Mary And Eve/Mary and Elizabeth (A Pair of Poems)

Happy New Year!

As we start 2017, I thought I would post a couple more poems that I wrote during Advent this year. This is a pair of poems meant to be read together. Mary, mother of Jesus, is the person the poems hold in common. In the first poem, she is with Eve, the first woman God created and the "mother of all living." And in the second, she is with Elizabeth, her cousin and the mother of John the Baptist.

********

Mary and Eve

Two women meet in a transfigured land,

Both mothers, one ancient and one young.

One kneels and weeps while one shines and stands,

Both sing the gospel song which must be sung.

Mary is a graceful, budding tree

Who hears the Word and lifts her arms in praise.

Her fervent yes will one day be the key

To God’s descent, his broken ones to raise.

Eve is broken, tired, bent and sad,

An unrooted willow who craves to know

How God will come to reverse the bad,

And o’er the shadowed world let true light flow.

Two women meet: one cries for what’s undone,

The other points to Him through whom the world will be re-won.

EMP, Advent 2016

 Mary and Elizabeth

Two women meet in an ordinary town.

Both expectant, one middle-aged and one a girl.

They embrace with work worn hands, in homespun gowns,

Each one a jewel, bright sapphire and pearl.

Elizabeth’s face shines with radiant light

For when they touch, her baby jumps for joy.

Filled with prophetic energy and might,

She honors her cousin and her cousin’s unborn boy.

Mary is amazed to once more hear and feel

That the One she carries is indeed called Lord.

She sings how he has come to rule and heal,

To love the poor and save the broken world.

Two women: both filled with God’s own might,

Their hug a loving step in His banishment of night.

EMP, Advent 2016

Nouwen's Reflections on Mary

Just read these reflections from Henri Nowen's Gracias!, which tie in beautifully with some of the reflections I wrote and posted here yesterday. For your pondering....

"Mary experienced uncertainty and insecurity when she said yes to the angel. She knew what oppression was when she didn't find a hospitable place to give birth to Jesus. She knew the sufferings of mothers who see their children being thrown into the air and being pierced by bayonets; she lived as a refugee in a strange land with a strange language and strange customs; she knew what it meant to have a child who does not follow the regular ways of life but creates turmoil wherever he goes; she felt the loneliness of the widow and the agony of seeing her own son being executed. Indeed, Mary is the woman who stands next to all the poor, oppressed, and lonely women of our time...

Every word in Scripture about Mary points to her intimate connection with all who are forgotten, rejected, despised, and pushed aside. She joyfully proclaims: 'He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.' (Luke 1:52-53)"

Jesus Came For Us All

Battling some side effects from the new chemo drug, I am sometimes finding myself once again waking up in the middle of the night and struggling to get back to sleep. Often I am nauseated and needing to focus on something (anything!) in the midst of my uncomfortable wakefulness. Sometimes I read, sometimes I listen to music or pray. Sometimes I check in on social media, both to look for beautiful images and to catch up with wakeful friends or those or live in a different time zone.

I was on Facebook in the wee small hours last night and ran across a meme that once again, has me baffled and frustrated over the power of the "culture wars" in our country, as well as worried about the lack of depth in our understanding of the gospel. This was a type of meme that has been circulating for several weeks. A usual version has a picture of the nativity and something that relates the fact that the holy family were refugees.

What gets me every time is not the message of the meme itself (though in meme fashion, it is sometimes presented in less than gracious terms...the one I saw last night was lashing out at some of the responses to earlier, more gracious versions, and basically saying if you didn't believe Jesus and his family were refugees, you shouldn't celebrate Christmas). What gets me is the Pharisaical reaction to the meme, in which commenters, many of whom clearly would identify themselves as Christians, are a) stating absolutely that Jesus and his family were NOT refugees, b) that even if they were, they were a different kind of refugee than those living in our world today, and c) that anybody who posts this is clearly a liberal who doesn't read or understand the Bible and thus deserves censure and mocking. The overall message in the comments, the ones I can stomach when I'm feeling nauseated at 4 a.m., seem to encapsulate that "this is not what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." In so doing, they seem to be capturing the idea that Christmas is about Jesus' birth, divorcing that instance of the birth somehow from the overall deep theological truth of the incarnation, Jesus taking on flesh and becoming human.

The distinction that critics of this meme like to make is that Jesus and his family were not refugees on the night that Jesus was born. They point out that Mary and Joseph had not gone to Bethlehem as refugees. They had gone to be registered in a census. True enough. Let's look at Luke 2:1-5...

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ And all went to be registered, each to his own town. ⁴ And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, ⁵ to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

  
So Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem to be registered in a census which was decreed by Caesar Augustus. This was the Roman Emperor who pretty much believed he controlled the whole world, and who in some sense, at that time, did control a lot of it. He was the head of a mighty Roman empire whose reach was incredibly long and powerful, so long and powerful that they had eaten up a lot of other people's lands and put themselves in charge everywhere they could. The Israel in which Mary and Joseph lived was an oppressed place. All you have to do is to look at other parts of the gospels, perhaps especially some of the narratives regarding Jesus' crucifixion, to gain a fuller understanding of just how oppressed the Jews were under the Romans. 

