What Kinds of Annuniciations Have You Experienced?

This is an excerpt from the poem “Annunciation” by Denise Levertov. I read this poem last advent when on a wonderful Advent Retreat with Michael Fish, OSB Cam, at Santa Sabina Center in San Rafael, CA. The poem can be found on the Education for Justice website.

‘Hail, space for the uncontained God’
From the Agathistos Hymn, Greece, VIC

We know the scene: the room, variously

furnished,

almost always a lectern, a book; always

the tall lily.

Arrived on solemn grandeur of

great wings,

the angelic ambassador, standing or

hovering,

whom she acknowledges, a guest.

But we are told of meek obedience. No one

mentions

courage.

The engendering Spirit

did not enter her without consent.

God waited.

She was free

to accept or to refuse, choice
integral to humanness.

Aren’t there annunciations

of one sort or another

in most lives?

Some unwillingly

undertake great destinies,

enact them in sullen pride,

uncomprehending.

More often

those moments

   when roads of light and storm

   open from darkness in a man or woman,

are turned away from

in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair

and with relief.

Ordinary lives continue.

God does not smite them.

But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.

Source: “Annunciation” from The Stream and the Sapphire, by Denise Levertov. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1997

Let not the gate close