… Oh the heretics! Not to remember Bethlehem, or the star as bright as a sun, or the child born on a bed of straw! To know only of the dissolving Now!
Still they drowsed on – citizens of the pure, the physical world, they loomed in the dark: powerful of body, peaceful of mind, innocent of history.
Brothers! I whispered. It is Christmas! And you are no heretics, but a miracle, immaculate still as when you thundered forth on the morning of creation! ~Mary Oliver from Goodness and Light
Christmas hath a darkness Brighter than the blazing noon, Christmas hath a chillness Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty Lovelier than the world can show: For Christmas bringeth Jesus, Brought for us so low.
Earth, strike up your music, Birds that sing and bells that ring; Heaven hath answering music For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest Bridal robe of spotless snow: For Christmas bringeth Jesus, Brought for us so low. ~Christina Rossetti “Christmas Eve”
Today is the day
the fog we live within is overcome by Light:
no longer dwelling in heresy,
we celebrate the joy of the miracle of God brought low for us.
God with us, God for us.
A miraculous transformation.
The world is filled, and filled with the Absolute. To see this is to be made free. ~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Ephesians 1:22-23
My mouth will utter praise of the Lord, of the Lord through whom all things have been made and who has been made amidst all things;
who is the Revealer of His Father, Creator of His Mother;
who is the Son of God from His Father without a mother,
the Son of Man through His mother without a father.
He is as great as the Day of Angels, and as small as a day in the life of men; He is the Word of God before all ages, and the Word made flesh at the destined time. Maker of the sun, He is made beneath the sun.
In His Father He abides; from His mother He goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth, under the heavens He was born upon earth.
Wise beyond all speech, as a speechless child, He is wise. Filling the whole world, He lies in a manger.
Ruling the stars, He nurses at His mother’s breast.
He is great in the form of God and small in the form of a servant, so much so that His greatness is not diminished by His smallness, nor His smallness concealed by His greatness. ~St. Augustine
How empty was the world before Christ! From Mary’s untouched womb to Joseph’s futile search for a place to sleep in Bethlehem, to the shepherds’ dismal existence on the hillsides, to Simeon’s arms aching to hold the Messiah, to Anna’s long wait in the temple.
In a million ways, seen and unseen, the empty spaces were filled, the hunger sated, the thirst quenched, the rest assured. He joined us so we shall never lack again. He became one with us–all is fulfilled and filled fully.
The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation.
It is not tame.
It is not beautiful.
It is uninhabitable terror.
It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light.
Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself.
You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this:
“God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God… who for us and for our salvation,”
as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”
Came down.
Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see.
It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms.
It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. ~Frederick Buechner from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubter’s Dictionary
[The Incarnation is like] a wave of the sea which, rushing up on the flat beach, runs out, even thinner and more transparent, and does not return to its source but sinks into the sand and disappears. ~Hans Urs von Balthasar from Origen: Spirit and Fire
He appeared in the flesh, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory. 1Timothy 3:16
Perhaps it is the mystery of the thing that brings us back,
again and again, to read the story of how God came down and disappeared into us.
How can this be?
God appearing on earth first to animals, then the most humble of humans.
How can He be?
Through the will of the Father and the breath of the Spirit, the Son was, and is and yet to be.
O great mystery beyond all understanding.
O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum. Ut animalia viderent Dominum natum, iacentem in praesepio: Beata Virgo, cujus viscera meruerunt portare Dominum Christum Alleluia
O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the new-born Lord, lying in a manger! Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear the Lord, Jesus Christ. Alleluia!
But to apprehend The point of intersection of the timeless With time, is an occupation for the saint— No occupation either, but something given And taken, in a lifetime’s death in love, Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender. For most of us, there is only the unattended Moment, the moment in and out of time, The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight, The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the rest Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action. The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation. Here the impossible union Of spheres of existence is actual, Here the past and future Are conquered, and reconciled…
~T.S. Eliot from “Dry Salvages”
We want to understand.
We want to know, not just guess anymore.
We want God to fit into the holes of our comprehension exactly like a puzzle piece falls into place in the space meant just for it.