Mary and Joseph didn't exactly flee to Bethlehem as refugees, no, but they walked about 90 miles as a young, impoverished couple, one of whom was pregnant (and whom we can easily and truthfully identify with unwed teenagers) to do the bidding of an emperor who had oppressed their people. Their registration in such a census was probably related to the fact that once you were enrolled, you could be taxed (which is why some translations read that way). If we're looking for ways to relate to the people in this gospel narrative, and to understand who they were: poor, tired, oppressed, stressed, and taxed could be some appropriate adjectives.

The difficulty of their circumstances continues as we read on in Luke's narrative. I'm not stopping to get into the scholarly debate here about whether or not they really stayed in a stable (no sentimental 19th century barn, for sure) or a cave or a relative's house that had an open area with an animal feeding trough in it. It's probably enough for us to know that there is no room for them at the inn where they originally stop, and so they have to make do with whatever they can find. And that the only bed they can lay their newborn swaddled son in, happens to be a manger where animals feed. I think we can add unwelcomed and exhausted to the adjectives without having to stretch too far imaginatively. 

Are we beginning to get a picture here? Jesus came to be born to identify with all humanity, to take on human flesh and to experience the difficulties and challenges of living in a broken world he had come to heal. He willingly entered into that brokenness. Although Jesus was part of the Godhead and the true ruler of the world, God didn't choose to send him as a human baby into a wealthy and influential family. He was NOT born the son of Caesar Augustus or even Herod the Great, the Jewish regional leader who was an arrogant, violent man and essentially a puppet of the oppressive Romans. God sent him to be part of a family that was poor and oppressed, but who loved God with all their hearts and were astounded to be part of his unfolding story. Thankfully, any of us who have ever felt poor and oppressed or actually been so in any way, can be amazed that the Creator would send his only Son to live in this way and to identify with our pain.

But (I can hear people who are scared  or scornful of refugees argue) they weren't refugees. Well, no, I guess not technically, not on the night he was born. They became refugees, of course, when Herod, freaked out that there was word that Jesus was born to be "king of the Jews" (a word he got from foreigners who had read the sky and Jewish prophecies and come to this incredible recognition) might grow up to become a political threat. According to Matthew, he ordered the death of every child, aged two and under, in the region where Jesus was born. Apparently it had been a while since Jesus was born when the wise men from the East showed up, and they were not entirely sure of the date of his birth...Herod in a sweeping rage and a fit of panic just decided to kill a lot of children to be sure he had wiped out his political threat. Blessedly, God warned Joseph in a dream what was about to happen. The angel tells him to take Mary and Jesus and to "flee to Egypt," which is what, of course, he does -- Joseph gets a lot of angelic messages from God, and he is always obedient and faithful to follow the instructions.  So Joseph, Mary, and a very young child Jesus go on the run to an ancient land where their ancestors once spent 400 years in slavery, to get away from a violent king who desires Jesus' death and who clearly has no compunction about killing children. 

Are they refugees? Yes. And could today's refugees relate to their situation? I think so. Many of the refugees we see today, some of whom are fleeing areas not too far from where Jesus and his family grew up and lived, are fleeing poverty and violence and are in real fear for their lives. Like the holy family, they are looking for shelter and compassionate welcome.

But (the critics interrupt again) some of the so called refugees who want to get into our country are actually people who want to hurt us! And (they also add) the Holy Family weren't refugees on Christmas! That came later in the story! (Truly...these are the kinds of arguments I have read.)

I'd like to tackle those issues in reverse order. First of all, Jesus' birth, important and beautiful as it is to read about, is not about one night, reverently silent or otherwise. It is about Jesus, the eternal Son of God, whom John calls the "Word" and about him doing this:

The Word became flesh and blood,
    and moved into the neighborhood. 

(John 1:14, in the Message paraphrase...traditional translations say he came to "dwell among us.") 

This is the point. He came to live among us and to BE one of us. He came to be human and to relate to our hardest, most difficult experiences as humans (as well as our joys). And he came because, in John's words again, from chapter 3:  "God so loved the world." The whole world. The entire world. Me and you. People like us and people not like us. People we love and people we find it hard to love. People who need hope and help and shelter, but also people we think of as our enemies. He came to love the lost and the poor and the broken. He came to love the Pharisees who were so confused by their clinging ways to traditional religion that they couldn't easily comprehend the radical light that had come into the world. He also came to love the prostitutes and the tax collectors, those collaborators who actually joined hands with the oppressive Romans (probably out of fear and greed) to collect taxes from their Jewish neighbors, often taking more than was needed so they could get their own corrupt cut of the money. Matthew was a tax collector before becoming a disciple whom Jesus called! Zaccheus was one too, before Jesus got hold of his life by calling him down from his precarious perch in a tree!

We cannot sentimentalize and compartmentalize Jesus's birth away from this ultimate truth of the incarnation. We can't say that Jesus doesn't love and care for refugees because he didn't happen to technically be one on the night of his birth. The entire incarnation matters. Jesus taking on flesh began with his conception and moved on through his entire life, including his death on the cross when he was executed at the hands of fearful Jewish leaders and corrupt Roman rulers (the Sanhedrin wanted him dead but didn't have the political power to put him on a cross; the Romans were only too happy to do away with any political threats by bringing out one of their favorite means of execution).  Jesus' incarnation also included his amazing resurrection three days after his death. These things were all part of his life, and it is his whole life that we can look at, cling to, learn from, enter into, be saved by and be grateful for, not just one piece of it that happens to agree with our picture of what it looks like for God to love us.

Most of the refugees begging for asylum in our world today are not looking to create trouble or to inflict pain. While it's true that sometimes unbalanced and violent people do cross borders to create trouble (the kind of sin we see in the biblical Herod is still alive and well in sinners today) it is not the norm. Most of what we see in the refugee community are people fleeing poverty, violence, and injustice, the kinds of things that Jesus and his family lived under, the kind of violence and injustice that sent the child Jesus fleeing into Egypt and that put him on a cross. So it's not a misreading of the Scriptures for people to say that Jesus and his family should compel us to be compassionate to refugees, even if putting such a sentiment in a meme with a Christmas card picture of the nativity makes that harder for some to understand. And mocking such people for their lack of biblical understanding is wrong as well as mean-spirited. 

Welcoming strangers is hard for all of us because we live with our own sin and fear, just as refugees do. In the affluent west, our fears may look a little different than our brothers and sisters who are fleeing persecution or oppressive governments. We fear people who don't look like us or don't speak our language. We fear people who might come in with violent intentions and try to hurt us and hurt our country. We fear what we don't understand, and in our sinfulness, we refuse to get close enough to learn who others really are at heart. 

But we serve an amazing God who came to identify with all of us, to be one of us because he loves each and every one of us. It's mind-boggling, but that means that God even loved Herod, crazy and hard as that seems. We know for a fact that he loved Saul, a man who terrorized the early church by persecuting and putting Christians to death. He loved him enough to appear to him, give him spiritual sight, turn his world upside down, and call him to follow him. Saul, whose name changed to Paul (showing his brand new identity) became a missionary and one of the main writers of the New Testament.

The story of Jesus' birth is beautiful and true, but it is a radical story that encapsulates not just what happened on one starry night when the angels cried their glorias to a field of shepherds (hmm....an interesting place to make a royal birth announcement!) but the entire amazing news that God had become man. He took on human flesh not only to love us and identify with us during the years he lived, but so he could one day sacrifice that flesh and redeem us from the bondage of sin and death. His whole story, including his eternal life before he became human, is part of who he is from the very start. Saying he technically wasn't a refugee on the night he was born is not really a point worth making. First of all, because he would soon become one, and that is as much a part of his life as the night of his nativity and his ultimate death on the cross. And secondly, or perhaps I should have said this first, in a way that we can almost see as refugee-like, Jesus had already made the most incredible sojourn from one home to another ever, as we read in Philippians (written by Paul!) chapter 2, verses 6-8:

"though he was in the form of God, (he) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,⁷ but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. ⁸ And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

 In another astounding passage, 2 Corinthians 8:9, Paul tells us:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." 

This is the Lord we follow, a Lord who humbled and emptied himself to this degree, who left the best home anyone could ever have (a home we will, by grace, one day know too) to come live in a world that was broken and poor and bent, a world that would misunderstand him, mock him, threaten him, and eventually kill him. A world filled with violent, rich, and oppressive rulers; stuffy, arrogant religious leaders; impoverished, oppressed families; refugees who cannot find welcomes, and so many more kinds of people we could name. He came for us all. He loves us all. He desires each one of us to repent and to walk in relationship with him. He longs for us to know him in his humanity and divinity, and he longs for us to love the humanity of our neighbors, no matter who they are, because each one is made in his image. He wants us to reach out to them with the kind of love we have come to know in him. 

St. Theresa of Avila and Trevor Hudson (on Souls, Gardens, and a Loving God)

I'm reading my way somewhat slowly through Majestic is Your Name: A 40-Day Journey in the Company of Theresa of Avila. I say somewhat slowly because I'm not doing it daily, and during the worst craziness of our move (and we're still unpacking) I missed a bunch of days. But I am over half-way through now, and I continue to find that my heart resonates with this great Carmelite teacher. (I've been realizing that I've always had a love for the Carmelites, but I'll save that insight for another post.)

Today's beautiful devotional included these words from St. Theresa, excerpted from her Life:

"When you enter into the spiritual life through the gateway of prayer, you would do well to see yourself as one who has set out to create a garden.

This garden is a place wherein our Lord wants to come and walk and to take pleasure...His Majesty wants to uproot the weeds and plant in this garden many fruitful and fragrant and blossoming plants. You may take it for granted that the Lord is already afoot, walking in His garden, if you have had any desire to seek him in prayer, for He always calls to us first and it is His voice we hear when we think it is our desire to pray.

If we want to be good gardeners of this new-sown soul, we must, with God's help, see to it that the good plantings are tended and grow -- and I am speaking now of the godly virtues. At very least, we must see that these good things are not neglected and die. Rather, we tend our souls carefully so that the first blossoms appear.

These are the spiritual "fragrances" that begin to rise from our lives -- the fragrances of faith, goodness, self-control, love, and the like. By them, many, many others are refreshed in spirit and attracted to the Lord...Then our Lord himself comes to walk in the midst of our garden. And it is all our joy to sense that He is there, taking pleasure in these lovely virtues."

I love this whole extended metaphor! (And quick side-note to poetic self, a slip of my neuropathied fingers made me realize that "soil" and "soul" are just one letter off.) I love the expression "fragrances of faith..." and that the purpose of the growing of good things is our lives is at least threefold: for our Lord's pleasure, for our own growth and joy, and for the refreshment of others that they may be drawn to the loving Lord and King we know.

I also love how the Lord, in his goodness, has this meditation dancing in my heart and mind today along with another meditation I've been contemplating for a few days, from Trevor Hudson's book Beyond Loneliness: The Gift of God's Friendship. I've been slowly working my way through the second chapter there, entitled "God's Passionate Longing for Friendship" in which he makes a couple of wonderful points. One is that God, of course, already has passionate and beautiful friendship within the triune Godhead. He did not create us because he *needed* friendship, but because he wanted it. He created us not out of need, but out of "the abundance of this divine relational life." He wants us to know that life, and so he invites us into it. And he takes the initiative to do this.

Where do we first see this? In the garden, the first garden, where we see the very first question in the Scriptures. The question is "where are you?" and God asks it of Adam and Eve when they hide from him after sinning because they are afraid.

I remember my daughter, when we read this story together when she was very little, asking me "why did God ask them that?" I think she was five or six at the time, and it already occurred to her very young mind that it seems like an odd question for the God of the universe to be asking. I remember her pointing out that God, being God, would know where they were. And it's true. He would also know why they were hiding. So why does he ask? As Hudson points out, he asks because

"even when we mess up, when we let ourselves down, when we fail to obey God, God does not reject us. Nor does God give up on us. Rather God comes looking for us. God continues to pursue our companionship. God knows the worst about us, but that knowledge does not prevent God from taking the initiative in reaching out to us. Here is the bottom line of God's good news: Nothing can ever extinguish the flame of God's passionate longing to be our friend."

Let's hear that last line again, and let's put it in bold: Nothing can ever extinguish the flame of God's passionate longing to be our friend. Can you hear that truth on this wintry Advent evening, during a season of life and love and light in the midst of darkness? God longs for us. And he longs to walk with us in the beautiful garden that together with him, we can create of our lives. He didn't have to go looking for Adam and Eve. But he did, because that is who he is, and has been, from all eternity. Jesus revealed God's heart to us even further when he gave us the picture of the Good Shepherd who went in pursuit of the one sheep who had wandered off from the fold.

Contemplate that amazing heart of God this Christmas. Contemplate that the loving heart that went to the cross has always, from the beginning of time, come looking for us when we are lost. That he does that for you, for me, and for every single person who ever lived. There is no one beyond the reach of that grace, no one he doesn't long to find and bring back into a close walk with him in a beautiful garden. When we know this with all our heart, it will shine forth from us in gospel beauty, refreshing others and attracting them to his heart. That's why we're here on earth, and for no other, deeper reason, I am coming to believe. We are here to learn to walk with him and to draw others into that loving walk.

Hidden Christmas: Timothy Keller Shares the Gospel With Clarity and Beauty

In recent years, Timothy Keller has become one of my favorite spiritual writers currently writing today. I have read a handful of his books in whole or in part. The "in part" comes because he writes so thoughtfully and deeply that I often find myself taking notes as I read, which means I don't always have time to finish his books before they go back to the library. Though I am thankful I can always check them out again!

Not long ago, I discovered he had written a new book entitled Hidden Christmas: The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. I got the news from Byron Borger on his terrific blog at Hearts and Minds Books. I trust Borger a lot as a reviewer, so when he placed this book in first place on his "must reads" for Advent, and wrote that he was "very grateful for its clear headed teaching" I went straight to my library catalog and put it on hold. Since it was already December, I thought I might have a long wait, but to my surprise and delight, it hit the hold shelf quickly...giving me some unexpected Advent reading.

When it comes to spiritual books, I am usually a sipper, not a gulper, but here's the thing -- I couldn't put this book down. It's true it's relatively short: just eight chapters and 144 pages, but not being able to put it down is not something I am used to saying about a book that is essentially devotional in nature. Keller draws on years worth of Christmas sermons he's given as a Presbyterian pastor in a handful of churches, and all I can say is I imagine he is a terrifically compelling speaker. These chapters are so clear, so cogent, and so soaked in the grace and goodness of the gospel that any heart hungry to grow closer to Jesus is going to love reading them.

Essentially what he does in each chapter is focus on a biblical text that relates some part of the Christmas story, and then dives deep for real and powerful truth about what that text means and how it can affect us when we embrace the truth of the text. The Scriptural passages he chooses are excellent ones: some of them are the ones you expect (the annunciation, the angels imparting the good news to the shepherds, the "people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light," the wise men making their visit, etc.) and some of them are ones you might not expect quite as much, such as the genealogy passages about Jesus' lineage, the word Mary receives from Simeon that Jesus is destined to cause the rise and and fall of many and that a sword will pierce her soul, and the words of the apostle John in 1 John chapter 1 about how he had truly seen and looked at and touched the Word of Life. In each of these, and other cases, he expounds so clearly and beautifully on the passage, bringing certain things about it to light -- some I had pondered before, and some I honestly never had thought of in just quite the way he was pondering it.

This is a book that both comforts and challenges us with the truth of the incarnation: that Jesus truly was God who took on human flesh and descended from heaven to share our lives and to rescue us from sin and death, a rescue we could never ever perform for ourselves. Over and over, he points to this truth, and doesn't just point to it, but invites us to embrace it in all its radical wonder and beauty. He reminds us of what our lives can look like and be like -- truly free and wonderfully saved -- when we trust in the truth of these accounts, look to Jesus, and really place our trust in him as Savior of the world and King of our hearts. 

His point in the introduction of the book is that "Christmas is the only Christian holy day that is also a major secular holiday..." although there are still glimmers of the reality it stands for in the ways that some secular people celebrate (putting up lights, listening to carols that still speak the gospel, giving gifts). His hope is that this little book can help people who celebrate Christmas without a full awareness of why they are celebrating to learn more about its real roots, because "to understand Christmas is to understand basic Christianity, the Gospel." So this is definitely a book you can recommend to friends who are not Christians, but who are open to reading and learning more about it.

On the other hand, it is also a book I think the church itself needs to read, so I also recommend it to brothers and sisters in the faith. For many of us, we have perhaps unconsciously fallen into celebrating Christmas in ways that dip far more into secular understandings that we realize. I don't necessarily mean that we buy totally into the season's commercialism (I know plenty of Christians who have simplified that element of the celebration, and who spend a good deal of time preparing their hearts and the hearts of their families through Advent preparation) but I think it's easy for all of us to fall into a simplistic sentimentalization of the story of Jesus' birth, perhaps partly because we've heard it so often and have so many nostalgic associations with it. Like our non-believing friends, we need to keep hearing the Gospel, even if we have already responded to it and given our lives to Jesus. We need to keep preaching (or letting other people preach) to our own hearts about how much we need God, how deeply he shows his love for us through the incarnation and ultimately through his suffering and death, how we need to rely on the resurrected Lord daily for his strength, mercy, and goodness.

This book was definitely the kind of preaching I needed this Advent. I might add that this is the first Advent which I have ever celebrated that has felt overshadowed by suffering and death: I lost my dear mother a few days before Christmas last year and am missing her so much; I have struggled in almost eleven months of treatment for late-stage cancer; and (in a much smaller part of everything, but still part of it) I am having to move from the home where I've lived for nearly twenty years to a brand new place. Put it all together, and you can see that I am a woman in need of contemplating the Christmas story anew -- but then isn't this really a need each one of us has? Because we all live in a world that is full of suffering, pain, homesickness, brokenness, worry, fear, and yes, death. THAT is the world Jesus came to, and he came to it because it was filled with such things. He came to bring life and to be the light. He came to save us because we could not save ourselves. And he came to bring comfort and rest to the weary, because he loves us so.

I'm deeply grateful that Timothy Keller reminded me of the power and truth of the Gospel in such compelling and clearly ordered reflections. I needed those reminders this year. If you do too, I highly recommend you find and read a copy of Hidden Christmas. I loved gulping it down like a parched woman who needed a long drink of living water, but I plan to go back to it and sip again and again.

Sing All Ye Citizens of Heaven Above!

My last post was written a week ago, but it feels so much longer. In that time, we've finished the Advent season and moved into Christmas. And my mother has entered into glory.

At 83, my precious, wonderful mother was feeling better than she had in a long, long time. We loved our visit with her on Thanksgiving. She was telling stories....lots of them. In fact, I wrote in my journal at the time that she seemed to be putting together the pieces of her life like a jigsaw puzzle. She lingered long over stories about her childhood, youth, and adulthood, especially about her journey of faith. She and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner together. She loved watching Sarah do her Irish dancing on the backyard patio. I remember her hearing the neighbors on the other side of the fence and hurrying over to chat with them (chatting with neighbors being something she loved doing more than almost anything!). She'd only recovered from hip surgery a few months before, but she was scrambling up on tiptoes and pulling herself up so she could call over the fence.

I had no idea that less than a month later, she would be gone from this earth and in the presence of Jesus.

The sudden and unexpected heart attack she had on Sunday was all the more unexpected because of how well she'd been feeling. She had no history of heart disease. She took incredibly good care of herself (and my dad took wonderful care of her during her hip recovery and her bout of cellulitis). She always believed a merry heart was the best medicine. Her doctors often told her how strong she was constitutionally. Her own mother lived to be 92; her maternal grandfather lived to be 100. I truly thought she had lots of time left.

But the Lord called her home this Christmas, and when the Lord calls, you answer. My mother answered with peace. She was one of the most active people I know, and yet when the time came, God gave her the serenity to simply surrender into his arms with assurance and peace. She taught me so much in her life, and even in her death, she continues to teach me.

I have so many stories I could tell about the grace filled moments of the past few days. Maybe I will soon. But on this day, Christmas day, I am simply rejoicing that Mama is home with Jesus....and simply missing her so much I ache all over.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

Despite the unusually warm temperatures outside, it's definitely mid-December. I know this because the advent wreath is on the dining room table, the Christmas tree is up and decorated, the box of Christmas books and videos/DVDs has made its appearance in the living room, and the cookie recipes are scattered in the kitchen. I also know it because yesterday was Christmas pageant rehearsal number two (one more to go before performance on 4th Advent), and on Saturday, Santa rode into our little town at the back of the Christmas parade. S' Christmas cactus is blooming wildly on the windowsill, brightly advent pink (joy!), and the poinsettia she rescued a couple of years back is also blooming again. I love her green thumb.

Then there's the fact that I spent a few minutes this morning hunting down the elusive notebook with my advent poem jottings. Yet another year that I am feeling almost certain that a poem won't get written, but I've managed it for twenty-three years running, even in really dry and difficult years, and somehow or other, it will happen in year twenty-four.

