Our Gift to the World

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – –Howard Thurman

I have always found a hint of sadness when it comes to Christmas.  Even sitting here writing this blog, I can feel it within me, as if it exposes a longing yet fulfilled.  I don’t know if anyone else experiences it, but I have found it nearly most years.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s great being around the kids on Christmas and the days leading up to it.  There is an excitement quite easy to tap into.  It’s contagious! 

There is, though, this sadness which accompanies such wonder and awe. 

There is a sense of profound connection and yet separation, all at the same time.   

There is a sense of anticipation and yet fear, seemingly bound together in a moment of time.

I don’t think we’ve experienced it quite like we have in 2020.  It’s hard to avoid the complexity of a human life as we continue the unanticipated drama of a global pandemic, touching all corners of the earth.  After a time of full gestation, it finally made it to Antarctica this week; one more notch in the belt for a rather unpredictable year.

However, maybe it’s a good reminder to us all we cannot outrun hurt and struggle.  Many believe themselves to be invincible and above the absurdity of a sickened human family, creating alternate realities for themselves in order to avoid pain.  How do you convince someone they need a doctor when they don’t even want to believe they are sick?  It’s not an easy undertaking.  Yet, it’s the reality in which we have dealt ourselves and one in need of transformation and redemption, even if it believes and doubts otherwise.

I believe, now more than ever, we “need a little Christmas; right this very minute”.  Christianity has all but put all of its eggs in its Easter basket.  One day we may find ourselves grateful Easter was essentially “cancelled” earlier this year and now we stand on the threshold of an incarnational moment, even given a clear reminder of the first through the alignment of the heavens this week leading up to Christmas as planets waltzed together in the darkened, night skies.

Isn’t it, after all, an incarnational moment we need more than anything?  The drama and saga of Easter is a natural conclusion to a story which begins with greater scandal, a God becoming flesh, acknowledging our value and worth.  Christianity has allowed itself to become overly dogmatic and corporate to the point it feels as if it’s been cut off from the body, from the very people which encompasses it.  It’s become “cut off” from its own incarnational moment of a God becoming flesh.  In other words, the head has decapitated itself from the body.

Some would argue, it always has been. 

It alone feeds the sadness and longing of a people, like shepherds who “quake at the sight”, for a God who’s “law is love and His Gospel is Peace”.  As much as there may be a place for dogma, theory, and creed, it can become a “stumbling stone” to an encounter and mystical moment with the God enfleshed.  It feeds the head, not a body of people who are hurting, a pandemic of anxiety constantly breathing down the neck as if the world sits atop us. 

God speaks.  Dwells among us.  We choose to reject it, and often in the name of religion.

My guess is God always is saddened by the events of our time.  No, not simply a pandemic plaguing the people, but the injustice, poverty, abuse of power, war and violence enfleshed more than love and peace.  Christmas, in all its wonder, manages to put all of it into perspective and pull us to the center of our humanity.  It is, undoubtably, our humanity we most wrestle with in this world.  It’s not only the humanity of the other; it’s our own we wrestle with and try to make sense of on a daily basis. 

It is, in most humble of fashion, all we really have.

This God who becomes flesh continues to desire to be embodied in and through us.  It is, the divine, our true self, soul, the Christ, no matter how you define it, a God who desires us to become fully human and recognize it is as lifelong journey.  This birthing and becoming is not a nine-month gestation, but one spanning from our first breath to our own natural conclusion.  We fight it, resist it, but ultimately, we’re invited to fall into it and embrace it for what it is, in all its wonder and sadness, fear and love, connection and separation.  It’s who we are in our fullness and when you “fall, on your knees” in humility, you once again unite the heavens and earth and Christmas becomes the present moment, once again incarnated in the world.

When we finally become grounded in our own humanity, so much more takes care of itself.  It allows us to see the value in all of humanity and no longer a held belief to “decrease the surplus population”, disposing of anyone who doesn’t contribute or produce in an economic way.  We begin to recognize the poverty of our own lives and the need for very little, an intentionality which leads to life and the fullness of this life.  Christmas didn’t just happen; it happens.  Some two centuries later, the courageous one who steps fully into their humanity continues to cause scandal, not conforming to the ways of the world, but rather, come into their own.

There truly is a sadness, mixed in with the wonder and awe of the moment.  It’s a sadness when we face reality as it is, a world easily distracted from the real, caught up in the head, cut off from the body, a world in need of hope. 

No, not a sense of optimism, but hope, coursing through the veins of our humanity, reminding us of what matters most.  As long as we find ourselves breathing, in a time when it can be quite difficult for many, we are being birthed and becoming the longing which pulls us into Christmas.

It’s not only about a child, but rather you and me.  The child simply points the way to what can be if we surrender ourselves to a life well lived and to love being born, when the “soul felt its worth” and a “weary world rejoices”!

Merry Christmas!

Hopeful Longing

Isaiah 9: 1-6; Luke 2: 1-14

“Shepherds quake…at the dawn of redeeming grace.”  Silent Night is marking its 200^th Anniversary on this very night.  On a night when the organ had been damaged by flooding, the words of a simple poem, set to guitar chords, has managed to transcend time as an eternal carol.  Silent Night.  Holy Night.  All is calm; well, at least for here, maybe not in your homes.  There is, though, something that is aroused in us in the silence in the night, when our own hearts quake.  There is obviously great joy that is so much a part of this feast.  I myself enjoy the time with nieces and nephews because of the joy, the sense of wonder and mystery that Christmas holds, but also knowing that it passes with time.  There is, along with that joy, often a deep sadness that many experience on this holiday, often associated with family and loss but also, in a way only a mother can know, the separation that takes place upon the birth of a child, setting in motion a deep longing and desire to be one.  This feast, like no other, manages to bring together that sense of great joy and sadness all into one, pointing the way to finding joy in the sadness and pain we may be feeling.

There’s a sadness as well when we look at this creche that has a way of capturing us each year like nothing else.  It’s not just a sadness that comes with what Christmas has become culturally but tied to the sadness of this scene, that like Silent Night, doesn’t find its way into our feast until centuries later, yet, a longing and desire draws us here to this place because in the midst of it all, it reminds us of who we really are.  It draws us in and speaks to us in the silence of the night because at the core of our being, this is who we are and yet we’re not there yet.  Everything about our lives moves us in the direction of becoming this creche, this scene of such peace and joy.  Yet, everything in us, connected with that longing and desire for love and joy, pushes us to resist it all at the same time because we don’t want to go to the place of longing, to our deepest sadness and hurt.  That’s precisely, though, right where we find that joy and peace.

It is where all the prophets lead Israel, as we hear in today’s first reading.  It’s one of the most poetic of all Isaiah’s writings.  But we need to understand, Israel once again finds itself on the brink of war.  Poverty and famine have become a way of life.  A chaotic and corrupt political leadership was the name of the game.  Israel, more often than not, found itself floundering in life, not only feeling as if God had abandoned them in so many of their experiences, but the separation that came from their land and from one another.  The deepest longing and desire of Israel was to be one and at peace but it never seemed to come to fruition.  They have lived through the pain of an enslaved people.  Isaiah, today, speaks of a people that knows darkness and knows it well.  They are a people that knew pain and suffering.  They are a people that knew separation and longing.  But the thing about it is, like us, the more we look beyond ourselves to satisfy it only deepens the pain and loneliness.  Isaiah offers a message of hope in finding the light in the midst of the darkness and not to despair, that what they desire they already have and keep seeking elsewhere. To be a people of faith they must find hope in the darkness of their own lives and trust that life will spring forth.  Long before Jesus is born in this stable, plainly pointing out to us our deepest identity, wrapped in swaddling clothes, Isaiah learned to trust the interior life, the divine indwelling, knowing the presence of God and revealing a message of hope and joy to a people that knew darkness more than anything.

The same is true of Mary and Joseph, as well as the shepherds with hearts that quake.  Mary and Joseph, in giving birth to the Christ, don’t somehow bypass darkness.  Jesus doesn’t come with a blueprint and map as to how they are to proceed in all of this.  The three of them are going to face utter darkness, not always knowing where they are going until they too are exiled.  Their own history and connecting with it, reminds them of the necessary hope as they make this journey.  The shepherds themselves will not make their way somehow to the top of the list in their time.  Rather, they found their deepest selves in that encounter.  In the quaking of their hearts, something begins to move deep in the silence, illuminating their own longing and desire for love and peace.  As we hear in this gospel, Mary and Joseph don’t rebel against the religious and political leaders of their day.  They simply through freedom and choice don’t become like the nations but rather grow into becoming like the one they bear, the Christ.

They will all face unbelievable sadness and pain in this journey.  There’s nothing easy about giving birth and the same is true of a God who tries to birth new life in each of us, leading us to trust the eternal that has already been planted.  All the stories we hear this season will point us in that very direction.  What’s most important is that when we find ourselves in that darkness is not to become consumed by it and be defined by it.  Whether it’s this creche or this altar, we are always being captured by the deepest desire to be love and joy and both remind us of that very truth of our being.  We will never get rid of darkness.  We will never get rid of sin.  For that matter, we will never destroy corruption and abuse of power and all the rest because all of it points to that deepest longing and desire within us.  It begins and ends with Christmas, with this very creche in which defines who we are.  In our very sadness and brokenness as humans, who simply long for joy and love, we learn to find it in that precise place we’d rather avoid.

“Shepherds quake…at the dawn of redeeming grace.”  It’s what Christmas is all about.  In the silent of night, the silent of darkness, a light is illumined, casting light upon our hurt and pain, our deepest longing and desire.  Maybe we find our own hearts quaking this evening, breaking forth and invited to something new, a new sense of wonder, simplicity, and joy, a child-like spirit that reminds us of days long ago.  It’s God breaking in.  It’s God reminding us that we’re something more than this cultural Christmas that also feeds into that deepest longing.  Like Mary and Joseph, we seek the courage to step into that very darkness, that pain, that longing, for it is there that they place their trust and find hope.  We are no different.  The gift awaits us all in that very place within our hearts that quake with the shepherds on this night, this silent night.  Wrapped in swaddling clothes we find a child, we find ourselves, with the dawn of redeeming grace.  Silent Night.  Holy Night.  All is calm.  All is bright.