Oh, To Be Hushed

...........in the wake of Newtown (update, and now Boston);
and the Newtowns of Syria, Gaza, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uganda, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Mexico....


I pray for a Jesus-y voice to rise above the din, a voice that will hush us.

A voice that peels away, sheers off,
our logical defenses
our rationed benevolences
our self-serving agendas
our short-sighted intentions.

A voice that unites us in our shames:
of sensationalism above sensitivity
of glamour above mental affliction
of mammon above poverty
of sword above plow
of individual rights above human rights
of homeland barriers above a welcoming hearth.

A voice so laden with grace, with humanity, with heart-break
that we cannot utter a sound
to counter.

A voice that melts us
drives us to our knees
breaks our hearts.
Hushes us.  Hushes us.

A voice that speaks to the darkness
in us.

Oh, to be hushed.
To be hushed.

unRaveling, unWrapping the Gift

It's been several years since I've displayed my Nativity scene.

Part of the time it was stored away because I was living out of a suitcase.  Then when I found a little place to call home, I didn't have room for it.  No extra shelf space, nothing to rearrange to give it place.  So it stayed boxed up.  And I really didn't mind, because actually I've been sorting out this Nativity narrative for a while.  Keeping it stored away gave me permission to wrestle with it.  In a way I was deliberately abstaining from its presence.  I wasn't abstaining from my faith or the God of my faith, but I was and still am unpacking a lot of theology that has in a way, kidnapped Faith.

In my struggle, I have felt bound to human constructs that frankly squashes the very life out of faith, that denies doubt, prohibits questions, and demands unthinking allegiance.

Because I experienced  (for lack of a better term) a God-encounter set within a framing construct, the two, the construct and the encounter, became synonymous.  How we think about God, how we explain God, how we handle the ancient narratives somehow becomes the authoritative focal point rather than the lens.  Our human constructs become the bigger story, bigger than the God of the narratives.

We don't like mystery; we are puzzled, almost tormented by paradox; we quake in a void.  So we construct meaning we can digest, and we call this Faith.

Intuitively I think I knew this, but when it comes to grappling with Spirit, human constructs are both comforting and stagnating.  Despite the tensions of intellectual, psychological, and spiritual dishonesty, I held just as tightly onto my human constructs as I did to the God of my encounter.

It wasn't until I attended Seminary that I saw a distinction.  That gentle, respectful environment permitted room for wrestling, for sorting out, deconstructing the human elements from the mystery of God.  Layer by layer, after teasing out the literary genre, the historical context, the grammatical tenses, the archeological discoveries, the parallel literature of the Ancient Near East (which all shape meaning), what we were left with again and again was....

.....mystery, paradox, a void.  More questions than answers.

While acknowledging both, our human ability to understand and give meaning and our human inability to understand and give meaning, all we really have left is a response.....faith.

Faith in the Mystery, the Paradox, the Void.


The other day unpacking my Christmas decorations, I came across my stashed away manger.  Because I am living in a different house, I now have room for my Nativity scene.  Habitually I set up the pieces arranging the story like I'd always heard it, but as I did I felt agitated, grieved.  I tried to ignore the blah undercurrent, but I kept asking myself, why is this bothering you?

As I stepped back and caught the "whole story" framed there in my living room, I realized  my struggle.  The traditional setting of the Nativity is orderly, staged.  Everyone has their place and every place has its appropriate thing or person.  Kind of, theological-like.  It feels contrived, not real.  Certainly not real like my-world-real or even real like Jesus-in-his-scene-real.  There was something about the whole thing that felt, phoney.

I was about to put it away, but couldn't let it go.  I wanted it there.  But I wanted it to be more real; I wanted the imagery to reflect truth.

So I messed it up.

I moved the pieces all around; very random.  There are no wise men gatherings or shepherd clusters or barn animals framing a manger.  Baby Jesus is not fore-front but skewed over to the side; Mary's worshipping but she's focused on the angel (and bless its heart, I realized my angel has a broken wing, which now has become my favorite piece).  Joseph is confused and wandering, a wise man is talking to a camel and another is facing the wall.  I love it.

In the mess, Love is present.  In the confusion, God is with us.  In the chaos we are offered a gift, wrapped in Mystery and Paradox, presented in a vortex.  It is called faith.  And the wonderment is how God steps right in as we unwrap, unravel, accept.  

Merry Christmas - Blessed Nativity.