Bring on the wonder...

As is often the case here, the week between Christmas and New Year's is slow and quiet. We listen to music, read, take long walks and mostly chill. For years it seemed as if the totality of both Advent and Christmas were realized for our family in these seven days: finally we were able to enter the wisdom of the liturgy without the demands or pressures of the season.  In Tucson, we actually headed out of town on Christmas morning so as to avoid any hint of "work" during this time of personal renewal and reflection.

This week will be comparably chill ~ although I was more fully embodied and connected to the rhythms of Advent and Christmas this year during worship for some wonderful reason than in times past ~ so I don't feel a need to "get away!"  But I still won't really "work" much this week. It is time for a rest. 

We will, however, stay connected to our community during this down time by participating in a special benefit for our friend and city council person, Pete White.  His mother's house burned down the week before Christmas ~ and those who love him are hosting a benefit tonight to raise emergency funds.  A ton of local musicians ~ including our church band ~ will share tunes as the emcees encourage buying raffle tickets, etc.  This is one way to combine doing good with both acts of compassion and prayer.  Like Fr. Richard Rohr wrote in this morning's email reflection:

Christian revelation is  always pointed, concrete, and specific. Our word for that is “incarnational” or  enfleshed.  Walter Brueggemann calls it  brilliantly “the scandal of the particular.”  Christianity is not a Platonic world of ideas and theories about which  you can be right or wrong, or observe from a distance. Incarnation is not something you measure or  critique or analyze, but Someone you meet!

This pattern reaches its  fullness in the enfleshment of the Divine in one ordinary-looking man named  Jesus.  We dare to believe that God  materialized in human form, so we could fall in love with a real person, which  is the only way we fall in love. It is almost   impossible to give your life  warmly for an idea, a force, an energy, or a concept.  We are programmed to give our lives away to other persons.

One of the truths I have experienced over and over this Advent/Christmas-moving-towards-Epiphany season has to do with the "scandal of the particular." There are times when it is very, very hard for me to love some people ~ family, members of the congregation, neighbors ~ and that doesn't even open the door for those who are enemies or evil. (Yes, evil, too, is not an abstraction but a cruel and dangerous embodied reality.) There are times when it is equally hard to love myself. And at least half the time I fail ~ not because I want to (as St. Paul states so clearly in Romans 7), but because that's how I am ~ imperfect, cracked and always being redeemed in the flesh.

For decades I hated and feared my cracks and brokenness but now I'm learning to love them. (Well, maybe not love but at least own and try to give them a hug.) In his book, A Play-Full Life, Jaco Hamman, encourages us ~ individually and in community ~ to not only embrace the wisdom of our failures, but to let them move us towards a measure of healing.  This won't happen quickly, but it won't happen at all if we avoid the scandal of our particularity.  As C.G. Jung used to say, the call to feed, nurture, visit and cherish the stranger in Matthew 25 is not only social, but also deeply personal.  "When did we see thee hungry and feed thee, Lord...?"

One of the things I find helpful to do during this week of quiet time, is to review the year for signs of blessings and curses ~ and then try to grasp what healing they both might be luring me towards. Like Gertrud Mueller-Nelson notes:

Emmanuel means "God is with us." Here, where myth and history intersect, he stands in our midst and we are none of us too poor, too broken, too sinful, too reject by the world to know his glories. In the very depth of our humanity we discover the power of the Sacred and every human experience is transformed. For the Word is made flesh and dwells in our midst, dwells wherever we are willing to recognize him.

So bring on the music, bring on the song... let's see where the journey towards Epiphany might lead us?

I can't see the stars anymore living here
Let's go to the hills where the outlines are clear

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the songI pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

I fell through the cracks at the end of our street
Let's go to the beach, get the sand through our feet

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder
We got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls for too long
I don't have the time for a drink from the cup
Let's rest for a while 'til our souls catch us up

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long

Bring on the wonder
We got it all wrong
We pushed you down deep in our souls, so hang on

Bring on the wonder
Bring on the song
I pushed you down deep in my soul for too long.

credits:
1) donskerphotography.com
2) offgridsurvival.com
3) maidenbelle.blogspot.com