Merry Christmas!

     Today is Christmas, and I am waiting in joyful hope for my boys to come home.  Isis is gnawing on a bully-stick, which is her favorite indoor thing to do.  Greg is working in the kitchen, getting the leg of lamb ready for supper.  I have lit candles, reminding me of all the people I am trying to remember clearly to pray for.  The delight of the morning was a call from Michael Oswanski on facebook.  I didn't know you could have a real-time aural chat--- I thought it was still the "typing messages" thing.  But somehow, because I don't know the technology, I couldn't see him.  So he always is pushing my technological skills a notch higher.  We talked about organ music, how hard it is to describe the beauty of those sounds! ... choral music, and the message of Christmas;  and the way time circles into the eternal NOW.  All the Christmases past, present and future--- and the moment when God breaks into history.
     I always come back to the fact that God chooses to come as a baby-- a just-born infant with eyes opening onto the big wide world--- and it fills me with such intense awe--- that God comes without words or dogma, in human skin-- baby skin, which smells heavenly-- and in those tiny hands and feet, those big eyes, full of wonder.  And such vulnerability--- no armies of angels in full battle gear!   God is willing to come to us, to let us be abusive parents, in all our self-absorbed egotism; God lets us fail to see the miracles.  He waits for us to get it.  He lets time spin out like yards of ribbons, or like the blown dandelion seeds in the dry summer--- waiting for us to come closer to the moment when we hold the baby in our own arms, let it fall asleep on our shoulder, or nestle it against our breast.
     No other religion really focuses on the human baby.  No other religion really brings our attention to the quality of our parenting a baby-- the thought of Joseph taking Mary into his home, because an angel told him to.  How Mary and Joseph together raise this child, in the hidden years--- and hide him from Herod and the slaughter of the innocents.  Most  religions start with a person in adulthood, exhorting us to connect our spirits to the Great Spirit.  But Jesus is also that baby.  He is coming in the most vulnerable, innocent, helpless way He can, to let us possess God, in the child.
     Last night we had singing carols before Mass.  A guy with a great voice sang "Mary, did you know that your baby boy..."  with several verses.  It makes me cry.  I think that we do not know.  We certainly do not know that our children are going to be piercing our hearts with sorrow and fear.  We think they will bring us joy, and we hope they will bring us honor.  We do not want to consider the way of the cross.  We certainly cannot contain, in our becoming parents, the suffering likely to come, as our children move forward toward God in their own journeys, falling and failing as we have fallen and failed.  And yet, Jesus has given us the path, shown us, in a few brush-strokes of the story, what we must endure.  "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?"  Even if the child does not know it is about his father's business, even if he thinks he can do it with his own WILL, God will be the alpha and omega of his path.  We are in our orbits, like atoms, on our pilgrimage toward the God who made us.  I have walked the labyrinth with this so clearly in mind-- that I am being called back to the center.  The still-point in time,  the mystical rose, the existential moment, the Eternal NOW.  And my child is also called, though he does not know it clearly, is not watching for signs, is not following the stars, is not sure of his way.  And maybe that is also the point.  We see the stars, we begin to watch for wise men, we begin to hear the message in a deeper way, a new way. We begin to think it is amazing and miraculous that shepherds were the ones to see the glory first.  We begin to understand that you have to be cold and lonely and outside at night, to SEE the stars.  And that when you are watching the stars, you begin to hear choirs of angels!  And that you have to listen to your dreams, like Joseph did.  It is amazing that the messages that come in the dreams are the most important guides to your life.  And that the baby will be born without a safe place in the world, because God is always being born in new and amazing ways, outside the ordered world, outside the circle of power and influence;  NOT born to the Rabbi;  NOT born in the Temple precincts or the palace.  The whole thing is amazing.  The whole thing calls us to be filled with wonder and awe.  I circle around it again, and am glad I was able to sing along, in the cold night, in our everyday community, filled with people struggling to be good;  with those dear carols I have loved all my life--- especially the one which says "gloria in excelsis Deo!"