"A Great and Wondrous Mystery Unfolds..."

Bethlehem has opened Eden. Come, let us see!

We have found joy in a secret place.

Come, let us seize Paradise hidden in the cave!

There the unwatered Root has appeared,

blossoming with forgiveness.

There is found the undug Well,

from which David longed to drink of old.

There the virgin has borne a child,

quenching Adam's and David's thirst.

Let us hurry to this place,

Where the Eternal God was born

as a little child!

(from Matins)

The Vocabulary of Christmas Carols

from Pierre Talec's JESUS AND THE HUNGER FOR THINGS UNKNOWN:

"...Too bad that many people see Christ's humanity only as a device of God's to restore his work of creation, which had been degraded by sin. As though God's humanity were a device!

I have always been struck by the simplistic shortcuts used by the catechesists to explicate the passage from sin to salvation. They seem to view it as an automatism foreseen through all eternity. First era: Man, created by love, rejects God's love; this is sin. Second era: God so loves the world that he sends hhis Son; this is salvation. One thus coldly speaks of God's love as if it were a motor beginning a process to which one ultimately remains quite exterior. One speaks of Christ's incarnation as though it were a forced emergency repair that cost God dearly...God is viewed as a sort of master sumpman, condescending to let his Son descend to earth! Thus, when we closely examine the vocabulary of our old Christmas carols, we find it celebrates God's self-humbling; we also note that Jesus Christ's humanity is conceived of as a sort of obligation that God inflicts upon himself.

...We tend to acknowledge God's 'merit' in humbling himself to become human rather than his joy in elevating us in his happiness. I have never heard anyone say that God was happy to become a human being. To forget that God's happiness is made of this greatness in being human is to go along with an atheism that rightly rejects a God who made himself human because he had no choice. If one fails to realize that for God, Jesus Christ is the desired Child, the awaited Child, the desired Man, the Man of his dreams, in whom he was well-pleased, in whom he finds his joy, then one cannot believe that God's glory is man fully human in Jesus Christ.

...The humiliation for God doesn't consist in agreeing to 'grow small' in order to become human. Nor in being placed on the level of the small and spending his time with the small. One totally misunderstands the Gospel if one views Christ's predilection for the small as humiliation. The humiliation for God is not so much embracing the human condition as assuming the human conidtion of sinners. He who was without sin took sin upon himself. He was fettered by sin, like a slave, but he was freed by the Resurrection to become the perfectly free man. That's why 'God raised him high, and gave him the name which is above all other names.' And this exaltation of the Son of God becomes in Jesus Christ Risen, the exaltation of man."

Pressing Forward

The never-setting Sun presses forward to rise,
enlightening all things under heaven.
Let us hasten with clean hands and pure deeds to meet Him;
let us prepare to be borne on high with Him in spirit!
Let us beseech Him in His compassion,
that, as He comes in His good pleasure to His own strange birth,
He may lead us, who have become strangers to the path of life in Eden,
into Bethlehem where He comes to be born!




The Word of God, upborne on the shoulders of the Cherubim,
goes to dwell in a womb without blemish.
The passionless One is bound fast to the flesh;
He comes on earth as a man, born of the tribe of Judah.
A cave becomes the palace of the King of all;
the throne of fire is replaced by a manger,
where the Virgin Mary lays Him as a babe,
for He comes to restore the first-created man,
as He is well pleased so to do.

O Word of God without beginning,
the Virgin lays You in a manger of dumb beasts.
You choose to begin Your life in the flesh
in a manner beyond understanding.
You have come to loose me from the fetters of evil
with which the envious serpent bound me.
O Lover of mankind, You are wrapped in swaddling clothes,
tearing to pieces the bonds of my countless sins.
Therefore I joyfully praise and worship your holy birth,
for You came to set me free.

Lists, for Fun

During a recent and long airport/airline day, I created some lists in my journal. If you ever want to amuse yourself, it's good brain-play.

Stuff I Feel I've Sufficiently Noticed/Appreciated/Cherished Thus Far in Life

--the lyrical magic of my neighbor's wind chimes
--the experience of waiting for the mail
--people's accents and dialects
--soap, all kinds
--urban legends
--conspiracy theories
--the aroma of pipes and cigars
--leftovers
--pumice and obsidian
--airplane magazines
--the game of trying to figure out the opposites of various things (for instance: alibi; confession, etc. What
would be the opposite of a projectile?)
--the phrase "What say...?" but only if uttered by people other than myself
--the courage of immigrants
--metaphors and similes
--imaginary friends
--spelling
--chewing gum
--the idea of the "crack" of dawn--is this visual or auditory?
--fissures and cracks--their velocities, trajectories, webbing, etc.
--Dance Dance Revolution
--the face
--the experience of reading books in which people have scrawled their comments and reactions--the more vehement, the better
--altitude sickness

Life Stuff to Which I Have Only Kind of Vaguely Paid Attention, and Should Have Appreciated More

--occasional insomnia
--interruptions, hesitations, awkward pauses--they exude an odd and particular integrity
--betweenness of various kinds
--cell mitosis
--the experience of moving from one medium to another (air to water, for instance, or sweet to salty)
--dogearing book pages
--the idea of various "final frontiers"
--the many varieties of phrases that use the word "dog," all of which completely beyond the comprehension of
of actual dogs: "dog-tired," "dog-eat-dog world," "hangdog," etc.
--glaciation
--the action of stoking a fire
--the word "fortnight"
--Canada
--the compact loveliness of passports
--surreptitiously attempting to glimpse what strangers are reading
--the coexistence in time of all places near and far
--the experience of locating your flight gate and then exploring the rest of the airport

Stuff I Wouldn't Miss If It Completely Vanished

--survival of the fittest
--pickpockets
--exhaust fumes
--pen disasters (leakages, explosions, etc.)
--bad erasers

And at this point, the list ends--my plane must have arrived!

