Just In Case

Today The Holy Rover has a guest blogger, Renny Martin.  Renny has been writing a lovely blog, Let Every Heart Prepare Him Room, for my church during Advent. I think you’ll appreciate what she has to say in this post from a couple of days ago (it certainly resonated for me):

There is always a “just-in-case” gift beneath our Christmas tree.  Some years it goes unopened.  When that happens I simply store it away in the crate with the ornaments and stockings until the following year…when it will once again be stashed beneath the tree…just in case.

Just in case?  Just in case what??

I confess…I suffer heartfelt angst that someone unexpected might surprise me with a Christmas gift.  And there I’ll be.  Unprepared.  Unable to reciprocate.  Thus, the “just in case” gift.  Unlabeled, but wrapped and beribboned.  The contents are nice, though not too expensive, and generically suitable for nearly any recipient.  And should anyone catch me off guard with their generosity, I am ready…just in case.

I have kept a just in case gift at the ready for years.  But this year…well, yesterday, actually…I suddenly came to see the just in case gift in a new light.  This is probably a consequence of spending so much time this Advent season writing and organizing pieces for this blog.  And if that’s the case, then this new insight is a gift from you—our readers—to me.  And here I am…you guessed it…unprepared!

In an essay called The God We Hardly Knew, William Willimon points out that “it may well be, as Jesus says, more blessed to give than to receive.  But it is more difficult to receive.”  Willimon goes on to suggest that “we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people, but because we are proud, arrogant people.  The Christmas story—the one according to Luke not Dickens—is not about how blessed it is to be givers but how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers.  We prefer to think of ourselves as givers—powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate.  Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas.  There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are…God wanted to do something for us so strange, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done.  We didn’t think of it, understand it, or approve it.  All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it.  A gift from a God we hardly even knew.”

Willimon’s essay hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks.  For years, I’ve felt quietly smug about that just in case gift stashed beneath my Christmas tree.  It stood for “Renny, the ever organized, prepared and thoughtful.”  But in a heartbeat, Willimon helped me see that the just in case gift captured my sheer dread of receiving with nothing to give in return.

Receiving.  With nothing to give in return.  As John Wesley once said, “Nothing is more repugnant to capable, reasonable people than grace.”  And I am deeply, even painfully, aware of the state of unreadiness in my own heart for the coming gift of Christ’s incarnation.  As Willimon said in his essay, “It’s tough to be on the receiving end of love, God’s or anybody else’s.”

And so, I need to go pray.  And after I do, I think I might go unwrap that just in case gift and see if I can get through this season without it.  And when it makes me anxious—because I know that this is going to make me really anxious—I will contemplate these thoughts from Oscar Romero:

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who have no need
even of God—for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel.  God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

Care To Join The Advent Conspiracy?

 You may have heard about the Advent Conspiracy (click below to find out more).  This is truly subversive stuff.  Be careful—if you take this seriously who knows what could happen.  Better keep it hush-hush.  Watch and then close the browser right away.

The Holy Chicken of Bethlehem

Each year when the Christmas season comes around, I remember a story from when our two sons were small.

It was our younger son Carl’s first day of “big kid” Sunday School.  The rest of us tagged along as he was introduced to his new teacher and new room.  Our son Owen, two and a half years older, took Carl around the room to each of its stations, explaining each one with the authoritative air of a big brother who had all the answers.  Bob and I looked on with approval, pleased at how much Owen had learned in his first years of Sunday School. 

Finally we came to a three-dimensional map of the Holy Land that came with little tokens that children could use to mark important places in Jesus’ life. 

Owen by now was in full lecture mode.  First he picked up a cross, showed it to his brother, and said, “Carl, this is a cross, and it goes here.”  And then he placed it in the middle of Jerusalem.

Then he picked up a token that was obviously the Star of Bethlehem, showed it to his brother, and said, “Carl, this is a chicken, and it goes here.”   And he placed it in Bethlehem.

 As Bob and I struggled to keep from laughing, Carl nodded solemnly.  Now I must admit that the star did have a small tail that made it look a little bit like a chicken.  And of course eventually Carl got the true story behind the Star of Bethlehem.  But I will never forget the absolute certainty with which Owen told Carl about the Holy Chicken of Bethlehem, and the absolute faith with which Carl heard the story.

This story is my own personal parable illustrating the dangers of having too much certainty in theological matters.  We all try to domesticate the divine message, immediately placing complex mysteries into the tidy categories with which we’re familiar. 

