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

Lost in Translation (Bruce Cockburn)

Dau yishyeh sta atyaun errdautau 'ndi Yisus

avwa tateh dn-deh Tishyaun stanshi teya wennyau
aha yaunna torrehntehn yataun katsyaun skehnn
Iesus Ahattonnia, Ahattonnia, Iesus Ahattonnia

As they entered and saw Jesus they praised his name,
They oiled his scalp many times, anointing his head
with the oil of the sunflower
                                                                                                              Jesus, he is born

There's a magic to each language, a special way of talking about and describing the world that can't quite translate into the framework of another tongue. We forget that this is true of the Bible as well, and so when we read the Bible in translation we miss some of the depth of meaning and texture of the original. 

The Huron Carol was originally written in Wyandot (also called Wendat) the language of the Wyandot/Huron people of the Ontario region of North America. The carol was a French missionary's way of communicating the message of Christ in terms more familiar to the context of the Wyandot people.

It speaks of Christ who has come to ransom humanity from bad spirits, and the "sky people," (whom we call angels and the Biblical Greek called "messengers") who are here to ask us to rejoice -- literally in Wyandot, to "be on top of life."

It's both sad and interesting, therefore, that this carol got turned into a sentimental hymn about imagining Christ if he were born as an Indigenous American. There's nothing wrong with imagining Christ as being born among other peoples, or honoring the specific ways in which each nation imagines Christ to be "one of us." What doesn't work is when we do this imagining on our terms, in our cultural language instead of trying to understand another's.

So sometimes it's better to dwell in the mystery of words that are foreign to our tongues, terms and ideas that don't quite make sense in translation, and recognize that it is precisely in these places of static and imperfect understanding where the true beauty and mystery of our experience of the incarnation lies.




Jesus Ahatonnia (The Huron Carol from Bruce Cockburn on Myspace.



The incarnation is, in the end, deeply cultural and deeply personal. If we truly believe Christ came for all of us, then there will be ways in which the mystery of the incarnation becomes embedded in another culture that don't make sense to us. ... or, that illuminate our own understanding of the incarnation in a way we'd never come to on our own.

In the common English translation of this carol, God is referred to as Gitchie Manitou, which is actually an Ojibway term meaning, roughly, Great Spirit. Yet the word 'manitou' isn't so easy to describe as simply, "spirit." The "character" of the word manitou is itself changeable meaning sometimes talent... attribute... spirit... potential... potency... substance... essence... mystery.

Even if in the wrong language, I like that embedded in the awkward English translation of this hymn is a word that calls us back to unknowing: the mystery of Christ, the potency he carried even into his birth, the spirit and attributes he embodied even as a young person and into adulthood.  These are the core mysteries of the incarnation, and whether they dwell with us through the medium of another tongue or our own, they offer themselves to our wonder, our reverence, and our great joy in a God who knows no boundaries of language or culture for the Incarnation speaks the native tongue of each and all in slightly different ways.

May you experience the awe of the God Who Comes in a language and culture you know as the same God Who Comes to others in ways that sometimes remain unintelligible... and yet offer the blessing of unknowing, of an experience of God outside language where the heart must guide us Home.

                                                                                              - Anna

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.  

- Luke 2: 9-12

Fri Dec. 23 - An Invitation (Imogen Heap)

And the Word became flesh and lived among us... From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

                      - John 1:14a, 16

incarnation: an improv

 (hit play and read on)

THE TIME IS NIGH. 

Creation braces;

cities shiver

and hide their sharp gleam.

pundits, thieves and martyrs seek solace in oblivion,

laughing at docile folk hunkering against the wind -

the desperate and lonely 
covering their ears 
against echoing angel sounds.

you, too, huddle:

lost, jaded, 
confused; 

reaching, uncertain, 
in the dark...

terrified that you are numb or

terrified that you might feel something --

or terrified that everything matters and you

haven't really paid attention.

have you done enough
to be ready?

have you done anything
at all?

HARK, NOW:

stop asking

all 

the wrong questions.

all you need

is

to open your eyes -

open your eyes -

OPEN YOUR EYES.

widen 
your whole self.

expand --

               allow --

                              release --

just

invite 

the miracle 

to be lit again

in you.

music: Cumulus by Imogen Heap

                                           - Anna

Sat Dec. 17 The Hour of Unknowing (Red Mountain Music)

"Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries." 

 -1 Corinthians 4:1

        


     There is a lot that I don’t know; more that I don’t understand. I’m not even counting the day I was absent from biology when they covered the Mendelian Square. Although, perhaps it was my years of somewhat mediocre scholarship that accustomed me to living in a space of unknowing. On a wider scale, in our modern American culture we don’t really like not having things figured out.  There is a way in which we seek to and, in large part, can control our environments by figuring out systems, workings, cause and effect; sometimes. The only problem is that God can not be controlled by us, or figured out, or systematized.  God is full of mystery.

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers,
wearing
their colored clothes; caps and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at tall,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

-Denise Levertov, Primary Wonder

                                                   Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

          I usually only hear today’s song sung at Christmas Eve church services. So when I hear it images of people gathered late at night in candlelight come to my mind and it reminds me of a moment during this season that I love. It is an hour when unknowing reigns, when we are ok with giving ourselves over to the mystery, surrender to wonder; when we remember that our faith story tells about a Deity that inexplicably came into the world as a baby and dwells among us still in ways of love and welcome that confound us, sometimes to the point of silence.  And perhaps that is the way that we learn to live with mystery, to keep silence and embrace the moments when the Great Mystery surrounds and embraces us.

Teach us to dwell in you, Divine Mystery.