Through a Glass, Darkly

O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your servant who calls upon you, and grant that I may know and understand what things I ought to do, and that I also may have the grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. -taken from The Divine Hours, Prayers for Summertime

My copy of The Divine Hours for summer got packed at the very end of May, so I didn’t have it until we unboxed the books last weekend. Meaning I missed all of June. Which was kind of a downward spiral for me with the class I was taking, the stress of things possibly falling apart with the house, the end of school, and, oh, yeah, packing. Now that I am able to sit on my couch and drink my coffee and read my prayers, I can see how it might have been a good thing for me to have that in my routine, to read those words and say those prayers with so many other people. To have something solid to stand on when I was floundering in my own lack of belief. Because those are big prayers. That up there? That’s a big prayer. That cuts to the heart of many of my prayers: What am I supposed to do? Why is it that particular thing? There are times when I know what I ought to do: I should forgive, because it is one of the cornerstones of my faith. I might even understand why I am supposed to forgive: Because I have been forgiven, and because it will actually make me feel better not to be carrying those things around. Just to name a few. But sometimes I don’t understand how it’s possible, and I think that’s the kind of understanding this prayer is crying out for. Help me know what to do. Help me understand how to do it.

It resonated particularly with me this morning, because last summer we had an unprecedented streak of days over 100 degrees, something I can never remember happening before. It was miserable and unbearable, but, caught up in my haze of summer discontent, I continued to go to my car every day at lunch and read. I would read the Midday Office in The Divine Hours, and I would read my novel. You can look at last year’s list to see which books were read in July and August and then imagine me sweating it out in my car. I parked in the shade, don’t worry. And I drank a lot of water.

I remember talking to Andrea on the phone one day, talking about how I was so desperate to have the summer off, but I didn’t know what to do. There were so many classes I needed to take, and I didn’t really know how to get in the school system. I don’t remember praying this prayer particularly, but I must have, this same week, last year. Mike and I want a different sort of life, one where we are closer to our friends and where we have more time to be together. I do not think I can work another summer without going completely stir-crazy. I know what we want, but I don’t know how to get there. Help.

And now, I sit in my new house, with five more weeks of summer vacation. I have felt for so long that everything was piling up around me and I could not relax. But I am beginning to feel that relaxation settle in, that the restlessness that prevailed last summer is finally dissipating. There are many areas of my life where I still don’t know what to do and how to do it. But I can look back over the past year and feel as if we were guided in each of those difficult steps: applying for a new job, taking the new job, taking classes, putting our house on the market, and, finally, moving. I know that this prayer isn’t just about me and my own life, but also about God’s greater work in the world and how we can participate in it. But those are the things that were on my heart last summer, and (most of the time) I believe the things that are on my heart are part of the things that God cares about. I was lonely and restless, I believe, because he created me to be in community and to want to have time to spend with my friends and family. I can breathe deeply now, in a way I haven’t in a long time, because I have that time to rest, because Mike and I have time to work on our house and go on vacation. Because I have friends within walking distance (and one whose place of employment can be seen from my sunroom). Because I can see my mother and my brother more often. Because I was given the grace to take the next step. Because I can sit here in my sunroom with my coffee and feel as if many of my desperate prayers from the past few years have been answered.

This year, our church’s Lenten theme was about restoration. Every week, someone gave a focus on how God has restored some aspect of their lives - a woman who was abused as a child has now become a counselor; a man who spent many years focusing on himself is now married and he and his wife have adopted their nieces and nephews after a tragedy in their family. I knew a little bit about some of those stories, but it was very powerful to hear them spoken.

On Palm Sunday, after the kids marched in with their palm leaves and they had been put in vases at the front of the church (after brushing a little bit too close to one of the candles and almost catching on fire) our pastor preached a sermon about betrayal, which, of course, had more than a little to do with Judas. At one point in the sermon, he was talking about various forms of betrayal, and he said something about parents rejecting you because they didn’t approve of your choice of spouse. One thing I like about going to a small church is that he includes examples from the congregation, that I know that he knows our story. But I was honestly surprised at what he said . . . betrayal? I have always thought of what happened with Mike’s parents as flat-out rejection. I have taken it very personally, this rejection of me. It took a while to get my mind around the idea that it was a betrayal of how parents are supposed to act. (Also, it was probably a good reminder that this, like most things, isn’t really about me.)

On Easter Sunday, after a wonderful church service, we had a big lunch with some friends from church. As our friend was blessing the meal, he thanked God for our families and the families we create around ourselves. While family is very important to me and Mike, we don’t experience certain aspects of that in the same ways that many people do, because Mike’s parents aren’t around. Our friend’s grace was a good reminder of the restoration we see in our own lives: like Naomi, we have felt so empty, but the Lord has filled us up again.

I don’t know anything about Tullycraft, but one evening I was listening to the radio station that Mike DJed for over the summer, and I heard this beautiful haunting song. I made Mike call the station and find out what the song had been, and it turns out that it was “The Lonely Life of the UFO Researcher” by Tullycraft. Now, sure, that’s a silly title, and in some ways it’s a silly song. I kept finding reviews that said that very thing. But, in my humble opinion, those people are missing the point. This is a song about faith and doubt, about believing in what is not seen, about questions and needing to know the truth. All of those things are set in the context of UFOs, but don’t be deceived. I experience these same emotions all the time, belief and unbelief forming an uneasy truce in my heart. Feeling misunderstood by people who don’t share my same faith. Desperately wanting a sign that I’m not wasting my time.

Antenna towers, and distant hopes
I’ve measured happiness with telescopes
Well, I’ve been face to face with what my future brings
The reels they turn recording blips and pings
Through the white noise and distortion
There’s a message I can feel
Just give me one sign that you’re real

Please give me one sign that you’re real

This year, our Lenten theme has to do with restoration, and I thought on Sunday about what Mike and I were like five years ago, how much we had managed to hurt each other and how, little by little, we have grown up and grown from those mistakes. If I am needing some sort of sign from above to confirm God’s existence, I only need to look at my husband, who faced his fears about college and grades and intelligence and returned to school, coming out of his shell and developing an incredible confidence in himself and his abilities. And not being satisfied with bettering himself, he has wholeheartedly embraced a profession that allows him to help other people.

There are so many ways that Mike encourages my faith, but none more than the way that he has quietly allowed God to work in his heart and give him the courage to change. This is what I picture when we talk about God restoring the years that the locusts have eaten: I think about how I will feel on May 16th.

At church on Wednesday, they said that the Ash Wednesday service is next week. Ash Wednesday? It’s almost Lent already? How did this happen?