But He doesn’t. He won’t. Our holes are rarely God-shaped. They are ragged and changing moment by moment – the hints are laid out and we make our haphazard
half-guesses.
The holes of our understanding gape so large that only God knows it takes the glue of faith to bridge the gap. Our doubts are conquered, our conflicts reconciled, the impossible union of heaven and earth made possible through the Incarnation.
Perhaps that is what “holy” is all about – filling up all our hole-li-ness with His Holiness come to earth from heaven.
Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again,and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy?
Power. Greater power than we can imagine,
abandoned, as the Word knew the powerlessness of the unborn child,
still unformed, taking up almost no space in the great ocean of amniotic fluid,
unseeing, unhearing, unknowing.
Slowly growing, as any human embryo grows, arms and legs and a head, eyes, mouth, nose,
slowly swimming into life until the ocean in the womb is no longer large enough,
and it is time for birth.
Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity,
Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes,
willingly and lovingly leaving all that power
and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years
to show us what we ought to be and could be.
Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine,
to show us what it means to be made in God’s image.
~Madeline L’Engle from Bright Evening Star
It’s the season of grace coming out of the void Where a man is saved by a voice in the distance It’s the season of possible miracle cures Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown Where time begins to fade And age is welcome home
It’s the season of eyes meeting over the noise And holding fast with sharp realization It’s the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention You are safe here you know now
Don’t forget Don’t forget I love I love I love you
It’s the season of scars and of wounds in the heart Of feeling the full weight of our burdens It’s the season of bowing our heads in the wind And knowing we are not alone in fear Not alone in the dark
Don’t forget Don’t forget I love I love I love you ~Vienna Teng “The Atheist Christmas Carol”
There is no longer a void or darkness upon the face of the deep. The stars need no longer to hold their breath.
There is unfathomed power in the powerlessness of this gift to us.
Grace has come in the face of Jesus the Son, through God the Father who moves among us, His Spirit changing everything, now and always.
Do not be afraid.
You are not alone in the dark
though wounded, though scarred.
You are loved, never forgotten.
Don’t forget.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Psalm 130: 5-6 from a Song of Ascents
Waiting is essential to the spiritual life. But waiting as a disciple of Jesus is not an empty waiting. It is a waiting with a promise in our hearts that makes already present what we are waiting for. We wait during Advent for the birth of Jesus. We wait after Easter for the coming of the Spirit, and after the ascension of Jesus we wait for his coming again in glory. We are always waiting, but it is a waiting in the conviction that we have already seen God’s footsteps. — Henri Nouwen from Bread For The Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
To wait is hard when we know the value of the gift that awaits us. We know exactly what is in the package since we have watched it being carefully chosen, wrapped and presented to us to open.
Not yet though, not quite yet. So we wait.
Even more so, we wait and hope for what we do not see but know is coming, like a groaning in the labor of childbirth.
The waiting is never easy; it is painful to be patient, staying alert to possibility and hope when we are exhausted, barely able to function. Others won’t understand why we wait, nor do they comprehend what we could possibly be waiting for when it remains unseen.
Yet we persevere together, with patience, watching and hoping, like Mary and Joseph, like Elizabeth and Zechariah, like the shepherds, like the Magi of the east, like Simeon and Anna in the temple.
This is the meaning of Advent:
we are a community groaning together in sweet anticipation and expectation of the gift of Morning to come.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. Romans 8:24-25
We are waiting, we are trusting
We are longing for Your blessings,
Lord And our faith is firmly anchored On Your never-changing Word Spirit fall down, fill our souls now
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
We are waiting we are trusting We are longing, Lord descend Let a flame of love be kindled While before Your throne we bend Spirit fall down, fill our souls now
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
We are waiting, we are trusting We are longing, Lord revive Death is fading, hope is rising In Your Spirit we’re alive
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ All for Your presence we wait
Lord, we gather in Your name Your power All Your promises we claim Together bind us with grace The body of Christ
All for Your presence we wait All for Your presence we wait All for Your presence we wait ~All Sons & Daughters
Down he came from up, and in from out, and here from there. A long leap, an incandescent fall from magnificent to naked, frail, small, through space, between stars, into our chill night air, shrunk, in infant grace, to our damp, cramped earthy place among all the shivering sheep.
