Why We Do It Again, and Again (Frightened Rabbit)

Graffiti Alley by AshtonPal

"It's Christmas so we'll stop 

It's on with the lights to warm the dark 

- It can go elsewhere -

As the rot stops for today

Let the rot stop just for one day"

What if the incarnation doesn't happen this year? Not literally, of course, but in the secret ways we hope for: the change in perspective, the prayer answered, the possibilities fulfilled... the tangible ways in which we are desperate to feel God moving today, now. 

What if they don't happen? What if we don't feel anything and nothing changes? Why do this Christmas nonsense at all, then?

This is a deeply uncomfortable question, because I do believe that celebrating Christmas is more than just a nice ritual or quaint historical remembrance. I believe the incarnation of Christ has power to turn this world entirely upside down every single year. 

But no matter what I think, the fact is: there is ZERO evidence that this happens. Families fall apart, or beloved friends die, or things just stay as screwed up as ever. Meth labs operate on Christmas. People get raped on Christmas. Children get killed and terrible memories get made just like the nice ones.

And the day after, or twelve days after, we put away the tinsel and... nothing. Life goes back to what it was. 

Maybe I sound like a Christmas depressive, wanting to join Frightened Rabbit in both their hopes and prayers in this song to "let the rot stop just for one day" and then realizing that "the tree lights brightened the rodent's eyes." 

But here's the difference between this song and what I believe: I believe this song is 100% true (rats and all) and believe that the incarnation is right here anyway.

Do you hear it?

Frightened Rabbit - It's Christmas So We'll Stop

I didn't hear anything but sadness the first ten times I listened to this song, because on the surface of these lyrics, there are only dashed hopes. But when we live into the Incarnation -- I mean, not politely, but free fall, base jump, hang glide, deep plunge into the Incarnation -- we agree to go way past the surface of things and risk sounding a little unrealistic and a lot strange. We agree to give our hearts to nutso stories of God coming as a baby, and we agree to act like these are more than just interesting symbolic ideas. We agree to believe, in the face of all facts and reality, that the world has fundamentally changed because of God's drawing-near. We agree to live in trust that opportunity, transformation, and redemption lie behind even the most ugly, inhumane realities.

Because Incarnation happens in the ugliness. Incarnation happens in the lostness, and sin, and deepest, most bone-shattering grief we can imagine. And these places don't get fixed. They don't, maybe, even seem to change at all. And yet, Incarnation is there. 

This belief isn't just some self-reassuring treacle to make me feel better on Christmas morning -- in fact, this knowledge should make me more uncomfortable than ever. Can I really begin to perceive the world like this without trying to gloss over the pain of others, or become complacent to need? Can I live like this song is true and like God-made-flesh is true, too?

I don't know. Probably not, most of the time.

So this is why I practice. 

Every. 

Single. 

Year. 

I drag out the lights and sing the songs and make the food not because any of this is required, but because, within reason, these rituals force me to consider how important all this baby Jesus nonsense is to me after all. 

Is it worth doing again, this Christmas thing?

I say yes, and again: YES. Because I need this revolutionary story for myself as much as anyone, and because this is the core of how we Shine On. 

As Advent draws down into the particularity of Christmas, we Shine On into the world's unmet expectations and unclear hopes and unanswered needs with joy-filled defiance, with humor and clear-eyed hope. We Shine On with the bizarre and still totally passionate belief that this small being, this Christ child, is, for now and always, the fulcrum on which the whole world spins, is the only power that matters, and the only hope worth following. 

"He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ...For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things..." 

- Colossians 1: 15-17, 19-20

So I Shine On this Christmas. And onward again, until there is a time when I can hold this song and my Advent hopes together and do full honor to both (on any given day) and know that Christ is being born again in me right now, Incarnate, humble, divine.

May you radiate passion and compassion in these days, 

may you mirror the truth of the world and the Truth of God, 

may you shine onward with defiance and grace 

and a beautiful broke-down hope 

as you participate in this messy, gorgeous world 

and look beyond the surface 

for the Incarnation that holds it all together.

                                                                                    -- Anna

Double Vision (Talib Kweli)

I've died enough by now I trust 
just what's imperfect or ruined.
...And a million others might be like me, our hopes
a kind of illegal entry, a belief in smashed windows...

- from God the Broken Lock
         by David Rivard



I believe in smashed windows. I believe in ruined bodies and limping minds. Not just in hope for their healing (sometimes), but with deep conviction in the preciousness of the bearers of brokenness themselves - which is all of us, in some regard. Brene Brown puts it this way, "what makes me vulnerable is what makes me beautiful."

Most of the time, though, I don't act like what is broken is beautiful - especially in myself or in the society in which I live.  I can have a gaze of such grace and loving-kindness for another, but forget to turn it on myself -- or harbor such anger about injustice or dysfunction in society that I forget to applaud the weeds and wildflowers that break through the concrete.

David Rivard's poem, excerpted above, reflects on himself as a young boy breaking into a concert hall with friends. Crawling around and then falling asleep, they awake to the sounds of a famous soul quartet warming up - not on their own hits, but on gospel songs about Jesus. Jesus, who spent his whole life turning his gaze not on the whole, the beautiful, the acclaimed, but on the ugly, humiliated, broken, and cast out.

Talib Kweli says it this way: "I approach it from another angle / I stay in the streets and notice the gutter rainbows." Gutter Rainbows of spilled oil and sunlight, even though "the pain that you will discover is making the angels shudder." Beauty doesn't take away the pain of our experiences, nor does it make them 'okay.' Beauty can be our survival mechanism, however, our way of looking with fresh eyes, and creating with a spirit of hope. Seeking beauty in the mess is our resistance to despair.

Gutter Rainbows by Talib Kweli. Lyrics HERE.

In our Advent waiting, it can be hard to keep this double vision of hard truth-telling about our brokenness and need, and also our belovedness and beauty. Our world was created good, and though we've invented a thousand sad ways to pervert it, the fundamental goodness remains. It can be vertigo-inducing to practice "seeing double" during Advent, but it's the most honest way to remember what we still can't see at all:

"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known."      - 1 Cor 13: 12

Double vision, actually, is a difficult 'handicap.' It is tiring, requiring slow movement and frequent rest. It can cause headaches, nausea. In the end, it is supremely uncomfortable to see two views of the world at the same time. Yet the side-effects themselves teach us the fundamental truth of our own vision: we always see double, and it's our minds that condense the images into one. For a season, therefore, we seek more diligently for a double perspective so that we might carry forward the remembrance that we are hard-wired to see two things at the same time -- to hold the paradoxes of brokenness and beauty, pain and possibility, as one.

In the season of Advent, may your double vision grow stronger, may you discern silhouettes of grace and beauty in even the most craggy passes.

                                                                                              - Anna


**This week, we'll take YOUR suggestions for what songs help you Seed the Hope or Resist the Sleep. Post a YouTube link with your thoughts and we'll re-post them all on our Saturday post.**