I was doing yoga that night, and at the end there is a position called Savasana, which I believe is called the “corpse pose.” I have been told that we do this pose both to rest our bodies and slow down after yoga, but also that it has a deeper meaning, something having to do with embracing death. So usually when I am in that pose, at the end of yoga, I pray a little bit and I rest a little bit and I think a little bit about death. Mostly when I think about death, I think about my dad. Sometimes everything that happened seems so long ago, like something that happened in another life or to someone else. And sometimes the smallest thing will bring tears to my eyes. It’s strange to think about all the things we have done without him, strange to see how our family looks now. These days, I just feel baffled that he isn’t here.

One of the classes I am taking is a young adult literature class, and for that class I wrote an evaluation of A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle (arguably my favorite of her books, and the one I return to most often). When I was younger, a lot of the lessons that it teaches about embracing death as a part of life went over my head, but when my dad was sick, I thought of that book more than any other. I have been thinking about Vicky Austin this week, about affirmations of life in the face of death. I have been feeling sad and lonely the past few weeks, so it’s been a good reminder to me to reach out to the people around me rather than retreating into my own shell. And yesterday was an encouragement, as I got to know some of the teachers at school a little better, as we watched a documentary and drank wine with some friends (aren’t we pretentious? Don’t you envy our yuppie existence? There was not just wine but also cheese).

I don’t really know what it means to embrace death, but I am glad that we practice it every year. I am glad for a chance to try again to learn with those around me as we enter into Lent. And that is what I will be doing next Wednesday, when my head is marked with ashes and I am told, “Memento mori.“

I got a letter today from my sponsored child, Stephen, who lives in Kenya.

It’s upsetting to get a letter like this when you are worried about someone. All I know for sure is what I have read on CNN about the turmoil in that country, and that Compassion lists his center as one of the ones that has reported violence in the area. Every day I check Compassion’s website, hoping to hear more concrete news, but they have had no updates since January 8th, and the news from Kenya has continued to be bad. I have been worried about Stephen, and this letter, written in September, did nothing to alleviate those fears. I couldn’t even read the letter - I made Mike look at it first. In it, he mentioned the upcoming elections, saying, “We believe that God will give us a God-fearing leader.”

I won’t claim to be the world’s greatest sponsor - I am, at best, rather lax about remembering to write to him. But I sat down this evening and wrote a letter back, telling him that my family and my church have been praying for him, that I think of him every day. I don’t know when he will get that letter. I don’t know if he and his family are okay. Even if they are okay, I don’t know if he’s been affected by what’s gone on.

On Sunday, at church, I was the liturgist, and in the prayer for the world, I asked God to help us remember the ways that we are connected to the people of the world that were created in his image. Sometimes the news of the world seems overwhelming, but when we remember that the people who are affected by the news we see on TV are individuals just like us, it helps us to know how to pray. I can sponsor a child, have the money drafted from my account every month, and not really think much else about it. I try to write to Stephen, but I am not good at knowing what to say, and he seems so far from my daily life. And yet, sponsoring him has opened my heart to another country, has given me great concern for the people there and their government and welfare. If you pray for the people of Kenya, please remember my sponsored child, Stephen. He helps his grandmother, and has goats, and loves soccer. Science is his favorite subject. He makes good grades, and he sends me the most wonderful letters.

He signed the letter, “From your loving son.”

(That I’m still a man in need of a savior.)

I happen to be a fairly capable person. I can do things and take care of things and figure things out. Sometimes I want to play the princess, to be rescued, but I am more likely to be in the midst of figuring out the solution. This means that it is hard sometimes for me to know exactly what it means to need Jesus to come and save me from my sin, to save me at all. I get it in an overarching sense, that I am a sinful person, but not always in an everyday life kind of sense. In my everyday life, I don’t often feel like I need to be saved.

Surely this is why we have big holiday gatherings at Christmas, to remind us exactly why we need to be saved. Such gatherings remind me that I do, in fact, desperately need Jesus to save me. In the midst of one such a gathering this year, I found that, despite my promises to be good, so good, unrecognizably good, that I could not, in fact, be good. I simply couldn’t do it. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I had to stand up for what was true, stand up for someone who was being berated. While I think that standing up in those ways, for those things, is important, I could possibly have done this in a slightly less angry/more tactful way. And whether what I did was ultimately right or wrong, the cost of my decision was that all the peacefulness went out of the gathering.

I have eaten myself up with guilt about this, about the fact that, still, after years of trying, I can’t just keep my mouth shut for a few hours. I can’t. I don’t know how. I see injustices happening, and whether it’s the right time or place to address them, I lose my head a little bit and must speak out, speak up. I spent the last few days before Christmas staring this reality in the face: I cannot be good enough, no matter how hard I try. I cannot do the right thing out of my own power. I did everything right to prepare for this event: lots of sleep, food, caffeine. But I can’t depend on myself to be able to have the right responses all the time.

And so, with reluctance and relief, I admit that I am very much in need of a savior, someone who does have the power that I lack. Someone whose birth and life and death gives me courage that I can try again next year, depending on him rather than myself. In recent years, I have spent Christmases knowing that I needed help to make it through, help to make good decisions, help to deal with life. But I spent this Christmas right in the middle of the knowledge that I cannot be good enough to earn any of the things I have been blessed with, not my friends, not my family, not any hope for salvation. During Advent, I was excited as we anticipated the birth of Christ, the mystery of God made flesh. I spent Christmas with a little more understanding of why I really needed him to come here, to set me free from sin and death.

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.”

Thank you, God, for being born,
You who first invented birth
(Universe, galaxies, the earth).
When your world was tired & worn
You came laughing on the morn.

Thank you, most amazing Word
For your silence in the womb
Where there was so little room
Yet the still small voice was heard
Throughout a planet dark & blurred.

Merry Christmas! Wondrous day!
Maker of the universe,
You the end, & you the source
Come to share in human clay
And, yourself, to show the Way. -Madeleine L’Engle

The inn was full. When Joseph knocked,
his wife was already in labour; there was no room
even for compassion. Until the barn was offered.
That was the precipitating factor. A child was born,
and the pattern changed forever, the cosmos
shaken with that silent explosion. -Madeleine L’Engle

—

It is happening now. It is happening in a stable in Bethlehem.

Over the stable, a star is twinkling. Inside the stable, the newborn child is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.

This is a meeting of heaven and earth. For the child in the manger is also a spark from the great beacon behind those weak lanterns in the sky.

This is the wonder. It is a wonder every time a new child comes into the world. This is how it is when the world is created anew under heaven.

A woman is breathing hard and weeping. Not out of sadness. Mary is weeping quietly, deeply, happily. But the child’s cries drown her out. The Christ Child is born. He has been born in a stable in Bethlehem. He has come to our poor world. -Jostein Gaarder, The Christmas Mystery

Here we are, on Christmas Eve, with Mary and Joseph as they search for a quiet corner to have their child, the one who was promised. As Mike and I usually do during Advent, we have read The Christmas Mystery and traveled back in time to Bethlehem, back to when the Christ Child was born. It is one of my favorite ways to prepare my heart, that journey.