I'd be happy to read other people's lists of any kind!

In the Land of the Living

"I believe I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
Ps. 27

Though I am the Queen of Complainers, I suspect that paradoxically, we can experience God here, in our incompleteness, damage, ongoing struggle to repent, our fragmentedness, our blurriness-of-sight, in ways that are unique to life in time and in these bodies--ways that are precious and unrepeatable--yes, it will all be glorious in the fullness of the eternal kingdom, but this time here/now is so significant that I've heard someone speculate that saints in heaven will be nostalgic for their trials on earth. There are qualities of intimacy with the Holy Spirit and with each other that can be experienced only in this life, only through the process of God's dealing with us here as our healer, physician, transforming designer, etc. from the inside-out and the outside-in, in the context of ambiguous and often frustrating dailiness. There is a communion with God that occurs in the secret places deep beneath the "radar" of our conscious awareness especially when it may seem to us as though nothing much is going on. Glory to God in everything!

Very Narrow

"And know that in life one has to pass over

a very narrow bridge.

The main thing is not to be afraid."

Rebbe Nachman of Breslev

Thermal Suffering--Fire and Ice

Because this was the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, this weekend we sang and heard about the three youths in the fiery furnace. Here is part of that story, from Daniel 3:

Then Nebuchadnezzar in rage and anger gave orders to bring Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego; then these men were brought before the king. Nebuchadnezzar responded and said to them, “Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the golden image that I have set up? “Now if you are ready, at the moment you hear the sound of the horn, flute, lyre, trigon, psaltery and bagpipe and all kinds of music, to fall down and worship the image that I have made, very well. But if you do not worship, you will immediately be cast into the midst of a furnace of blazing fire; and what god is there who can deliver you out of my hands?” Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. “If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with wrath, and his facial expression was altered toward Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. He answered by giving orders to heat the furnace seven times more than it was usually heated. He commanded certain valiant warriors who were in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in order to cast them into the furnace of blazing fire. Then these men were tied up in their trousers, their coats, their caps and their other clothes, and were cast into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire. For this reason, because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of the fire slew those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up.

Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and stood up in haste; he said to his high officials, “Was it not three men we cast bound into the midst of the fire?” They replied to the king, “Certainly, O king.” He said, “Look! I see four men loosed and walking about in the midst of the fire without harm, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!” Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the door of the furnace of blazing fire; he responded and said, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, come out, you servants of the Most High God, and come here!”

Then Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego came out of the midst of the fire. The satraps, the prefects, the governors and the king’s high officials gathered around and saw in regard to these men that the fire had no effect on the bodies of these men nor was the hair of their head singed, nor were their trousers damaged, nor had the smell of fire even come upon them. Nebuchadnezzar responded and said, “Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who has sent His angel and delivered His servants who put their trust in Him, violating the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies so as not to serve or worship any god except their own God.

In his wonderful sermon, our priest talked about the opportunity we are all presented with at some point--to glorify God even though we are in a fiery furnace of suffering.

This story comes up frequently in church, and it never fails to move me. "When the holy Children were cast into the furnace of fire, they changed the fire into dew by their hymnody, as they cried out thus: Blessed are Thou, O Lord, the God of our Fathers."

But this morning as we sang about the youths in the furnace, I thought about the differing thermal environments of various sufferings. Sometimes in sorrow or temptation we feel that we are burning, blistering, parched, or asphyxiating, and other times, we feel that we are somehow freezing--for example, grief, isolation, depression, disappointment, failure, or even deep fatigue can seem like an endless and all-penetrating inner cold. In fact, we can even "feel" that we have lost all feeling--become numb, or mostly numb. And I'm not speaking only of the personal level--certain cultural or social/institutional conditions can create a kind of chill from which there seems no escape. Yet God's presence does not leave us, no matter how extreme our situation. Thinking about that presence while I stood there singing in the choir, I vaguely remembered something I'd read about the polar explorer Shackleton, so this evening, I looked it up--here's that story as found in Alexander Fabry's essay (http://www.theharvardadvocate.com/archives/2007/winter/features_fabry.html)


...After the loss of the Endurance , Shackleton and his men set out on foot, dragging three lifeboats with them until the pack ice was loosened and melted by the comparative warmth of summer. They found refuge on the desolate Elephant Island, and Shackleton set off to find help, navigating a small open boat to South Georgia, incredibly surviving and arranging the rescue of his companions...

...After Shackleton miraculously found his way across 800 miles of open ocean to South Georgia , a further obstacle remained. He had arrived on the wrong side of the island, and the small boat which had carried him so far was rudderless and unfit for journey. They were at the very end of their strength; no-one had ever traversed the island before. First they had marched, then sailed, and now they completed the third impossibility, and climbed towards help. In South , Shackleton concluded his account of the journey by relating a physical encounter with the intangible and ineffable: “I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, ‘Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us'…

As Fabry points out, this later inspired T.S. Eliot to write,

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you.

***

Furnace suffering can feel claustophobic; polar suffering can feel terrifyingly open-ended--huge yet closed skies, trackless wastes, disorientation, a sense of lostness.

Obviously, I'm not in any position to make claims identifying the presence with the explorers--was it a delusion? Was it an angel? Who knows? All I know is that the story speaks to me of grace and presence appearing unexpectedly in the midst of all kinds of suffering, the trial by fire and the ordeal of ice.