During Advent, as I kindle the wreath candles that mark the journey to the Bethlehem stable, I return to particular writers that I love and certain music that I can't seem to get through the seasons without. I have Advent habits.

For instance, I often re-read W.H. Auden's For the Time Being. In one portion King Herod weighs the threat to publiic order posed by the birth of the Christ child. Is the collatoral damage of murdering the male children justified in order to maintain security and social stability? If this Messiah survives, ponders Herod, then:

Reason will be replaced by revelation … Justice will be replaced by pity as the cardinal virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish … The new aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums, and permanent invalids. The rough diamond, the consumptive whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the new age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

I listen to the San Antonio Vocal Art Ensemble's Guadalupe: Virgen de los Indios CD. The ancient Nahua Indian hyms welcoming the Christ child and extolling the virtues of Mary are haunting - interweaving complex indigenous harmonies gleaned from 400-year-old deerskin musical scores:

The world guards the memory of the life that He gave in the earth, and there in the heavens the presence of Your glory is felt. The vision of happiness, then, exists in the memory of this earth.

It's also an opportunity to keep company with the Bible's holy ones. Episcopal priest Margaret Guenther writes movingly about Anna and Simeon in the December issue of Sojourners. And Ade Bethune's silk screen Icon of the Mother of God reminds me that the saints are keeping watch over me – even in Advent's terrifying darkness.

Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.