Thank you for traveling with me on this more public journey as well. And now it is Christmas Eve, and we find that so many things have finally come together to bring about what we have been waiting for. We see the end of all that we have been talking about: angels, pregnancy, courage, taxes, stables, stars, shepherds, wise men. Everything converges in Bethlehem tonight as a child is born. May your celebration of this wondrous event bring you great joy.

O come, O come Emmanuel
within this fragile vessel here to dwell.
O Child conceived by heaven’s power
give me thy strength: it is the hour.

O come, thou Wisdom from on high;
like any babe at life you cry;
for me, like any mother, birth
was hard, O light of earth.

O come, O come, thou Lord of might,
whose birth came hastily at night,
born in a stable, in blood and pain
is this the king who comes to reign?

O come, thou Rod of Jesse’s stem,
the stars will be thy diadem.
How can the infinite finite be?
Why choose, child, to be born of me?

O come, thou key of David, come,
open the door to my heart-home.
I cannot love thee as a king–
so fragile and so small a thing.

O come, thou Day-spring from on high:
I saw the signs that marked the sky.
I heard the beat of angels’ wings
I saw the shepherds and the kings.

O come, Desire of nations, be
simply a human child to me.
Let me not weep that you are born.
The night is gone. Now gleams the morn.

Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel,
God’s Son, God’s Self, with us to dwell. -Madeleine L’Engle

While I roll my eyes a bit at people who absolutely refuse to listen to any Christmas music before Christmas Eve (or the 15th, I have heard people say, for whatever reason), I must admit that I love that, at church, we don’t sing anything but Advent songs until Christmas Eve. I am sure that some people roll their eyes at that, but I love the sense of anticipation that those songs give me each year. It gives me the chance to transition my heart from the Thanksgiving season into preparedness for Christmas, rather than jumping on into Christmas. This gratitude for the church calendar is nothing new for me to be saying, so I won’t bore you with that. But I like the chance to celebrate that anticipation, not just celebrating the event itself.

Last year, our church used “Here Comes the Sun” as our Advent theme. This makes us sound impossibly trendy, using a Beatles song, which, frankly, isn’t really true. And, if I’m honest with you, it’s the kind of thing I generally scoff at. A Beatles song? For Christmas? But both Mike and I found ourselves incredibly moved by the song by the end of the season, and it has found a permanent spot on our Christmas list, I think. The lyrics of that song are like Advent for me: out of the darkness comes a great light. Does it make you tingle down to your toes like it does for me? It’s been a long, cold lonely winter. Here, my friends, here comes the sun.

O come, O come Emmanuel.

Winter solstice, when the sun seems to stand still in heaven, watching for the Baby to be born. -Luci Shaw

—

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. -Robert Frost

Of course I know that Christmas should probably be celebrated in the spring, and that it is only celebrated in late December because of pagan rituals. But is it okay for me to confess that I like it being just after “the darkest evening of the year?” Because I do. To have the hope of Christmas shining in such a dark time seems just right to me, and I am thankful that, every year, in the midst of the bleakness of winter (I live in the Northern Hemisphere, you see), we experience the darkness . . . and then the marvelous, miraculous light.

Last night at a Christmas festival, I heard a choir sing, in Latin, Gabrielli’s O Magnum Mysterium: “O greatest of mysteries and O most wonderful sacrament, Jesus lying there in the manger for all creatures to gaze upon. O blessed virgin, whose womb was deemed worthy of bearing Christ, the Lord Jesus. Alleluia!” An intense sweetness filled the space in that auditorium as voices deep, strong, high, clear, resonant, and reverent moved out from the stage and enfolded me. The harmony and the all-encompassing sense of the meaning of the words, which went beyond intellectual understanding, pierced me.

The Incarnation shows us simply, clearly, what would otherwise blind us–Jesus, Logos, metaphor of God, Word that both tells and shows, accessible yet mysterious, essence as well as sacrament, actuality and analogy both.

God and his truth are like a sun that fills the sky. His huge verities flare off from its center of certainty like the flaming tongues of a corona, overwhelming us in our insignificance. Yet he may appear to those whose eyes are open–the seers (Annie Dillard calls herself a stalker of truth, Virginia Stem Owens a spy)–in forms as unthreatening, yet true, as a baby, or a seed, or a dove, or a lamb, or a loaf of bread. Or a flick of rainbow color on the wall. -Luci Shaw

That’s one of the things I like about this time of the year: My eyes seem more open to God and his truth. Look, there he is in that little boy, dressed in a bathrobe, playing a shepherd in the Christmas Play. Look, there he is in a woman who serves the church and the poor every month by preparing dinner for the homeless shelter. Here he is in some kind words written in a Christmas card. Here he is in the miracle of rain in the midst of a drought. I see him in the candlelight service on Christmas Eve, in the in the faces of those I love as we gather to celebrate the holiday, in a clear starry night. What a mystery, that the God we serve is accessible and can be seen, if only we have the eyes to look for him. O greatest of mysteries, that instead of overwhelming us with our own insignificance, he would make himself nothing that we might see his truth and follow it out of the darkness into God’s own marvelous light.

I know not all of that which I contain.
I’m small; I’m young; I fear the pain.
All is surprise: I am to be a mother.
That Holy Thing within me and no other
is Heaven’s King whose lovely Love will reign.
My pain, his gaining my eternal gain
my fragile body holds Creation’s Light;
its smallness shelters God’s unbounded might.
The angel came and gave, did not explain.
I know not all of that which I contain.

I have felt for a while like Mike and I were living in transition, if only because we’d been pondering the idea of me switching jobs. Not to mention that the end of his college career is rapidly approaching, which will move us out of this comfortable existence into something new and unknown. Since switching jobs, though, I do feel more settled, like I have an idea of what our lives might look like for the next few years. After that, who knows? I am tired of trying to make plans.

The new job has made me think a lot about myself, my strengths and weaknesses, how I come across, how I can rise to meet a challenge. I have surprised myself. I am a stronger person than I sometimes realize. So, while I am not carrying the Son of God, I agree with Young Mary that I don’t know all that I contain, either. I know more than I used to, but I am still learning all the ways that I am gifted, that I am strong.

Praise be to God, who gives us these gifts, even things we don’t yet understand about ourselves. Who walks with us in our struggles, who does not forsake us. And who, despite the fragility of our bodies, chose to live among us, and now chooses to live in our hearts.

Very different from the simple shepherds were the wise men who came from three different parts of the globe, a long journey that must have taken them well over a year. They were serious scholars who studied the heavens and the movement of the heavenly bodies. They were both astronomers and astrologers, and we have not seen their like since astronomy and astrology were separated many centuries ago.

