On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People

A Poem and Painting for the Second Week of Advent

For Advent this year, I am sharing a work of visual art and poem each week.

I love this painting by Tim Joyner called Incarnation. He painted it during Advent 2021 using primarily “Lamp Black” pigments made from “discarded stubs of vigil candles” to symbolize the darkness so many of us experienced that year. Yet his painting ultimately symbolizes how, to quote Joyner,

…at the end of all this waiting there is an arrival. But it’s not me arriving at the other end of darkness or doubt, brokenness or betrayal. It is the Christ Child who arrives. He meets us here. And rather than chasing away all that it means to be human—including the pain and the longing unfulfilled—and banishing it forever, He wraps Himself in it.

Tim Joyner, Incarnation (foraged pigment on paper, 2021). Used with permission.

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Like Joyner’s painting, this week’s poem is also about God wrapping Himself in darkness in order to bring us light.

It was inspired by the true story of Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, Pope Francis’ official almsgiver, who took desperate measures when Rome shut off power to an unused state building where hundreds of unhoused people were sheltering. Krajewski climbed down a manhole, broke police seals, and flipped a switch to restore the building’s power for these families. His actions are a striking metaphor for what God has done for us through Jesus’ incarnation.

On a Cardinal Climbing Down a Manhole to Restore Power to 400 Homeless People

We were almost used
to living in the dark,
to being powerless,

that day you quietly
pulled the lid off the sky
of a world below

and snuck down, strange
inside that stale air,
to flip the switch,

subverting power structures,
sparking gasps of joy
in us who could not pay

that suffocating debt,
your dirtied hands declaring,
“Let there be light.”

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Notes

Thanks to Commonweal Magazine for originally publishing this poem.

You can read more about Tim Joyner’s painting Incarnation at The Rabbit Room and find more of his work on his Instagram.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to share this post, and be sure to check out the rest of my Advent series.