octaves out
And hoarsely grinds its battered tune.
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.
This is a meditation on the encounter of two worlds, seemingly utterly different. It takes place on earth, with its ordinary passing of time, seen in changing light, sounds which come and go, ‘destroying minutes’. Earth is temporal, with the change and decay of a place in time.
By contrast, the angel is eternal, beyond space and time, unlimited by dimension. Yet in that afternoon, these two worlds meet. And rather than prove an encounter of incomprehension or confusion, it proves to be an occasion of deep connection. Each is reflected in the other’s face: the girl reflects heaven; the angel, earth. Indeed the angel seems profoundly affected by this wondrous meeting, enraptured. Finally, they look so deeply at each other it seems that it will never come to an end, recalling lovers in the first days of passion.
We commonly consider the Annunciation from the point of view of Mary – and this is natural, for we share her humanity. But Muir explores the wonder of the encounter – and by extension the Incarnation itself – from the point of view of eternity. It is at least as rapturous for the divine to meet the human as for the human to encounter the divine.
And an image for today – we encountered the Beaton Panels on Monday this week. Here is another, of the Annunciation, with a lovely vase of flowers between the angel and Mary. The dove, above the angel Gabriel’s wing, symbolises the coming down of God to creation in the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit, her becoming pregnant with the Son of God, and in time giving birth.
Yours,
Donald.
Revd Dr Donald MacEwan
Chaplain