And now, after all, there he lies, fast asleep. ~Luci Shaw “Descent” from Accompanied By Angels
The Lord brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up. ~1 Samuel 2: 6 from the Song of Hannah
Hannah’s prayer describes the Lord in all His paradox of reversals:
the strong are broken
those who stumble strengthened,
the satisfied end up working for food
the hungry become filled,
the barren woman bears children
the mother of many pines away,
the poor and needy are lifted up to sit with princes.
He humbles and exalts–we have read the stories of how the Lord uses such reversals to instruct and inspire His people.
Yet nothing Hannah says is as radical and unprecedented as being brought down to the grave and then raised up, the Lord causing death and making alive. This makes no sense. Once in the grave, there is no escape. Death cannot be reversed like the weak becoming strong, the hungry filled, the barren fertile, the poor enriched.
Hannah sings that this will indeed happen, just as the other reversals happened. It would take centuries, but her prayer is fulfilled in the child born to Mary, who lives and dies and lives again in the greatest reversal of all.
There can be no greater mystery than a God who chooses to walk the earth as a man among the poor, the needy, the helpless, the sick, the blind, the lame, the wicked, the barren, the hungry, the weak.
There can be no greater reversal than God Himself dying–put away down into the grave– and then rising up, glorious, in the ultimate defeat of darkness and death.
Hannah already knew this as a barren woman made full through the blessing of the Lord, choosing to empty herself by giving her son back to God.
Mary knew this as a virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, choosing to empty herself by bearing, raising and giving her Son back to the Father.
The angels knew this, welcoming the Son of God to a throne in a manger as He is born to bring light to the darkness, and peace to a torn and ruptured world.
We know this too. We are the weak, the hungry, the poor, the dying filled completely through the love and sacrifice of the Triune God, and so give ourselves up to Him.
In from out, from down to up. It can be done. And He has done it.
Have you heard the sound of the angel voices ringing out so sweetly, ringing out so clear? Have you seen the star shining out so brightly as a sign from God that Christ the Lord is here?
Have you heard the news that they bring from heaven to the humble shepherds who have waited long? Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis Deo! Hear the angels sing their joyful song.
He is come in peace in the winter’s stillness, like a gentle snowfall in the gentle night. He is come in joy, like the sun at morning, filling all the world with radiance and with light.
He is come in love as the child of Mary. In a simple stable we have seen his birth. Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis Deo! Hear the angels singing ‘Peace on earth’.
He will bring new light to a world in darkness, like a bright star shining in the skies above. He will bring new hope to the waiting nations, when he comes to reign in purity and love.
Let the earth rejoice at the Saviour’s coming. Let the heavens answer with a joyful morn: Gloria in excelsis Deo! Gloria in excelsis Deo! Hear the angels singing, ‘christ is born’ Hear the angels singing, ‘christ is born’
~John Rutter “Angels’ Carol”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be as you have said.” Luke 1: 38
…to bear in her womb Infinite weight and lightness; to carry in hidden, finite inwardness, nine months of Eternity; to contain in slender vase of being, the sum of power – in narrow flesh, the sum of light.
Then bring to birth, push out into air, a Man-child needing, like any other, milk and love –
but who was God. ~Denise Levertov, from “Annunciation”
The Annunciation by Henry Tanner, Philadelphia Museum of Art
I want it to be the way I want it: my plans, my timing, my hopes and dreams first and foremost.
And then life happens and suddenly nothing looks the way it was supposed to be. I feel abandoned and completely emptied.
Yet only then, as an empty vessel, can I be filled. How am I to respond to such a paradox?
In my work in a University Health Center, I see this struggle in the lives of young adults: a tremendous lack of resiliency, an inability to ride the waves that crash and overwhelm. One of the most common responses to the unexpected is to panic, facing uncontrollable anxiety that interferes with eating, sleeping, working, studying. A common response to anxiety is to self-medicate in any way easily accessible: alcohol, marijuana, nicotine, sex, a friend’s prescription drugs. A little isn’t working so a lot might be better. The anxiety is compounded and descends into deepening depression.
The sadness and hopelessness, even anger –is a discouragement stemming from the lack of control of circumstances, feeling there is no way out, being unable to find another path to a different future. This leads too frequently to thoughts of ending one’s life as it seems too painful and pointless to continue, and more rarely, taking others’ lives at the same time in an attempt to make sure everyone else knows the depth of the pain.
There is an epidemic of hopelessness among our society’s young people that I’ve never before seen to this extent in my forty years of clinical work. To them, their debts seem too great, their reserves too limited, their foundations too shaky, their hope nonexistent, their future too dim. They cannot ride the waves without feeling they are drowning. So they look for any way out.
In the annunciation of the angel approaching a young woman out of the blue, Mary’s response to this overwhelming circumstance is a model for us all when we are hit by a wave we didn’t expect and had not prepared for.
She is prepared; she has studied and knows God’s Word and His promise to His people, even in the midst of trouble. She is able to articulate it beautifully in the song she sings as her response. She gives up her so-carefully-planned-out life to give life to God within her.
Her resilience sings through the ages and to each one of us in our troubles: may it be to me as you say.
May it be.
Your plans, Your purpose, Your promise.
Let it be.
Even if it may pierce my soul as with a sword so that I leak out to empty.
You are there to plug the bleeding hole and fill me.
So I sing through my fear, through my weariness, through my tears.
“Like Mary, we have no way of knowing… We can ask for courage, however, and trust that God has not led us into this new land only to abandon us there.” ~Kathleen Norrisfrom God With Us
Matthias Stomer’s Annunciation
Everything inside me cries for order Everything inside me wants to hide Is this shadow an angel or a warrior? If God is pleased with me, why am I so terrified? Someone tell me I am only dreaming Somehow help me see with Heaven’s eyes And before my head agrees, My heart is on its knees Holy is He. Blessed am I.
Be born in me Be born in me Trembling heart, somehow I believe That You chose me I’ll hold you in the beginning You will hold me in the end Every moment in the middle, Make my heart your Bethlehem Be born in me
All this time we’ve waited for the promise All this time You’ve waited for my arms Did You wrap yourself inside the unexpected So we might know that Love would go that far?
Be born in me Be born in me Trembling heart, somehow I believe That You chose me I’ll hold you in the beginning You will hold me in the end Every moment in the middle, Make my heart your Bethlehem Be born in me
I am not brave I’ll never be The only thing my heart can offer is a vacancy I’m just a girl Nothing more But I am willing, I am Yours Be born in me Be born in me Trembling heart, somehow I believe That You chose me I’ll hold you in the beginning You will hold me in the end Every moment in the middle, Make my heart your Bethlehem Be born in me
As the universe expands around us, our faith, in response, spirals inward.
The Hands that flung the stars and planets into their places now reach inside us to grip and hold our hearts.
It’s the little things that feed our faith:
there are so many to remember during this month of waiting.
There are names for what binds us: strong forces, weak forces. Look around, you can see them: the skin that forms in a half-empty cup, nails rusting into the places they join, joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly whenever they’ve been set down – and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
And see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more strong than the simple, untested surface before.
There’s a name for it on horses, when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh, as all flesh is proud of its wounds, wears them as honors given out after battle, small triumphs pinned to the chest –
And when two people have loved each other, see how it is like a scar between their bodies, stronger, darker, and proud; how the black cord makes of them a single fabric that nothing can tear or mend. ~Jane Hirshfield “For What Binds Us”
A gaping wound heals slowly,
new flesh rising from beneath and from side to side,
growing thicker and stronger than thin skin torn asunder.
That binding scar may not always be beautiful
but it won’t give way,
held fast and tight
built to last forever.
Like our horses’ legs caught in gates or fence
where gashes meld together dark,
we too have proud flesh —
we won’t forget our wounds
or His.
When they are visible
you may see from where my healing comes
and where I remain so soft
and so tender
and so proud.
Barnstorming 