Dry and difficult aren't quite the words I would use for this particular advent season, but there have been lots of struggles this year. My stress levels have been an almost all-time high in the past week or so, and the stress is manifesting itself in physical ways -- I am struggling with back and hip pain of the kind I only get when my body has just maxed out stress-wise. S' anxiety levels have been enormous of late, which is affecting all of us, especially as she struggles with sleep. (Though blessedly, last night was better. Thank you, Abba!)  I also know a lot my own stress is due to being deep down tired:  I've had health issues while needing to keep an incredible work pace this year, and it's not over yet. Some of it is our financial stress -- we've had a rotten fourth quarter, and the personal Christmas miracle I am praying for right now is the ability to keep our electricity on through the holidays (not an exaggeration). Some of it is also weariness in the face of difficult news of suffering from around the world, which sometimes seems more (not less) acute when we look at it with advent eyes.

In and through all of this, it can sometimes be difficult to hear the gospel sing, but sing it does, and that too is another reason I know it's mid-December. Because Jesus has come and still comes and will come again, and that means light in dark places and tender care for all aches and hope where reason tells us there's no reason to hope. So deeply thankful that it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas again.

Advent Reading: Madeleine L'Engle's Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas

I recently went looking through my review archives to read over some of the reflections I wrote, in years past, about Advent and Christmas books. One of the Advent books I have loved the longest is Madeleine L'Engle's Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas.  I wrote briefly about it here on the blog back in 2011, and I reviewed it in full on the now defunct Epinions.com back in 2004!

In honor of the first week of Advent, and in honor of what would have been Madeleine's 97th birthday on November 29, I thought I would post that old review in its entirety here. And yes, that precious 2 1/2 year old girl I talk about in the review is now a wonderful 13 1/2.

***************
Last Sunday night, while we were still finishing the Thanksgiving leftovers, we got out our family Advent wreath and set it up with new candles. This is the first year that our daughter, almost two and a half, is really getting "into" the Advent traditions that her Daddy and I had already established for a decade before her birth. The lighting of the wreath, along with a special prayer time each night, is the best part.

For centuries, it has been the tradition of the Christian church to mark the weeks before Christmas as a time of reflection and celebration of the coming of Jesus. A good summary of what Advent is all about is "He comes; He's coming again!" Even as we await Christmas day (the celebration of the feast of the nativity) many of the appointed Scripture lessons focus our attention on the eventual return of Jesus as King. So our vision has a kind of dual focus: the humility of God coming to earth as a tiny child, and the majesty of Jesus' promised return as King to set things right and make all things new.

The wisdom of the tradition of Advent feels more and more apparent to me the older I get, especially now that I'm a parent. In the darkest days of the year, the season of Advent turns our attention to the coming of light. In the frenetic rush and busyness of a consumer crazed culture, the season of Advent refocuses our attention on the gift of the incarnation, God-become-human-being. Advent helps us to "anticipate" with joy, things both small and large. It's natural that our family is excited about good things at this time of year: beautiful decorations, time with family and friends, traditional music, delicious food, the exchange of gifts with loved ones. Taking time out to reflect and rest in the meaning of the celebration reminds us that these good things we're waiting for are just side-dishes, with the real banquet of love and light still to come one day.

Some of my first meaningful brushes with the whole Advent concept of "slowing-down/waiting/anticipating with joy" came in Madeleine L'Engle's marvelous book The Twenty-four Days Before Christmas. First published in 1964, it is still in print. The edition I own, well loved and well read, is the hardback edition illustrated by Joe DeVelasco and published by Shaw. I believe this edition is now out of print, but used copies still seem to be floating around. It's well worth it if you can find it because the illustrations are charming and help bring the story to life.

Fans of Madeleine L'Engle will recognize the family in the story. The Austins were introduced by L'Engle in 1960's Meet the Austins and were the focus of several other books she wrote from the 1960's on into the 1990's: The Moon by Night (1963), The Young Unicorns (1968), A Ring of Endless Light (1980), and Troubling a Star (1994). All of those were novel length, but in addition to these, L'Engle revisited the Austin family from time to time in "long short story" format, including The Anti-Muffins and A Full House which shows the Austins on another Christmas. Of the three shorter books, The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas is my favorite, and I think by far the strongest and most interesting narrative.

Like all Austin stories (except for Young Unicorns and A Full House), this one is narrated by Vicky Austin. Readers familiar with the novels know Vicky as an adolescent, but in this "prequel" she is only 7 years old. Also part of her family: older brother John, younger sister Suzy, father Wallace (a doctor by trade), and mother Victoria. Oh yes, also Colette the poodle and Mr. Rochester the Great Dane. In all other Austin books, one of the most memorable characters is the youngest Austin sibling, Rob. He is definitely a part of this book too, but in a different way: Mrs. Austin is pregnant and Rob makes his somewhat dramatic appearance toward the end of the book.

The Austins live in an unnamed New England village. The book opens with Vicky proclaiming "December is probably my favorite month". That's because the family gets to do something special for each day of the four weeks leading up to Christmas. They start each December with a new Advent calendar, and then each day they get to do something else new and special. Most of these are ordinary but creative family traditions: making cards, making cookies, getting familiar ornaments out of the attic, choosing their tree from the woods. Vicky relates what the family does to celebrate each day in the course of a story packed with all sorts of other anticipation. The children keep waiting for the first snowfall of the year; they are excited about the upcoming church Christmas pageant; and most of all they are excited about the new baby, due in early January.

Vicky makes a precocious seven year old narrator. L'Engle occasionally seems to give her a too "adult" kind of tone/reasoning...but readers familiar with the older Vicky can forgive this a bit, and I think even other readers will find her endearing. A lot of us have known very smart seven year olds (and even younger children) who surprise us with the intensity of their questions and the profundity of their thoughts. What feels perfectly natural about her narration is the undertone of anxiety shot through the joyful anticipation. What if she goofs up her part as an angel in the Christmas pageant? (She overhears the director say she's awkward, and spends much of the rest of the story walking around the house with an encyclopedia on her head, trying to improve her grace and poise.) Worse yet, what if the baby decides to come early and her mother ends up in the hospital for Christmas?

L'Engle delightfully resolves these childish but oh so understandable dilemmas and fears. The end result is a story shot through with the Advent themes of waiting, working, praying and loving in joyful anticipation.

Vicky is very much a member of a family, and readers will enjoy getting to see her interact with her parents and siblings in ordinary ways. Some critics have faulted L'Engle for "unreal" or "ideal" portrayals of family life, but I think that's probably more a commentary on the sad brokenness we're used to than on her writing. The Austins, at any rate, always felt much more real to me than L'Engle's other famous family (the time-traveling Murrys) and I love them here. They fuss, fret, squabble, laugh, cry, eat, pray, and read together. As the youngest member of my own family (and so basically an "only" child by the time I was 13) I loved stepping vicariously into the Austin household. Of course, I also related somewhat intensely to the gawky, introverted Vicky. Still do!

All in all, this book is a wonderful introduction for children and grown-ups to the celebration of Advent. I remember reading this when I was in my late teens and early twenties, and thinking "I want to do those kinds of things with my children some day." Now I'm getting to, and I'm still grateful for the inspiration this story provided.

And it is a story with enough tender moments to make you wish to be a part of it again and again. I am always especially touched by Vicky's night-time thoughts by the creche, and by Rob Austin's birth. Yes, he comes within the 24 days...just!

The story comes in at 48 pages of fairly packed prose, although in my edition a few of those are full page illustrations. It can be read in one long sitting -- something I've done and enjoyed on Christmas Eves past, but that might be tough going for very little children. Alternatively, it can be read and enjoyed as a kind of "serial" since each day of the month is described. Some of the days have long narrative sections and others only brief mentions, so you might want to plan ahead and plot a reading course that works best for your family.

Happy first week of Advent, and happy reading!

Advent Conjugation

A very merry Christmas! I thought I would share my annual advent poem here as one more way of celebrating today. Blessings to all!

Advent Conjugation

He came.

It was a journey

long and far.

  The One

who made the light

and every star

stepped into darkness

that we might see

his shining glory here.

He wrapped himself

  in flesh

that we might behold

the face of God

and hold his gentle

love within our hands.

He made himself

  so small

we could embrace

eternity in swaddling bands.

He comes

  each day.

He understands

our longest journeys.

The baby refugee

whose parents fled,

the man who had

no place to lay his head,

he knows the way

  we wander,

the borders we cross,

and all the places

where we hide

when we’re afraid

  and lost.

The courage he sends

through the strength

of his name gives light .

when we’re down

to the barest of flame.

He will come

  once more.

The long journey

will be made again

and all our stories

brought to their

  rightful end

in the love story

begun before

the world began.

Both joy and fears

enfolded in his grace

and every step

of every weary race

redeemed.

We will be whole.

He promises

to make it so.

And this is the

advent conjugation

that’s true for every

tongue and tribe

 and nation –

that we can trust

  the One

  who came,

  who comes,

  who will come

  once again,

to lead us into

joyous life

that never ends.

            ~EMP, Advent 2014

Why I'm So Glad Christmas is a Season

As I pondered writing about this today, it dawned on me that I wrote some reflections two years ago that never found their way here. These reflections are part of others I've written over the years that may (or may not) make it into my Advent and Christmas poetry collection one day.

I wrote this back on St. Stephen's Day (December 26) in 2011, hence some of the dated references. I hope you'll find something here worth pondering on this blessed seventh day of Christmas in 2013.

***********

This morning I took the trash out – two big bags worth, detritus leftover from yesterday’s Christmas celebration. Although this year I did not pile the wrapping paper scraps into the trash. My environmentally conscious nine year old, bless her, made me put it all in a box to take the borough paper recycling dumpster later.

Since we live over a warehouse in a building that belongs to the lumber yard next door, our trash dumpster is also in the lumber yard. Among other things, this means I get serenaded every time I take the trash out by the PA system that blares radio music left on for the lumber yard workers to hear while they pile wood and confer with customers and drive fork lifts.

The lumber yard was open this morning, though almost deserted. Either the workers were all inside having one more Monday morning after the holiday cup of coffee, or some of them had taken the day off. Certainly no customers were in sight, and no trucks moving about. But the office and store lights were on and the gate was open, so I shouldered my plastic bags like Santa and hoisted them into the dumpster.

The music on the PA system brought me up sharply. During most of the year, what plays on the radio doesn’t register with me when I take the trash out, especially if it’s advertising. I’m forty-three; I’ve gotten very good at tuning out commercials, one of the biggest wastes of brain energy ever encountered. Usually I am working out a story or musing on a poem or looking at the sky – or on more prosaic days (and they happen) – planning what to cook for dinner or thinking through my next language arts lesson with my daughter. I only pay attention to the sounds of the radio station if they’re playing music, and then often only if they’re playing a song I know and particularly like.

The couple of weeks or so before Christmas are different. The lumber yard tunes to one of the “oldies” stations that plays Christmas music all the time up until and through Christmas day. During cold, dark December days, I get used to trudging to the dumpster to tunes like “There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or (if I’m really blessed) “The First Noel.” (Yes, our oldies station will occasionally still throw an actual Christmas carol onto the playlist.)

So today I went trudging into the lumber yard, December 26, the second day of Christmas – and what do I hear? An old rock song from the 80’s. Not a Christmas carol. Not even a so-called secular Christmas anthem. Nothing Christmassy at all. And it slams home to me once more how the culture really doesn’t get Christmas.

It happens every year, but every year I forget it. Decorations come down swiftly, the stores sweep a few Christmas items onto sales shelves prelude to decking for Valentine’s Day, the radios stop playing Christmas music, even the bland songs that hardly feel like Christmas but at least pay minor lip-service to the time of year. People get back to work, most of them tired from staying up too late, some of them secretly glad the whole crazy holiday time is just “over” for another year. And I want to say “People? Seriously? We’re just getting started!”

There’s a reason there’s a whole Christmas season. The church, in its wisdom, has given us twelve whole wondrous days to celebrate the birth of Jesus – and we pack that calendar full of other celebrations and commemorations while we’re at it. On the 26^th (today) we get the feast day of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr, on the 27^th we celebrate St. John, the apostle and evangelist, on the 28^th we remember the Holy Innocents who died at the hand of Herod. On January 1 we celebrate Holy Name day, remembering the day Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple to be circumcised and named (and were met by prophet Simeon and prophetess Anna, who sang and spoke over the holy child). And of course on the 6^th, traditionally known as 12^th night, it all culminates in Epiphany, when we remember the Wise Men who came from the East, following the star, and how they worshipped the young child who they knew to be the King of the Jews.

It makes such perfect sense that we continue to celebrate the unfolding story – not just of Jesus’ birth and the events that took place in the days and months after it – but the unfolding story of those who would follow after him in years to come. If this birth is what we say it is – the birth that changed everything, the birth of the only one who could come to save and rescue us, the coming of Almighty God into the world of space and time and skin – then everything changes. It’s not something we can sing about and shout about for one day, and then just sweep it all away and go back to business as usual. This birth changes everything.

I wonder sometimes if even people who really don’t have an understanding of the season – who aren’t sure why they celebrate Christmas except that it seems to be a culturally acceptable time to give and receive gifts and go to parties and take time off work (and listen to Christmas themed songs on the radio) – don’t feel the acute disappointment and strangeness of the swiftness of the workaday, everyday world’s return following the celebration. Even in dim culturally bound echoes, the Christmas season can burn so brightly. The festive foods, the time spent with family that you might not see any other time of year, the chance to give help to people who are truly in need, the brightly wrapped gifts, the lights on the trees (or the streetlamps or town gazebos). The scent of evergreen and ginger, plastic nativity scenes on lawns, bright flags flapping on porches, scarlet poinsettia plants gracing front halls.  Even in dim echoes, the celebration can sometimes stun us with beauty and moments of heart-rending heartache, like we’re seeing something out of the corner of our eye that takes our breath and calls us home.

I wonder too if we can’t take a clue from our ordinary, lived experience – the kind of ordinary, everyday, lived experience that God entered and forever hallowed in Jesus – and look at how we celebrate “ordinary” human birth and feel its aftermath. If you’ve ever given birth to a child, or welcomed a child into your family by adoption, you know how it feels in the weeks and months leading up to the grand event. You know the exhaustion and exhilaration of hard labor to bring that child into the world, or the anxious waiting to welcome that little one into your arms. You know that the day that baby is born, or brought home, is one of the most memorable, mountain-top experiences of your life. You could never, ever forget the way it feels. But you also come to know, through days, weeks, months, and years of parenting and learning to be a family, that the day was just the beginning. It stands out like a shining crystal, never to be forgotten, but it was just the beginning, the start of something beautiful and deep, a whole journey of learning to love that little person and make them part of your life.

Would it make sense to give birth to a baby, celebrate the fact giddily and gratefully for twenty-four hours, then say “Wow, that was great! Let’s do it again next year?” and go on living just the way you did before the baby was born, as though the event never happened? To not care for, cherish, and nourish the new life we’ve been given, to enfold that life and its rhythms and the way it shapes us into our ordinary everyday?

Of course not. Nor does it make any sense to prepare for weeks leading up to Christmas, celebrate it in giddy joy for twenty-four hours, then cart all the leftover detritus to the dumpster to workaday music and try to get back to being just who you were before the grand event.

Not if the event means what we say it means. Because every year we celebrate Christ’s birth, his coming into the world, we remind ourselves that because he has come, our lives are forever changed. Because he has come, he still comes – every day, in new ways, in the hearts and lives of those who know him as Savior and Lord. And he is coming again, one day, in great glory and power and majesty, to judge the living and the dead and to make all things brand new. So brand new that even the brightest, most sincerely beautiful and reverent of Christmas celebrations, or even that mountain-top moment you held your precious baby in your arms for the first time – are going to pale in comparison to the amazing glory that will be revealed.

O Come, Let Us Adore Him is not just a call for one day of the year.  Really each Christmas prepares us just a little bit more for the celebration of forever living in his presence. And we’re being prepared not just for a season of love, but an eternity of it. A time when the glorious music that sings his praise will never fade, and the candles that echo his vast and glorious light will never be put out.