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

Star of Wondering (Anne Trenning)

The best Advent Bible study I have ever been to was with a bunch of 5-7 year olds. Sorry colleagues and friends, sorry pastors and teachers. And to be clear, I have participated in some excellent advent-themed discussions and studies. But my favorite, by far, was one cold Sunday morning, gathered around a table with twelve little hands passing between them figurines of Mary, Joseph and a donkey, while the teacher told the story of their long journey to Bethlehem and of Jesus' birth.

After the story the teacher said "Let's imagine about that long journey, what are some things you wonder about?" And slowly but surely the wonders started to emerge, "I wonder what a donkey feels like?" "Did Mary get cold?" "Did God wish he could hold Baby Jesus when he was born?" The wise teacher didn't answer the wonderings, but just let them hang in the air, sparking our imaginations. 

Advent is a time to wonder. A time when we are confronted with unabashed mysteries and questions whose answers dance just at the edge of our understanding.
A time for small wonders and big wonders, wonders that warm our spirits and those born of our deep longing- 
What do donkeys feel like? 
How do reindeer fly? 
How does selfless love come to us? 
How did such a big God fit into such a tiny baby? 
How can a person's heart change after so long a time? 
Will peace ever come? 

We hold the questions, we visit and revisit them, not as a theological exercise per say (although theologies are fine things to work on) but we hold them in a different way in this season. Maybe they are bathed in the light of hope or ringing an echo of Mary's assertion that all things are possible with God, or maybe they have just been dusted with the magical whimsy of our Christmas culture, a la It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. 

Even so, there is something in that story of a starlit manger, of God breaking into the world in such a way, that pulls us toward a deeper sense of wonder: that mix of awe and mystery and hope, that unsteady, tiptoed longing, reaching, imagining, marveling. Like a child who imagines Santa's trip around the world in one night or someone who open themselves to the mystery of a Love Incarnate. For this season promises one of the greatest wonders of all, that in the midst of our questioning and wondering and longing, Christ comes to dwell.


Today's song has no words. Instead I would encourage you to take these moments to wonder, to question, to marvel at this story, this promise, this hope to which we give our hearts year after year...

Please share with us some of your 'wonders' this season in the comments below.

-Lindsey

All We Can Say (Tracy Chapman)

While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby.  She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger... 

 -Luke 2

Here they are, the usual characters, ushered into our consciousness on this day, as we hear once more the story of travel-weary parents-to-be, lowly shepherds, glorious angels, kings, wise ones, various farm animals and, of course, the babyGod. They remind us that God comes, once more, to be born among us; among the weak, the powerful, the ordinary, the violent, the fearful, the cynical, the innocent… among us.

In the stables of our lives- the lowly and cold places, the messy, chaotic places, the unsuitable and unexpected places-God emerges.  Through the voices of these familiar characters God proclaims, into our time, hope that makes us unafraid, peace and joy that reach out across creation, and Love that has come to save us all.

What can we do on Christmas Eve, but agree?  In today’s song, Tracy Chapman infuses the familiar Christmas hymn with the beautiful and gentle refrain of “Mmmhmm.” What more can we say as we stare again into the manger’s soft light, as again we are embraced by a love that is bigger than we understand? What is left but our awe and a quiet “Yes,” “Let it be so,” or “Mmhmm”?

The wondrous answer to our broken Advent cries of “Come, Lord Jesus,” God’s answer of Love, rushes with possibility all around us. As Shawna Bowman, pastor at Friendship Community Church, writes, “God’s expansive love bellows ‘yes’ through eternity… and it joins us where we are. It is magnified by our own yes – our willingness to love in the same way God loved - to live hard into love in the midst of our messy human god-filled lives.”

So, this Christmas Eve may our spirits answer back "yes." As we spiral again around the luminous mystery, may we dwell in the wonder of the moment when God, in whom all things hold together, became a small baby and reached out to embrace all things in the hold of grace. Yes, we say together, Love has come. Mmhmm, Love has come for us all.

Holy One, let us meet you tonight, in wonder that unfolds and opens our souls and in Love that sounds our depths and echoes through our very being.

-Lindsey

Fri Jan. 6 - Window on the Mystery (1 Giant Leap)

I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen.  I must bring them also.  They, too, will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.  
              - John 10:16


On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.  Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they returned home by another road.
         - Matthew 1:11-12

The shepherds get a lot of air time as being God's unexpected chosen guests at the manger - not powerful kings but the poorest of the poor, called upon to receive the Son of God. But what do we make of those other first guests, mysterious foreigners of other faiths who journeyed afar? Not Mary's 'church family' or religious leaders from Joseph's synagogue, but wisdom seekers, star trackers, faith sojourners?