So as we journey further into Advent, it’s good to keep that chicken in mind.  Here at The Holy Rover, we’ve posted a picture of a particularly goofy-looking rooster right above the door, as a reminder.

Why You Need To Be Distracted Right Now

Annonciation, passage de l'ange jaune, by Macha Chmakoff

“Besides the big brokennesses in people’s lives this year, I’ve noticed all sorts of really dumb things breaking lately. Since Advent began at the end of November, I’ve had a dozen calls reporting broken cars, water heaters, a window, even a finger. So I was on the lookout for something wonderful to happen, because of this great story I heard recently about dumb things going wrong: Carolyn Myss, who writes about healing, went to Russia a few years ago to give a series of lectures. Every single aspect of getting to Russia that could go poorly, did. Then in Moscow it turned out that her reserved room at the hotel had been given to someone else. She ended up sleeping on a stranger’s floor. Two mornings later, on a train to her conference on healing, she began to whine at the man sitting beside her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far. It turned out that he worked for the Dalai Lama. And he said gently that he believed that when a lot of seemingly meaningless things started going wrong all at once, it was to protect something big and lovely that was trying to get itself born — that, in other words, perhaps it needed for you to be distracted so it could be born perfect.”

                                                                        Anne Lamott

Answering Yes

Virgin & Child, by Sandro Botticelli

“As theotokos, Mary is …the mother of Wisdom. Unlike Zechariah, who responds to his annunciation concerning the birth of John the Baptist by inquiring of the angel, “How will I know that this is so?” Mary asks, simply, “How can this be?” It’s an existential question, not an intellectual one. God responds to Zechariah by striking him dumb—for the entire gestation of his child, a nice touch—while Mary finds her voice, making the ancient song of Hannah her own. For me, the essential question is not what author placed Hannah’s words in Mary’s mouth, and with what theological intent. What is far more important is how I respond to this threading of salvation history from 1 Samuel to the Gospel of Luke. How do I answer when the mystery of God’s love breaks through my denseness and doubt? Do I reach for a reference book, or the remote control? Am I so intent on my own plans that I ignore the call, or do I dare to carry the biblical tradition into my own life’s journey? When I am called to answer “Yes” to God, not knowing much about where this commitment will lead me, Mary gives me hope that it is enough to trust in God’s grace and the promise of salvation.”

From Kathleen Norris’ forward to Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary, editors Beverly Roberts Gaventa and Cynthia L. Rigby

A Pondering Sort of Day

Outside my door this morning

A friend who works in a local bookstore had a customer recently who said she wanted to buy a children’s book on Advent.  Her one caveat:  “I don’t want to have anything about God in it.”

I can sympathize with the woman’s likely impulse, which was to try to find another way to experience the holiday season.  But unlike Christmas, Advent is one of those religious holidays that the secular world hasn’t taken over.  (Yet, at least.)

Here in Iowa, it’s an Advent sort of day.  As I write this, we’re in the middle of a humdinger of a winter storm, one of those blizzards that shuts down nearly everything.  A layer of thick snow blankets the landscape and the winds are creating whirlwinds of white around the corners of buildings.

It strikes me that the mood of today is quintessentially Advent.  It’s a day to slow down and put aside the normal routine.  In the story of Mary that we’ve been ruminating about this week at The Holy Rover, there’s a line that says, “Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” 

If there’s one thing the modern world lacks more than anything, it’s pondering time.  Advent gives us permission, if you will, to sit and look out the window at the snow falling, mulling over what is often overlooked in our too-busy lives.  I hope you find some time to do that today, whether or not you are snowed in by a blizzard.

It seems like a good day to link to my very favorite carol, the one that I would choose if I was on a desert island and could take just one. 

She Let Herself Be Spoken

Hopi Virgin & Child II, by Fr. John Giuliani

The Story Teller by David Denny

Children, there was a girl–

 She lived in a small village on a tall dry mesa the size of ours,

 She did what you do.

 But her ears heard more than sounds.

 You hear me talk and know I am bigger than my words:

             They come from inside me.

 This girl heard a word, but it wasn’t inside her.

 She was inside the word.

 She stayed still as the stone canyon walls, and let herself be spoken.

 That word, which made the desert and the sky,

             the mesas and the arroyos,

              the rain and the girl—

That great word of our Grandfather loved the girl and became so small

            He lived inside her as you lived inside your mother once.

What became of that Word-boy is another story.

Today, simply listen.

She is your mother and gives you special ears to hear more than sounds,

            more than coyotes, rain, thunder and wind.

You will hear your name, and you will know what you must do.

You will walk in beauty, laugh and weep in beauty,

            Because the girl is beauty and your mother,

            the Mother of Millions,

            from a tall dry mesa the size of ours.

 

An Extraordinary, Ordinary Story

Virgin and Child, by Rogier van der Weyden

Let’s talk about virginity today, shall we?  Specifically, the Virgin Birth, the doctrine that even a lot of Christians dismiss, though they may pay lip service to it on Sunday mornings when they say the creed.  I used to be one of them, thinking that it was just another example of the church’s fear of sex and disdain for women.  Why add one more miracle to a story that already strains credulity?  Why not have Jesus born the old-fashioned way?  Isn’t it just a recycled myth that a lot of other religions also have?  Or the result of a translation error in which “young woman” gets read as “virgin”? 

But when I came back to the church after a long time away, I found to my surprise that I didn’t mind those miracle stories at all, including the Virgin Birth.  In fact, I loved them.  I didn’t want to have them hidden in a cupboard, dusted off only for special occasions.  I have come to agree with author Nancy Mairs’ tart description of much of modern Chrisitianity:  a church with “all the mystery scrubbed out of it by a vigorous and slightly vinegary reason.”  

So let’s look at the story of the Virgin Birth not after it’s been bathed in vinegary reason, but instead through the lens of what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur calls a second naïveté.  There’s the first kind of naïveté, which is exhibited in beliefs that come naturally and uncritically and are typically born in us as children.  For many of us, there then comes disillusionment and cynicism (“you mean Santa didn’t really bring those presents?  And there’s no tooth fairy either?”)  

But a second naïveté can follow, one that realizes that perhaps there’s a deeper truth that lies beneath the surface of these stories and beliefs.  In the Virgin Birth, I think the message has to do with the divine entering the world in a way that is both ordinary and extraordinary.  It’s a story of a woman who needed no man to serve as her intermediary for God.  Fierce in her innocence, she sings a song called, appropriately, the Magnificat.  “My soul doth magnify the Lord,” she says, and goes on to sing about the mighty being toppled from their thrones, the hungry being fed, and the rich being sent away empty.  She may be young, but she’s no pushover. 

Author Phyllis Tickle tells the story of a man who came up to her after a talk in which she had referred to the difficulty many Christians have in accepting the doctrine of the Virgin Birth.  He told her, “Of course I believe in the Virgin Birth.  Why wouldn’t I?  The whole thing’s so beautiful, it has to be true, whether it happened or not.”

A Very Strange Choice

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico

This week brings another visitor to The Holy Rover:  an uneducated, poor, unwed pregnant teenager named Mary.

When you think about it, she was an exceedingly poor choice to bear such an important child.  Imagine, in fact, a group of market strategists consulting with God before the decision was made.  If you want to make an impact, you need to go with someone of high-status, they’d argue.  Someone who could protect that child from danger and give him all the advantages of class and wealth.  You’re going to need to choose an older mother, too (you know how completely unreliable teenage girls are).  Make sure she’s in a large city, so it will be easy for her child to make connections with important people as he grows up. And here’s an idea:  make him the son of a princess or queen—maybe even the wife of the emperor.  Think big!  Don’t limit yourself!

And just imagine their faces when the plan is revealed.  Wealthy?  She’s from a peasant family.  Educated?  Nope.  Powerful?  Not in the least.  Does she live in a city, at least?  Nope—she’s from Podunk, Palestine.

And what’s more, the details of the plan are going to make things even harder for her.  She’s going to get pregnant under suspicious circumstances, so that a cloud hangs over her reputation for the rest of her life.  Her son will have that shadow on his reputation, too. His father was likely a Roman soldier, people will whisper.  She was pregnant before she was wed, you know.  The family tried to hush it up, but that’s the truth.

Market strategists, presented with this alternative, would likely shake their heads in disbelief.  Go back to the drawing board on this one, they’d say.  What a recipe for disaster.  Something this important shouldn’t be left in the hands of a powerless, unknown, uneducated teenager.

There she is, vulnerable and alone and a completely foolish choice.  And then the angel arrives.

Christ Climbed Down

Christ Climbed Down

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings