The Possibility of 'Enough' (Hannah Rand)

"It was cold that night,

just like tonight,

the stars were burning bright

like angels taking flight

But nothing in the world --

nothing in our world --

nothing in the world felt really right"

What to do when everything is full of beauty and it's still all wrong? The creche is ready to welcome Jesus, it's "O Holy Night" time, and we're still squirming in our own skin, or keeping vigil over a deathbed, or rushing to some finish line we can't quite define. 

But maybe that's exactly as it always happens at Christmas, and we just normally don't see it. Brené Brown reflects:

"I went back [to church] for the wrong reasons. I really went back because [in my breakdown] I was like 'This is hard, this hurts' and I went back to church thinking that it would be like an epidural, like it would take the pain away... [but] faith and church was not like an epidural for me at all. It was like a midwife, who just stood next to me, and said:

'Push. This is supposed to hurt a little bit.'

Advent, as it brings us right to the threshold of Christmas, is supposed to hurt a little. All our wild longings, our needs, the brokenness and violence of the world... there are no insta-tools to answer and fix these. Jesus doesn't come with a super easy cure for sorrow or a quick-fix for fear. He comes with nothing 'obvious' at all, born simply from the blood and tears and determination of his mother, the faithfulness and hopefulness of his father... into a little nowhere place in a nowhere town.

"you came with nothing

you came with nothing but love

you came to show us:

love might be enough"

Lindsey: I often wonder about the familiar characters of the Christmas story, whether they experienced the signs and wonders of angels and a star, and God’s movement among us, with the same bewildered, uncertain curiosity that I sometimes feel when I glimpse God moving. Frequently, when I experience God, I am not quite sure what is happening, or if I am imagining things, but I try to be able to say, maybe, just maybe, God is up to something here. 

Perhaps Mary and Joseph and the shepherds knew exactly what was going on -- how huge and important this moment was. Perhaps. Or perhaps in the midst of the uncertainty, in the tension between the expected Messiah and the stable birth, in the company of this strange cast of characters, they rested in what might be. Perhaps for them, as for us, the simple miracle is that in the glowing light of that manger, we can open ourselves to the possibility, give our hearts to the idea, choose to believe together that Love might be enough.  

  

With Nothing by Hannah Rand and Me, You & Her 
(HERE for more album info and free download from the artists!)

Anna: In reality, we are midwifed into Christmas by the Advent season: pushing through our layers of worry and waiting, hope, doubt, rage, desire, grief, and finally...perhaps... we fall silent in wonder at the inconceivable determination God has to just love us throughout history, straight into the flesh and blood of life... to be with us in the midst of everything.

"sing alleluia

sing alleluia

sing alleluia

let love be enough"

Is Love enough? If it's just the really sweet, peaceful, comforting, warm feelings we want at Christmas, I'm not really sure it is. But let's remember that it's this same exact Love that years later wakes up the fishermen, Peter and Andrew, from their lakeside nets, the same exact Love that shakes up the Pharisees and the tax collectors and the townspeople, that same. exact. Love. that shows up so clear and so strong that eventually we just had to look away and cover our ears and...

But no one wants to go there at Christmas. We want to stick with the epidural version of love, even when we all know that often "nothing in the world feels really right." We want to flee to the Christmas Eve candlelight, or the chaos of the children's nativity reenactment, and be charmed or soothed into Christmas, even though we also know that for love to truly be "enough" to speak to the hurt in this world it can't just lull us to sleep.

Yet what might be happening in the midst of the actual chaos of this world is that instead of singing us lullabies, God might be saying "Push." God might be asking us to participate in the birth of Christ in a way we normally don't dare imagine: not as spectator or shepherd, but as Mary herself, living in the pain and the unknowing and the chaos of the present-tense. Choosing to believe that God-in-Christ might indeed be born within all this mess -- and that Love is, indeed, enough.

It will be cold and dark where we live tonight. We will arrive at the Eve of the Light's Coming worn out or confused, unready or joy-filled. The point is: no matter how we come, if we are willing to live into the discomfort and the doubt enough to PUSH --- we can allow Christ to be born again, a little more fully, in us again tonight.

May your courage open you to what is being born anew tonight in the world and in yourself. May your hope guide you to look for where Love is dawning. May you shine on, shine on, on this blessed Christmas Eve.

Sing Alleluia!!

-- Lindsey and Anna

"The people who walked in darkness

    have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

    on them light has shined.

You have multiplied the nation,

    you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

    as with joy at the harvest,

    as people exult when dividing plunder.

For the yoke of their burden,

    and the bar across their shoulders,

    the rod of their oppressor,

    you have broken as on the day of Midian.

For all the boots of the tramping warriors

    and all the garments rolled in blood

    shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child has been born for us,

    a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders;

    and he is named

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

His authority shall grow continually,

    and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

    He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

    from this time onward and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this."

- Isaiah 9: 2-7

It All Falls Down (Sufjan Stevens)

image courtesy Alejandro Heredia

"One mother rises
Pulling the sheets from the crib
All the disguises
Wandering stars, what she did.
All the king's horns
All the kings men
Saddled and worn...
Raise the dead.
Holy, an infant
He came to raise up the dead"

Sometimes a song is Advent down to its bones... even if I can't figure out why. This was the case for last year's Mogwai song I featured on A.M.P., as well as for today's "All the King's Horns." Certainly, a Sufjan Stevens song seems like a safe bet, given its' presence on his 2003 "Songs for Christmas" album, but when I really listen to the lyrics... I'm not sure what I'm listening to. Is this a hopeful song? An omen? Is it even mostly about Christmas at all?





If I could rename this song, it would be called "It All Falls Down." What I hear are portents of things to come, the unrest of nations and the victims of violence brought back to life. I hear the heavens rearranging themselves, and the turning upside-down of all things. I hear "shapeless surprises" in all forms. I hear not just Christmas, that historical event, but Advent.

Basically, I hear this: 

“My soul glorifies the Lord
    and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
    of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
    for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
    holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
    from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
    he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
    but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things

    but has sent the rich away empty."
                          - Luke 1: 46b-53

In Mary's words, Advent and Christmas truly embrace. Some have noted that her words are in the past tense, suggesting that even before Christ's birth, Mary was intimately aware that something was already moving, things were already upending... Humpty Dumpty had already been toppled, and not even all the kings horses, and all the king's men...

It All Falls Down. This could sound like a sentence of doom, but when we are confronted with powers and principalities of this world that seem all too solid, when we are faced with injustice and violence, poverty and brokeness seemingly without end -- it might be a word of profoundest comfort to remember that all of it, all of it, will one day come tumbling down through the astonishing grace of God-in-Christ. 

I choose to believe that this is a song about hope. The difficult, messy kind that isn't totally harmonious. Not all the lyrics of a hope like this seem to make sense, but taken as a whole...what you get is a baby that topples rulers, born in the midst of unrest and portents of his own future death. A baby born to a fierce and faithful mother who said one tremendous yes that helped change everything from that day forward (it's what she did). A Christ who continues revealing this revolution started over 2,000 years ago even now. Even in me. Even in you.

What you get is Advent.

Today may you shine with a messy, illogical hope that moves mountains and topples principalities. May you co-create with God in Christ for the upending of all things. May you trust that you, too, are being re-created this Advent toward the renewal of all things.

Shine on.

                                                                                             -- Anna

Too Much To Believe (The New Pornographers)

Joseph really doesn't get a lot of airtime in the Christmas story, or in Christmas music in general. So I love the depiction of Joseph in today's song as a worried, harried, slightly outcast partner, trying to decide if he can "be cool" with this whole Son-of-God Born-of-a-Virgin 'Christmas' thing. 

We know from Matthew's gospel that Joseph has a change of heart about his role with Mary (and therefore Jesus) after being visited by the Angel Gabriel in a dream, but I imagine this song taking place in the time before that strange dream, as Joseph wandered the streets, brooding, wondering what would become of his life plans. The song illustrates his thoughts like this: 

I know this child was sent here

to heal our broken time

and some things are bigger than we know

You're asking me to believe too many things

You're asking me to believe too many things...

Joseph Who Understood by The New Pornographers - Lyrics HERE.

How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God.

How vast is the sum of them!

I try to count them -- they outnumber the grains of sand;

I come to the end -- I am still with you.

- Psalm 139: 17-18

One of the ways we often find ourselves holding the mystery as Advent draws us toward Christmas is when our intellectual doubts and our need for control rub up against the incomprehensibility of God. We find ourselves trying to believe too many things: that God became fully human in Christ; that this Jesus has something to do with us today; that God has not abandoned the world; that God cares at all about our puny, messy lives; that Christ will come again to reconcile and make new... it's all very heady stuff.

Luckily, believing isn't just about our minds. The root of the word 'believe' means "to give one's heart to." In the end, we are faced with one simple question: can we give our heart to this story of God Incarnate, of a mewling baby who will become the messiah of an upside-down kingdom of grace?

This is no small question. To give our hearts to this story asks something of us: we are called to wrestle a blessing from it, just as Joseph struggles in this song to wrestle a blessing from his strange circumstances. In the song he symbolizes more than just the Biblical character, but many doubting partners, many doubting hearts, asking, "Mary, is he mine?"

Is this small Christ, this someday-revolutionary, mine? Ours?  Not ours to own, but to cherish and wrestle with, to question and ponder, to hold in wonder and awe.  

What does your heart say as you venture deeper into the Christmas story?

May you find your heart captivated by a story to which you can give your heart anew each day, with awe and curiosity, creativity and hope.

                                                                                                 - Anna

Finding Our Bearings (Aimee Mann)

 

“We are all meant to be mothers of God...What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of Man is begotten in us.”  
-Meister Eckhart

 

 

 

      Mary. Standing right in the middle of the mystery of this season, this solitary young woman; the human anchor, around which, so many questions, doubts, and wonders rush and spin. Each year I return to her story to find in myself both a deep identification with her ordinary-teenage-girl-ness and a great sense of intrigue around her venerability. These mingle into a sense of wonder and wondering, my own sense of curiosity and imagining gets sparked.  I am not the only one to experience this draw to Mary; there have been so many writings, poems and films about her, across time.

One that continues to stick with me is from Jan Richardson:

“They still argue, Mary, about whether you were a virgin. Maybe it’s never bothered me because something deep inside me knew the truth: that you were whole, that you were a woman unto yourself, that you chose freely, that you were a soul mother, a spirit catcher, a God bearer even before you consented to open your womb,” (Night Visions).

 

      Mary’s story draws me, it questions me, and it inspires me. So does Dorothy’s story. I met Dorothy today, when I went to visit her father. He is suffering from dementia and is no longer able to leave the house to attend our church. Dorothy moved back from California to care for her father and her sister, who is also in failing health. As Dorothy led the three of us in prayers of thanksgiving today, I was left wondering, rather left in wonder of her spirit of grace and joy. There are bearers of God among us still, these marys bring Christ into the world each day, as they give birth to love, hope, peace and grace among us.

 

                                                              Read full lyrics here.

 

      We seed the hope when we recognize them, when we recall their example, when we take up their work, when we lift our hearts and our voices in thanksgiving to the God who chooses to enter the world each day, born by ordinary people: spirit catchers, God bearers. Whether we call out voluntarily, as today’s song suggests or our call is necessitated by loneliness, sadness, need; whether we consider ourselves “the miracle kind” or skeptics, there is power in calling up for ourselves, remembering, connecting with those who bear God into our world, those who light the way, from the  past and in the present. May we find among these God Bearers, encouragement, belonging, strength and challenge.

 

So today, I am calling on Mary, show me how to resist the sleep;

I am calling on Dorothy, help me now to seed my hope;

Calling on Alfred and Pastor Jacob

Calling on Etty Hillesum, Dolores Huerta,

Calling on Valerie and Martin

Calling on Carol, Desmond Tutu, John

Calling on Matthew, Mercy Oduyoye, Rubem Alves, and Georgia…

 

 

Who are the Bearers of God in your life?

                                            ...Thanks be to God.

-Lindsey

**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.**