The wise men were wise men indeed, men of great intellectual sophistication; but each one saw the birth of an unknown child as an event of unprecedented proportions, and each one left home to make the long trip to Judea because of what he had read in the movement of the planets and the stars. They understood the birth of a single child could affect the entire universe, just as physicists today understand that all of creation is a single organism. Nothing happens in isolation. The crying of a baby sends sound waves to galaxies thousands of light years away.

So these ancient astronomers believed that something was happening in Bethlehem that would change the world . . . The wonder of the Incarnation can only be accepted with awe. Jesus was wholly human, and Jesus was wholly divine. This is something that has baffled philosophers and theologians for two thousand years. Like love, it cannot be explained, it can only be rejoiced in. Did the wise men understand this Glorious Impossible? Perhaps they came close. They left gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their homes by another way. -Madeleine L’Engle

I have stayed away from poems and passages about the Magi because, really, that’s supposed to come after Christmas. But I found this one so moving, I had to include it. My apologies to those of you who think I should have waited until Epiphany. I just love the sentence, “[T]hese ancient astronomers believed that something was happening in Bethlehem that would change the world.” How did they respond? They traveled on a long journey to find out what was happening.

I also believe that something happened in Bethlehem that changed the world. I even have the benefit of knowing how the story ends. (Well, not the very end of the story, but at least the end of the chapter of Jesus’ life on earth.) I believe that the birth of that child did affect the whole universe, that it was an event of unprecedented proportions, that it was an act of love that cannot be explained or completely understood. It is a cliche at this point, to say that, after encountering Jesus, we are unable to go back the way that we came. But if I were to travel this world as those wise men made their journey–with a purpose, with faith–how would the people around me be affected?

And how can I possibly live as if the birth and life and death of Jesus hasn’t made a difference when it was an act of love that changed the course of this world? The creator of all the universe entered this world as a helpless baby. What gifts have I to offer him?

And the angel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. And the Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.”

What an amazing, what an impossible message the angel brought to a young girl! But Mary looked at the angel and said, “Be it unto me according to your word.”

And so the life of Jesus began as it would end, with the impossible. When he was a grown man he would say to his disciples, “For human beings it is impossible. For God nothing is impossible.”

Possible things are easy to believe. The Glorious Impossibles are what bring joy to our hearts, hope to our lives, songs to our lips. -Madeleine L’Engle

This week I have been busy, and being busy is hard on me. I have had a lot of meetings and church and baking and stuff going on lately, but it is encouraging to me that I have been handling it better than I sometimes do. I think the new job gives me enough space that I feel like I get time to myself in the afternoons, even when I am busy. Let’s hope I still feel that way next semester, when I am taking two classes on top of working. I can get stressed/overwhelmed pretty easily, and I get worked up about things, sometimes beyond what it seems like I can control (though I will admit that it has been much better in the past few years). And then they calm down, and everything seems fine. I was thinking about all of that today as I read this passage. It seems impossible to believe that I will ever be able to handle stress and my emotions in a more productive way. But, as Madeleine L’Engle points out, for God nothing is impossible.

Even more than that, I believe (Lord, help my unbelief) in so many Gloriously Impossible things. I take them on faith. What is a small thing like controlling my emotions to a God who walked this earth because he loves us? And so I continue to trust that these patterns will one day be broken. This, for me, is a tangible reason that Christmas is a time of hope: I can hope because there are real challenges (though certainly they are less perilous than those faced by many people in the world, that doesn’t make them less real to me) that I want to overcome, and though they seem impossible, the baby in the manger reminds me that the God who came to live as one of us can overcome any obstacles, no matter how impossible they look from my perspective.

Cribb’d, cabined, and confined within the contours of a human infant. The infinite defined by the finite? The Creator of all life thirsty and abandoned? Why would he do such a thing? Aren’t there easier and better ways for God to redeem his fallen creatures?

And what good did it all do? The heart of man is still evil. Wars grow more terrible with each generation. The earth daily becomes more depleted by human greed. God came to save us and we thank him by producing bigger and better battlefields and slums and insane asylums.

And yet Christmas is still for me a time of hope, of hope for the courage to love and accept love, a time when I can forget that my Christology is extremely shaky and can rejoice in God’s love through love of family and friends. -Madeleine L’Engle

I think that I often blow right on past the idea of the creator entering his creation. Partly because it’s so hard to comprehend - how can God, so infinite, be contained by a human body? Why was this the way he chose to reconcile us to himself?

I must apologize for this next thought, but bear with me as I explain it. If I (or someone much more tech savvy than I) created a video game, and then somehow entered it and accepted its limitations, that would sound like a movie, right? (Is there a movie like that? Is The Matrix something like that? I have still not seen The Matrix.) So the idea of God accepting human limitations is something that’s hard for me to understand as real and true. I know that I pay lip service to the idea, but I try not to think about it too much, because it’s just so hard to wrap my mind around.

The news is always filled with terrible things: war and famine and recession and debt. But the idea that we are loved by someone so much that he would give up the infinite to accept the limitations of this life . . . that is a powerful thought. It not only gives me hope, it also gives me courage to think that I can affect change. By taking care of the earth, by showing love to a child, by opening my heart to those around me. It says in Corinthians that Christ’s love compels us because he died for all of us, and it’s also true that it compels us because of how he lived, and even by the fact that he came to live among us at all. If he can do such an amazing, incomprehensible thing, well, just think what I could do with his power at work in me.

Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, “Here I am. Enflesh me. Give birth to me.” And the artist either says, “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” and willingly becomes the bearer of the work, or refuses; but the obedient response is not necessarily a conscious one, and not everyone has the humble, courageous obedience of Mary. -Madeleine L’Engle

On the second Sunday of Advent, a missionary who has been visiting our church preached a bit on creativity. He claimed not to be a very creative person artistically, but he put forth the idea that using your gifts to serve God was being creative enough. This was actually an idea I’d been pondering for a while, since I don’t consider myself very creative, either. I have been wondering if some of the ways that we talk about art can’t also apply to, say, spreadsheets and charts. Book reviews. Fixing broken computers. These are areas where I am much more comfortable (I’m not saying I can fix REALLY broken computers, but I am okay at troubleshooting. Just for the record), but they aren’t things that people are going to hang on their wall or strum their guitars along with. And, in general, I feel pretty sad/insecure about my lack of creativity, because I feel like I am surrounded by incredibly talented people, but that my own brain is kind of broken when it comes to creativity. Also, they are taller than I am.

But I think that what Madeleine L’Engle is saying here actually does apply to left-brained things like charts and spreadsheets. If those are my gifts, if I can make a mean PowerPoint presentation or write a good book review, then I should obediently bear that to completion. Knowing your strengths and playing to them, doing those things well, and being open to challenges in your own life . . . I think that takes the same humility and courage that Mary had. Of course it doesn’t take me as much courage to set up a computer as it took Mary to bear the Son of God, but doing my best in the areas where I am gifted and in those where I am challenged does take that same kind of obedience.

So whether serving my gifts leads me to a symphony or an excellent lesson plan, Mary can still be an inspiration, teaching us about obedience both artistic and practical. Her obedience changed the world as we know it, but if I use my mind and my gifts to turn someone’s day around, then I have done what was required, which is (or should be) incarnational enough for me.

It was from Joseph first I learned
of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
me from his house; but, unafraid,
he put me not away from him
(O God-sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.
The Child’s first cry came like a bell:
God’s Word aloud, God’s Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
and Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
to you another gift was given,
your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
and cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
man’s love it was that made me able
to bear God’s love, wild, formidable,
to bear God’s will, through me performed. -Madeleine L’Engle

I wish we knew more about Joseph. I always find him so interesting. Years ago, I read a novel by Elizabeth George called Missing Joseph, which doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas or this post, really, except that one of the things the book talks about is that Joseph is often missing from the Christmas pictures. Mary takes center stage with Jesus. That was probably the first thing that sparked my interest in him, back in middle school. I don’t remember what else that had to do with the plot of the story, though.

A few days ago, I wrote about how Mary and Joseph must have been not only amazing individuals but also an amazing couple together for them to have been given such great responsibility. I thought about that when reading this poem, too, but on a more personal level. I have a very loving family, but at the same time, I have learned so much about love by being married to Mike. I tend to think that Jesus’ earthly father was a little bit like Mike - quiet, determined, brave.

The poem theorizes that Joseph’s love and compassion made it easier to bear the things that happened to Mary, and I believe that was probably true, if only because we as humans were created that way, to need the people around us. God placed a community around Mary that helped her be brave enough to say yes to the angel, bear the controversy of her pregnancy, give birth in a stable, face the things that happened later on in Jesus’ life and his ministry. Though different things are required of me, God has also gifted me with people who help me face the things that happen in this life, both wonderful and terrible. And I am glad that Mike, with his compassion and humor, his quiet determination, his patience, is with me as we try to listen and obey the wild, strange love of God together.

He came, quietly impossible,
Out of a young girl’s womb,
A love as amazingly marvelous
As his bursting from the tomb.

The child was fully human,
This child was wholly God.
The hands of All Love fashioned him
Of mortal flesh and bone and blood,

The ordinary so extraordinary
The stars shook in the sky
As the Lord of all the universe
Was born to live, to love, to die.

He came, quietly impossible:
Nothing will ever be the same:
Jesus, the Light of every heart–
The God we know by name. -Madeleine L’Engle

This reminds me a bit of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: all these amazing things were happening quietly, without most of the world noticing. Sure, there were some shepherds who heard about it, and, yes, some kings came from the east, but mostly life just went on as usual.

These days, in this country, celebrating Christmas is the usual thing. But the big displays at the mall, the lines to see Santa, the stress that so many people feel–those are actually pretty far removed from the quietly impossible way that Jesus entered the world, lived among us, and then died. It’s our responsibility (all year, but especially at Christmas) to take the time to make the idea that “nothing will ever be the same” a reality in our own lives.

This birth has death forevermore confused.
That God, the holy & immortal one
Should take on mortal flesh, should be abused,
Be killed–oh, how could such a thing be done?
What does this death then do to death?
Death grasps the holy body of the Lord,
Crushes the mortal flesh, lets side be gored–
Oh, God! has death not triumphed over life?
Why did you come to share our joy & pain?
Our feeble times of peace, our constant strife?
What did you think your fragile folk might gain?
I do not know the answer, Lord, but you,
Embracing death, made life forever new. -Madeleine L’Engle

The first week of Advent, our church had a service of grief and remembrance, just as a time to acknowledge that the holidays can be difficult. I was nervous about going, but it was nice to sit in the darkened chapel and let myself think about the things that are hard to remember this time of year. As they read the names, I looked around and realized there was so much loss, just in this room, just in the past year or so. It was a sobering thought, but also an encouraging one, that I am not alone in my struggles. It’s easy to get caught up in my own loss and forget that the holidays are hard for a lot of people.

There was some Scripture read, and one of the passages was from 1 Thessalonians: “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.” As the reader said the last part, “We believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him,” there was an audible sigh in the room, as if everyone there was simultaneously taking comfort in that thought. That was the best moment of the night for me, as we all breathed in the truth of that hope together.

Before I went to the service, I was undecided about whether it was weird or inappropriate, just because maybe that’s not how we should be celebrating Advent. But it was one of the things I think will stand out from this year’s Christmas season–as we wait for Christmas, as we wait with the rest of the church for Christ’s return, we also wait to see our loved ones again. And because of Christmas, we wait with the hope that Jesus brings, knowing that he triumphed over death and shared that triumph with us.

As I grow older
I get surer
Man’s heart is colder,
His life no purer.
As I grow steadily
More austere
I come less readily
To Christmas each year.
I can’t keep taking
Without a thought
Forced merrymaking
And presents bought
In crowds jostling.
Alas, there’s naught
In empty wassailing
Where oblivion’s sought.
Oh, I’d be waiting
With quiet fasting
Anticipating
A joy more lasting.
And so I rhyme
With no apology
During this time
of eschatology:
Judgment and warning
Come like thunder.
But now is the hour
When I remember
An infant’s power
On a cold December.
Midnight is dawning
And the birth of wonder. -Madeleine L’Engle

Soooooo, remember how yesterday I said I want to keep on buying presents? Well, I do. I really do. It’s like, it was radical enough to stop buying presents for Mike, even though we did it to be responsible financially, and even though I love it now. But that makes me counter-cultural enough, you know? I don’t want to say that I don’t give presents at all. It’s already a dead weight in the room when someone says, “What did Mike give you for Christmas?” or, “What are you getting Mike for Christmas?” and I have to say, “We don’t exchange presents.” It’s what I imagine being a vegetarian is like. It’s how people respond to Mike when he goes on and on about sea turtles and conservation. “Oh, you’re one of those.” Sometimes I kind of want to be one of those. But it’s a hard step to take.

It is a well-documented fact that I don’t love shopping. But I don’t know if I could give up presents altogether, because I think I would feel a little bit guilty about not giving presents to OTHER people. (This is because I do like presents myself, much more than I like shopping.) But, for the most part, buying presents doesn’t make me feel the same way that many of our other traditions do. It doesn’t fill me with joy as much as luminaries in the park, or seeing A Beautiful Star, or decorating our tree, or listening to our favorite Christmas music, or reading our Advent book . . . I feel peaceful doing those things. Buying presents doesn’t make me feel peaceful.

So, honestly, I will admit that I don’t know what I want to do. I do like giving presents to the people who are important to me. I just don’t like the way that shopping and consumerism make me feel. I guess I need to continue to think it over, to think about the most meaningful ways to celebrate the holiday, because when I read something like this, all I can think is that “wonder” is very very far away from what I see at the mall.

So we rejoice in the mystery of this tiny baby. We give presents to each other as reminders of his great gift of himself to us. We trim the Christmas tree, although the Christmas tree was not originally a Christian symbol, but came out of northern Europe and the worship of different gods. But any affirmation of love and beauty can become Christian, because Christianity is totally committed to incarnation. The decorated tree may have secular origins, but if we truly believe in incarnation, then everything secular can also be sacred. So we trim our trees and make them sparkle with light as a symbol that light is stronger than darkness, and even in a world as dark as ours, the light still shines, and cannot be extinguished.

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the Earth betrayed by war and hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out and the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honor and truth were trampled by scorn–
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn–
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth. -Madeleine L’Engle

I love our Christmas tree, though I have to admit that it felt a little early to be putting it up this year. We put it up the day after Thanksgiving, as we always do, because that is the day that we can put it up, a day that we have off. We make ourselves a Thanksgiving dinner, and we decorate the house.

I also love the idea of a Christmas tree as a symbol of light, though I can’t say that I feel that way about mine all the time. It’s important to me, and I love our ornaments and our angel, our traditions. Our Christmas tree represents family to me, and maybe that’s enough.

Mike and I have had some conversations about Christmas presents lately, because we feel pretty content these days with our whole “not exchanging presents” thing, as it gives us time and money to do things like go to plays and walk among the luminaries at the park and spend quiet nights listening to Christmas music. We wonder (in a theoretical way) what we should do when we have a family. Every year Mike is more committed to the idea of not exchanging presents at all, of rejecting the consumerism that says that we have to spend a certain amount of money at the holidays. I like the idea of making birthdays our big present-opening celebration and keeping Christmas separate from the world’s idea of celebration, but I don’t think we have to eschew presents entirely in order to make that happen. I think that presents can be part of that celebration, part of affirming love and beauty, part of affirming love and light in our troubled world.

I don’t want presents to be something crossed off a list or purchased out of obligation, but I do take great joy in buying presents and baking cookies for those around me. I want to do so as long as those things continue to point me to Christ.

This time of the year
the new-born child
is everywhere
planted in madonnas’ arms
hay mows, stables,
in palaces or farms,
or quaintly, under snowed gables,
gothic angular or baroque plump,
naked or elaborately swathed,
encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
garnished with whimsical
partridges and pears,
drummers and drums,
lit by oversize stars,
partnered with lambs,
peace doves, sugar plums,
bells, plastic camels in sets of three
as if these were what we needed
for eternity.

But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
There are some who are wary, these days,
of beards and sandalled feet.

Yet if we celebrate, let it be
that He
has invaded our lives with purpose,
striding over our picturesque traditiosn,
our shallow sentiment,
overturning our cash registers,
wielding His peace like a sword,
rescuing us into reality,
demanding much more
than the milk and the softness
and the mother warmth
of the baby in the storefront creche,
(only the Man would ask
all, of each of us)
reaching out
always, urgently, with strong
effective love
(only the man would give
His life and live
again for love of us).

Oh come, let us adore Him–
Christ–the Lord. -Luci Shaw

I used to know someone who always read the Passion in the week or so before Christmas. While that is not one of my traditions, I do understand the sentiment, the idea that it’s important to know where the story is going to be able to keep the story of Jesus’ birth in perspective. (Look, here is Biblical support for my tendency to read the end of the story before I have actually gotten that far!) I actually find it more helpful to think about the Christmas story at Easter, especially on Good Friday. The Christmas story, with all its unexpected hope and promise, how did it come to this? But it’s important, too, to keep the crucifixion in mind as we wait during Advent. We have to have the whole story to be able to truly grasp the enormity of what was happening. God, sent to earth as a baby, well, that’s powerful enough, but God, sent to earth as a baby who grew to be a man who died for our sins . . . that is a story that, as the poem says, strides over our shallow sentiments and rescues us into reality.

On the eighth day after Jesus’ birth a prophecy laced with further torment was spoken to Mary: “A sword will pierce your own soul”–a pain for her to ponder and dread for over thirty years. During that waiting time, Jesus directed some of his hardest sayings to his gentle mother–words that must have wounded. But the culmination of all her anguish was at the cross, under its very arm, as she watched her beloved son die a slow and brutal death.

But hers was not the kind of dead-end pain that has no meaning. She was privileged to be caught up in the life of the One who fought the fierce battle between light and darkness. We can understand that mix of pain and joy only as we carry Christ in our hearts, birthing him into a hostile world. That may mean suffering; we may be as misunderstood as Mary. But there is a reward: Because eternity was closeted in time, he is our open door to forever. -Luci Shaw

“The One who fought the fierce battle between light and darkness.”

When I read this passage, that particular line jumped out at me. I’ve been thinking about why, at this time of year, I crave fairy tales more than anything else. I don’t think I’m alone, either: think about the blockbuster Christmas movies of the past few years. The Lord of the Rings; Harry Potter; The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; and, this year, The (controversial) Golden Compass. Mike and I read The Christmas Mystery, our Advent book about traveling back in time to the moment when Christ was born. I am drawn to fantastic tales like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (or anything from the series listed above) in November and December. I want to see good triumph over evil.

Many of those stories are, of course, just an echo of the one true story of good battling evil, but they carry those sparks of truth in them. Fairy tales are one way of bringing the light of truth into the darkness of this world, and I am thankful for authors who take that responsibility seriously as they write about the big questions of good and evil.

I think that the passage I quoted is much more deep than what I have pulled out of it, but I also think that stories are one of the ways that we can understand the truth about Jesus and the mystery of Incarnation. And so, in their own way, stories that are about the truth of that battle, whether they are explicitly about Jesus or not, point us to that open door that Jesus brings.

He did not wait till the world was ready,
till men and nations were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time.
He came when the need was deep and great.
He died with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine. He did not wait

till hearts were pure. In joy he came
to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours, of anguished shame
he came, and his Light would not go out.

He came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of the Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice! -Madeleine L’Engle

I chose to use this poem because I loved the lines, “In the mystery of the Word made Flesh / the Maker of the stars was born.” I love the idea of the creator entering his own creation, and I think I found another passage or two that talks about that more fully (but don’t hold me to this . . . I could be losing my mind). So I may have more to say about that later.

As I was typing the poem out, I thought about a few things. Just as he didn’t wait until the world had everything together (which wouldn’t have been possible without him) to become one of us and walk among us, we don’t have to get all our stuff together to be able to approach Jesus. And, in fact, as the poem says, he came to share our grief and pain. It’s something he understands, all that pain in our lives, whether because of our own sin or someone else’s (or some combination thereof).

On the first Sunday of Advent, our preacher talked about how Advent, this time of waiting for Christmas, also mirrors our current state: waiting for Christ’s return. How “waiting” doesn’t have to mean inaction, but, instead, should spur us to action.

The purpose of Advent is to get you to experience that, to see what it is like “to wait in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.” There is a reason for that. If you can experience what it was like for Israel to wait for the Messiah, then perhaps you will see that that is what you are doing now. Advent is not only the remembrance of a time back then, but a description of human life now. To the extent that our life is a time of waiting, this, too, is Advent . . . In Advent we look honestly at the distance between what is promised and what has actually happened, what ought to be and what really is. The church’s answer to the hard questions of Advent is, “Christ has come and Christ will come again.” In the meantime we, like Israel, must wait.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here Until the son of God appear.

We’re not just role playing when we sing that. We’re not just pretending that we are back in the time before the first Christmas. We are singing about ourselves, about our own lives. We are singing about a world that still has Herods in it, where people are still poor and homeless, where there are wars and rumors of wars, sickness and pain, absurd suffering and dying. It is still a world in which people cry out for justice; still they cry for some meaning and purpose in their lives; still they cry for someone to save them from their sins, or to save them from the consequences of the sins of others.

Madeleine L’Engle says in her poem that, “We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our songs with joyful voice,” and I would add to that that we can’t wait to turn our faith into action, to reach out to the needy and suffering in the world around us, for that, too, is the meaning of Christmas.

An angel came to me
and I was unprepared
to be what God was using.
Mother I was to be.
A moment I despaired,
thought briefly of refusing.
The angel knew I heard.
According to God’s Word
I bowed to this strange choosing.

A palace should have been
the birthplace of a king
(I had no way of knowing).
We went to Bethlehem;
it was so strange a thing.
The wind was cold, and blowing,
my cloak was old, and thin.
They turned us from the inn;
the town was overflowing.

God’s Word, a child so small
who still must learn to speak
lay in humiliation.
Joseph stood, strong and tall.
The beasts were warm and meek
and moved with hesitation.
The Child born in a stall?
I understood it: all.
Kings came in adoration.

Perhaps it was absurd;
a stable set apart,
the sleepy cattle lowing;
and the incarnate Word
resting against my heart.
My joy was overflowing.
The shepherds came, adored
the folly of the Lord,
wiser than all men’s knowing. -Madeleine L’Engle

After yesterday’s impossible things, I thought this poem was a nice juxtaposition of the impossible and the commonplace. This story does seem complicated . . . and then, at the same time, what is more common and ordinary than a woman giving birth? It happens every day, all over the world. To be sure, each birth, each life entering the world is a miracle, but you can hardly say that it’s unusual. The only things unusual about Jesus’ birth are how ordinary it ended up being. This is another reason to laugh with joy over the Christmas story: rather than entering this world with great fanfare, we get a story of a baby born in a dirty stable. To save the world. O Simplicitas, indeed.

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things every morning before breakfast. It’s good advice. Unless we practice believing in the impossible daily and diligently, we cannot be Christians, those strange creatures who proclaim to believe that the Power that created the entire universe willingly and lovingly abdicated that power and became a human baby . . . How can we trivialize the Incarnation as we have done? Tawdry tinsel and crowded shopping malls are not the worst of it. Arguing about Christ’s divinity versus Jesus’ humanity is equally to miss the point. Like the White Queen we need merrily to accept the impossible (with us it is impossible; with God nothing is impossible!): the baby who was born two thousand years ago in Bethlehem was God, come to us as a human babe. Jesus: wholly human. It’s more than our puny minds can comprehend. It’s one reason Jesus kept insisting that we be as little children, because we can understand this wonder only with childheartedness, not with grown-up sophistication.

We can, to some extent, understand Jesus’ humanity. We can glory in but not understand, in any cognitive way, his divinity. We are still like that fetus in the womb, comfortably swimming around in the warm amniotic fluid, with no idea of what life out of the womb is going to be like. Unlike us grown-ups, the fetus seems to enjoy being without questions! Questions are fine as long as we do not insist on finite answers to questions which are infinite. How could Jesus be wholly God and wholly human? What does the resurrection of the body mean? How can God be good if terrible things are allowed to happen? How much free will do we have? Can we make a difference?

To that last question, at least, we can say Yes, and that Yes is easier for us to say because of Christmas. What a difference this birth makes to our lives! God, in human flesh, dignifies our mortal flesh forever. How did the schism between flesh and spirit ever come about to confuse and confound us? God put on our flesh and affirmed its holiness and beauty. How could we ever have fallen for the lie that spirit is good and flesh is evil? We cannot make our flesh evil, without corrupting spirit, too. Both are God’s and both are good, as all that our Maker made is good.

God created, and looked on Creation, and cried out, It is good!

At Christmastime, we look at that tiny baby who was born in Bethlehem, and we, too, may cry out, It is good! It is very good! -Madeleine L’Engle

One of the things that I have come to love about Christianity is how mysterious it really is. We cannot, as she says, insist on finite answers to questions that are infinite. And so I have moved out of a black-and-white cut-and-dried approach to my faith, and I have become comfortable with a little more mystery. It’s done me a lot of good, allowing me to embrace my faith, especially Christmas, with a more child-like enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that was lost for me when I focused more on theology. I’m not saying that theology isn’t important, because we should know what we believe. But I think we should also accept that our brains weren’t made to comprehend all of God’s mysteries. At Christmas, I enjoy abandoning what my puny mind can understand in favor of all-out celebration of a baby who was born who changed the world.

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child. - Madeleine L’Engle

I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me for posting this more than once here, but it sums up the miracle of Christmas for me like nothing else. Plus, it’s shorter than yesterday’s entry, so you have to give me that, at least.

(This one’s long. Sorry.)

As we move into Advent we are called to listen, something we seldom take time to do in this frenetic world of over-activity. But waiting for birth, waiting for death–these are lightning times when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from God’s call to center in Christ.

During Advent we are traditionally called to contemplate death, judgment, hell, and heaven. To give birth to a baby is also a kind of death–death to the incredible intimacy of carrying a child, death to old ways of life and birth into new–and it is as strange for the parents as for the baby. Judgment: John of the Cross says that in the evening of life we shall be judged on love; not on our accomplishments, not on our successes and failure sin the worldly sense, but solely on love.

Once again, as happened during the past nearly two thousand years, predictions are being made of the time of this Second Coming, which, Jesus emphasized, “even the angels in heaven do not know.” But we human creatures, who are “a little lower than the angels,” too frequently try to set ourselves above them with our predictions and our arrogant assumption of knowledge which God hid even from the angels. Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man.

Listen. Quietly. Humbly. Without arrogance.

In the first verse of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” we sing, “Word of God, our flesh that fashioned with the fire of life impassioned,” and the marvelous mystery of incarnation shines. “Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh,” goes one of my favorite propers, for it is indeed the mystery by which we live, give birth, watch death.

