Advent is celebrated when the year is becoming darker and colder, moving
into the death and dormancy of winter. Before we can greet the coming of
the light, we need to engage with some themes that are challenging and
occasionally fearful. Like the Magi who travelled a long distance to
search out and adore the infant Jesus, and who took some wrong turns on
the way, we too have a journey to undertake before we find that we have
'Walked haphazard by starlight straight Into the kingdom of heaven.' U.
A. Fanthorpe, BC: AD Haphazard by Starlight is a companion volume to
Janet Morley's bestselling Lent book, The Heart's Time (SPCK, 2011),
which delighted readers with its thoughtfully chosen selection of poems
and its biblically sensitive commentaries. Here, the reader is given an
opportunity to engage in a pilgrimage of the heart, through Advent and
Christmas to the feast of the Epiphany. Each day - from 1 December to 6
January - offers a poem (sometimes explicitly Christian, often not) and
an accessible commentary that is both critically informed and devotional
in intent. The poets represented include Rowan Williams, Elizabeth
Jennings, Edwin Muir, Philip Larkin, Jane Kenyon, Gillian Clarke, George
Herbert, T. S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Waldo Williams, P.
J. Kavanagh, Ruth Fainlight, William Blake and many more.