The fact is, those "Wise Men," don't seem to have become 'Christians' in any recognizable sense either before or after they visited the manger - yet they still came to witness, honor, and give gifts to Jesus where he lay.  They were Zoroastrian foreigners who sensed the in-breaking of God in Jesus and worshiped that divinity, ultimately leaving transformed.  So in a way, this shows that Jesus truly and fully embodied the Divine Mystery which lays at the heart of all religions.  Yet rather than making Christ the center, the period on that Mystery, it also makes Christ the window on the Mystery itself.

As we've explored, that first Christmas was full of surprises and reversals, turning people's expectations upside-down. This Epiphany, we might consider the surprising ways in which Christ's coming continues to upend us, razing the boundaries we had in place, upsetting our rules and expectations.  Over and over, what Christmas really show us is that the God we worship is unlimited by our current understandings of the way the world works - and in the story of the "Wise Men" cannot even be tamed by the boundaries of religions we have tried to erect, transforming both us and others in the process.

I Love the Way you Dream by 1 Giant Leap feat. Asha Bohsle, Michael Stipe, et al.  (lyrics HERE)

Note: Brief nudity in the context of religious ritual toward the end of the video.

As we journey forward from Christmastide into the early days of a new year, may we feel Christ's in-dwelling Spirit making all things new, not just in the world, but in our own vision of the world - of its peoples; of its complicated, messy, problematic, blessing-filled faith traditions; and of God's spiraling, upending, all-encompassing plan for us all.

Thanks for journeying with us- and peace in the coming year!

Its been real, its been fun, its been real fun.

-Lindsey and Anna

Sat Dec. 24 - Things Hold Together (Dave Matthews Band)

Joseph went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.              -Luke 2:5-7

(Anna) Maybe this isn't the most reverent thing to say on Christmas Eve, but babies often remind me of Cracker Jack boxes. They may not all look the same, but there's really no telling what they'll become. Reprobate, saint, mediocre wishy-washer... they all just start out as, well, babies - complete with personalities but not yet shaped by the marks of fate upon their skin. So pause the manger scene for a minute and flash forward thirty or so years: what do we see now? Does it even really matter on Christmas night?

Yes, it matters, because if I can't get it in my head that I'm welcoming a child who isn't just going to sit quietly in a crib forever, but will one day be the pushy, annoying, rabble-rouser that doesn't just implicate people I don't like but who pushes back on me as well, well then I might as well just open my gifts and be done with it. But, if even for a fleeting moment, I can hold on to the fact that there is both something real and pure about the lavish gift of love and peace offered in that silent night in the manger, AND that there is something complicated, messy and uncomfortable about this baby's birth that will (and already had) upset the order of the world -- then I've truly held Christmas in my hands. When it feels almost impossible to hold this paradox in mind, I just remember that the almost-impossible and the nearly-incredible are what lie at the heart of the Christian faith - as this night where God who comes as a human and showers us with 'love, love, love.. all around' so wonderfully proves.

(Lindsey) Every good story has a conflict. Great works of literature, Disney movies, the good story of a friend, they all have something with which the main character must contend: bad guys, hardship, or even her/himself. But this story, this baby, brings our literary preferences pretty close to home. It flips the script. Jesus (as baby, man, God)  is the conflict, the scandal, the sticking point upon which the world's way of being trips and topples - and is the conflict over which we still trip and tumble and are upended.

The story of this night unfolds into the life of Christ - among a long list of characters: 'less-informed authorities,' cynics, jeering neighbors, demanding family members, those who seek violence as a means to peace, people who love their traditions more than anything, and those who will not risk. I have at times inhabited many of those characters in the stories of my own life. But this story is not (only) a great literary work, a moralistic tale, or the story of a friend - this story is more. It is an axis of wonder, a place that we return to year after year, a mysterious truth that we spin round and round. The wonder of it is this: that the conflict and chaos, the resolution, the love, the frailty and the fear are all present as God's grace embraces the world. That in spite of (or, I believe, because of) this complexity, both present in the world and present in us, the Creator came to walk among these 'characters' -- and comes still to walk with us now: the uninformed, the violent, the cynical, the fearful.

And so we fall silent on this Christmas Eve in the face of a love that is bigger than we understand. And we dwell for a moment in the wonder that God, in whom all things hold together, became a small baby and reached out to embrace all things in the hold of grace.


May we be embraced by wonder as Grace is born again to us tonight.

                           - Anna and Lindsey

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.