When the Second Person of the Trinity entered the virgin’s womb and prepared to be born as a human baby (a particular baby, Jesus of Nazareth), his death was inevitable.

It is only after we have been enabled to say, “Be it unto me according to your Word,” that we can accept the paradoxes of Christianity. Christ comes to live with us, bringing an incredible promise of God’s love, but never are we promised that there will be no pain, no suffering, no death, but rather that these very griefs are the road to love and eternal life.

In Advent we prepare for the coming of all Love, that love which will redeem all the brokenness, wrongness, hardnesses of heart which have afflicted us -Madeleine L’Engle

Since the passage itself is so long (and, really, speaks for itself), I will only say this: One of the messages of Christmas is that Christ can bring meaning into the hardships of this life. Of course this message is applicable all year round, but the holidays are a difficult time for so many people . . . it’s a good reminder that the ways that we hurt and the ways that we hurt other people can, after all, be redeemed.

It seemed too much to ask
of one small virgin
that she should stake shame
against the will of God.
All she had to hold to
were those soft, inward
flutterings
and the remembered sting
of a brief junction–spirit
with flesh.
Who would think it
more than a dream wish?
an implausible, laughable
defense.

And it seems much
too much to ask me
to be part of the
different thing–
God’s shocking, unorthodox,
unheard of Thing
to further heaven’s hopes
and summon God’s glory. -Luci Shaw

—

A group of us from Regent and Vancouver School of Theology went to an excellent production of Much Ado About Nothing at Bard on the Beach. I’ve always loved the play because of Beatrice and Benedick, Beatrice being one of the best, funniest, and warmest of Shakespeare’s women’s roles.

Hero, Beatrice’s cousin, and Claudio come off much less well. Hero is set up by the villain to look as though she is being unfaithful to her fiance on the eve of their wedding. Claudio believes the cruel hoax without question and then, with vicious cruelty, allows the wedding to take place as planned until the moment when the friar asks if anyone knows of any impediment, at which point he publicly denounces the innocent Hero.

It reminded me of another man whose fiancee seems to have betrayed him at the last minute. Instead of denouncing her, having her stoned–the customary punishment for adultery–he lovingly decides to send her away to some safe place.

And then he is willing to believe the angel who tells him not to be afraid to take the young girl for his wife, for the child within her is from God.

I wonder if Shakespeare was aware of the opposing parallels? -Madeleine L’Engle

Each year, it seems that I stumble upon a different angle from which to approach the Christmas story. As more and more of my friends had children, it was easier to see things from Mary’s point of view. What a brave, amazing girl she must have been, to accept what the angel told her, to bear the burden of her scandalous pregnancy, to travel with Joseph and give birth in a stable. And the things she must have gone through later on, as well: What was her life like during Jesus’ ministry? How much did she understand about his crucifixion?

A few years ago, inspired by Andrew Peterson, I was inspired to think a little bit more about Joseph. He was, as my pastor said, the first person in the New Testament to see life through the new lens that Jesus brought. He, too, must have been extraordinary, full of love and faith. He was certainly someone whose imagination was widened.

This year, I find that I gain insight by seeing things not from the perspective of one or the other of these central characters, but from the perspective of their relationship. I don’t know about carrying a baby, let alone the Son of God. And the things I have been asked to bear in this life are, frankly, rather ordinary (I am not complaining about that. Just calling it like I see it). There are no angels, no public scandals, no dreams from God. However, I do know a little bit about marriage and facing difficult tasks with my spouse. And so, this year, what strikes me the most is how amazing they were together, what an extraordinary couple they must have been. For years I have been thinking about them as individuals who were chosen to bear these impossible things, but I have been neglecting the fact that, in order to complete the tasks that were given to them . . . they needed each other.

It came to me, recently, that faith is “a certain widening of the imagination.” When Mary asked the Angel, “How shall these things be?” she was asking God to widen her imagination.

All my life I have been requesting the same thing–a baptized imagination that has a wide enough faith to see the numinous in the ordinary. Without discarding reason, or analysis, I seek from my Muse, the Holy Spirit, images that will open up reality and pull me in to its center.

This is the benison of the sacramental view of life. -Luci Shaw

It seems such an overwhelming task to think of asking God to widen my imagination . . . that kind of thinking is often squashed out of us by adulthood. If I was willing to imagine God doing all kinds of things (even the things he promises he will do), who knows what kinds of bold prayers I would be willing to make. I would rather play it safe when it comes to that sort of thing. It’s so much less of a fuss, so much more convenient. It’s much easier to compartmentalize this way.

And yet. Every year, Christmas approaches and I am faced with the reality that the things I believe take some imagination. (This also happens at Easter.) There are angels and a virgin birth and stars guiding visitors from other countries. I tell this story to children, but, as much as I would like to, I can’t simply make it a children’s story (there I go again with the compartmentalizing). I can’t simply pretend that what I believe isn’t amazing. And, if I’m lucky, I won’t escape the Christmas season unchanged by these glimpses of the extraordinary.

Some people say that the internet is cold and impersonal, or else that it is chock-full of serial killers and people who aren’t who they pretend to be. Let’s ignore the fact that all of us pretend to be something other than what we are, at least some of the time. Or maybe that’s just me. I often pretend that I have things together. Though this fools approximately no one, it makes me feel better. Anyway, I think the internet, though it can be cold and impersonal, what with all that spam, can also be a very friendly place. One of my readers very kindly sent me a copy of Wintersong by Madeleine L’Engle and Luci Shaw from my Amazon wishlist, and throughout the month of December, I thought I would feature readings from it (and possibly other books) as part of my Advent preparation.

We are now in Advent. The readings in the Lectionary start back at the beginning again. The Christmas tree has been bought. From where I write I can see it through the sliding door of the family room, sitting on the porch with the first snow sifting through it. The house, which is being transformed with Christmas decorations, is in chaos, like a woman caught in the middle of doing her hair. -Luci Shaw

I liked this passage not only because of the idea of the house being transformed (in my house, we loudly and proudly use a plastic tree, so it’s not so much “buying” as “plugging in”), but because of the entire idea of transformation. Advent is a time to remember (not that it should be our only time, mind you) that Christ has transformed our hearts and minds. The church year starts over, and we begin anew - another transformation. We can look to the month (and year) ahead with the same anticipation as the woman who is doing her hair. I imagine she’s going to a Christmas party, one she’s been looking forward to for a while.

This year, the Christmas season seemed to start so early. I am sure that was a combination of things, including the busyness in my own life (changing jobs will do that), the early Thanksgiving, and the general commercialism of the land. I don’t feel like I was given the opportunity to look forward to the Christmas season; it was thrust upon me without my consent. That is why I am especially thankful for Advent, as I join with the rest of the church in looking forward to the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation.