Finding Mary in the Chaos

Day by day of the Christmas season, the Gospels unfolded each chaotic and strange occurrence: an oppressive regime, an unexpected night with no lodging to be had, a gaggle of poor shepherds, wise men from the East, the chilling violence of King Herod. There is the confusion of losing Jesus in the temple, the wonder and amazement at finding him among the temple elders -- and this line, one of the few lines that Mary utters in the Gospels, which has resonated with me this Christmas season: "Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, in sorrow your father and I have been seeking you." 

I feel in many ways that this has been my prayer, too, all through the Advent and Christmas seasons. All through these seasons I have searched for time alone, to pray, to be with God and to experience the joy of the season. But -- that is not what happened. Life happened. Good things happened, bad things happened: things happened too fast to make meaning of.

Still, the Gospels are comforting because they paint a picture of a first Christmas that was also rather chaotic, and the narratives of Christ's childhood read after Christmas are equally chaotic, and depict Mary, his mother, also not always certain how to make meaning of the sorrows and anxieties of daily life. And to those of us who do take the spiritual meaning of Christmas seriously, to meet with so many unexpected challenges can feel like a betrayal, an abandonment: "Why have you treated us so? We have been seeking you."

And so I find comfort in the answer Mary comes up with as well; twice the Gospels say that she "took these things, and pondered them in her heart."

I am staying close to this line, staying close to Mary who stays close to Jesus as she ponders these things that unfold; so unlike the forceful chaos around her, she waits patiently for the meaning to reveal itself, for God to make himself known in this world.

Singing Out of Tune

Christmas this year is coming in the midst of a a year that has seen historic levels of refugees, people displaced by war and poverty across the globe. It comes in the midst of a year marked by terrorism and mass shootings, of an ugly presidential election, war, and a bad economy. There is no doubt that celebrating seems... off. How do we celebrate in a world marked by violence and sadness? Do we bury our heads in the sand and ignore this suffering, focusing on ourselves? Something is out of tune, to celebrate in a time of sadness.

On a personal level, can any of us look back on the past year and think that they have made no mistakes? There can be no doubt about it. We love poorly. We forgive grudgingly. Even when we mean well, we communicate badly.

And now it is Christmas, and we are supposed to celebrate. I have been pondering this disconnect during Advent. I have pondered it especially during the various music concerts that I have attended during the season. Music has always marked the seasons of Advent and Christmas, and this year I have been blessed to listen to some wonderful music.

It is interesting to me that the disconnect seems most apparent when I hear secular Christmas music. I am not saying that secular songs are bad; but they tend to emphasize an ideal -- how wonderful it is to be home with family and be together during the holidays, to experience snow and all the good things of the season -- which seems impossible to live up to. How many people can be home, and with a united family that they get along with perfectly, and stay there together, enjoying each other's company? If you're in Washington, DC, and experiencing the 70-degree weather, the songs about snow seem even more ridiculous this year. The disconnect between what we ought to feel and what we actually experience seems more apparent during such songs.

The disconnect, as I see it, is this: we are not who we want to be. Our world is not as it should be.

And the answer, as I seem to be slowly experiencing it this Advent and Christmas, is that that is really the point of Christmas: we aren't perfect, but there is hope. God comes and experiences what it is like to live in a broken world full of imperfect people. In a world which values fame, fortune and popularity, he comes as a vulnerable child, unknown, poor.

And so we build up. In a world marked by noise, I was struck at the courage of musicians planning elaborate concerts with obscure composers -- determined to bring beauty into a world that no longer recognizes it. And it made me ponder other small acts of bravery. In a world marked by loneliness, I am struck by the courage of those I know who invite a lonely neighbor to a Christmas meal. In a world marked by division, it is an act of courage to go celebrate Christmas with one's family, to be together in spite of differences. In a world of materialism, it is courageous to share with one another simple gifts, to share a part of oneself. Yes, Christ comes again in these small acts of building up, of loving, of sharing with each other.

I have not mentioned one of my favorite parts of these Christmas concerts: getting to hear the second and third and sometimes fourth verses of Christmas carols, which are at times packed with meaning and beauty. One of my favorites is the third verse of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," which gets at the heart of what I am saying -- albeit in far fewer words. Christ came into our imperfect world, and there is hope for people who are so aware of their weakness. And if we are silent, if we pay attention, and if we too, embrace our weakness and our dependency on God and on each other -- then we, too, can partake in these small acts of courage that prepare our hearts to receive him, and yes, even in this world -- to rejoice:

How silently, how silently,The wondrous Gift is giv'n!So God imparts to human heartsThe blessings of His heaven.No ear may hear His coming,But in this world of sin,Where meek souls will receive Him still,The dear Christ enters in.

Weird and Wonderful

It's that time of year for everyone: a time of transitions. Letting go and taking hold of new things, like a trapeze artist in the circus, except, in my case, far less graceful. A whirlwind of emotions from excitement, sadness in saying goodbye, apprehension and fear.

It's no wonder that we are often tempted to remain stagnant in life, to stay in our comfort zone of what we know and what we control: to be in transition is to be in a moment of vulnerability. This is a moment where mistakes are made, missteps that are sometimes comic and sometimes tragic.

Transitions are when we realize that we are in far less control of our lives than we would like to think: all of the things that we have been building, or checking off the list of things to get or to have, are so fragile. In an instant, they can be gone. We think of ourselves as building toward certain goals, building a certain identity, but in moments of change, we see how fragile the things we build really are.

What I have learned is that awe and wonder are powerful responses in such moments of uncertainty. Colin Meloy has a beautiful song about the birth of his first child, in which he is in awe of how "weird and wonderful" a new baby is. He could have written a song about how scary new babies are, or how fragile and bothersome and expensive they are. But instead, he wrote a song about simply being in awe of this fragile and precious thing.

I think it's the perfect response for any sort of new birth or new transition in life: awe. It is an act of faith to continue to move forward in life. All the evidence suggests that moving forward and transitioning to new things greatly increases your risk for getting wrinkles, for making mistakes, for getting your heart broken, for saying goodbye to people that you love. But in awe and wonder we can begin to move forward and risk this weird and beautifully fragile thing called life: because it is all passing, it is all transitioning until we reach that final destination, where awe will be the truest response for eternity.

Asking for Directions

I haven't written a blog post in a while. I tried a few times; I would begin typing, but each time ended with me saying to myself: "I've got nothing."

Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows one extremely frustrating fact about me: I have a terrible sense of direction. This means that sometimes my friends and family get embarrassed and slightly panicked phone calls from me asking for directions. This might be funny until it's not: I somehow always wait until I am at my wits' end, when I have finally made so many wrong turns that I can't even admit to myself how lost I am.

And so it was that I set out to write a blog about where I find God in daily life, and like many times when I have set out to find many things -- I got a little lost.

Where was God in the frustrating situations I was finding myself in? I'm not talking about the big things we deal with in life -- I'm talking about the little, petty, annoying things. The tiny argument which we lost but we know we were so right. The small grudges we hold. The cold weather that doesn't let up. The person on the bus who talks loudly when we just want to rest.

Where is God when we keep messing up? When we know that we are just plain selfish?

If God was present in those situations, I couldn't see it. If there was something I could write about them, I kept coming up short.

But I've got a funny idea now, that maybe that's exactly when God shows up. When we realize that we come up short. When we realize that we do not have it all together. God shows up when we ask him for help. When we realize that we are people who need to ask for directions from God and from each other.

Maybe that's when we can start finding God, because we finally have the humility to start looking not just for a nice theory or a good explanation but a for a real Encounter that surprises us and frees us from our self-centeredness that leaves us lost.

And maybe at that point -- we finally can admit that we just need to buy a GPS.

The Questions We Ask

I find myself lately identifying with the people in the Gospels who ask Jesus questions and raise objections to him.

"We only have five loaves and two fishes." 

"He's been dead for three days."

"We don't know where you are going. How can we know the way?"

I think that what is funny about these exchanges -- and probably why I relate to the people who ask them -- is that the questions are always perfectly reasonable, completely logical objections to what Jesus says.

They are exactly the objections we raise, exactly the kinds of things we might ask when we worry if there is enough, when we wonder if there is hope, when we do not know which way to go.

Yet somehow Jesus always exposes these questions as completely incorrect.

"You are thinking not as God thinks." 

Is it any wonder that we don't always have the right answer? In each of his responses, time after time, Christ reveals that we don't even have the right questions.

The good news is that we don't have to have all the answers -- we have a person. A person who has experienced all of our reasonable questions. All of our wondering where to go and how to go and whether or not we'll get there. All of our fears that we are going to mess up and be proven inadequate.

To all of our wondering and our questions and our perfectly logical objections, Christ answers that He is the way. And so we find ourselves in Lent, a time to draw closer to him, to follow this Wisdom that is not our own to a conclusion that we would never have expected. We don't have to have all of the right answers to the questions that life will throw our way -- all we need is Christ.

In Defense of the Mess

I lugged my broken laptop to the electronics store yesterday, hoping for an easy fix. The man behind the counter plugged it in, pressed the power button, and, within a matter of seconds said very solemnly, "It's the motherboard."

This sounded very serious. It also sounded very basic, as if it was something I should know about, so I did the only thing that seemed logical at the time: I pretended to know.

"Oh no, not tha-at..."

He was not amused. "Do you have an external hard drive?"

I figured that if I couldn't remember what an external hard drive was, I probably did not have it. So I confidently said that I did not.

"Here," he said, plunking down one of those incomprehensibly-difficult-to-open electronic packages on the counter. "I'll transfer the data onto an external hard drive." I nodded.

"Do you want to recycle your computer?"

Oh. So that's what a broken motherboard means. I was frustrated. Now I would have to buy a new computer -- and I thought momentarily of the past five years that that computer had seen of my life. What next?

Around the same time, my mom told me her adventures of taking the grandchildren bowling. Because both of my nieces became sick in the car, they didn't make it to the bowling center and didn't get to spend the day as planned. She spent the next day cleaning up the car, cleaning up the house, and helping take care of them.

As I grow older, I can't help but notice how easily these little things come to my mom -- one setback here, one fix there, one step at a time. "Kids throw up," I've heard her say matter-of-factly and with a laugh. "That's just what they do."

These are the messy parts of life: messy cars, messy houses, broken computers, broken motherboards. They feel like interruptions, but sooner or later, you realize that these messy interruptions make up a good deal of life, and the way you handle them determines a lot about your character and your future.

These are the messy parts of life, maybe the "Ordinary Time" that we hurry through, embarrassed at the pettiness of these setbacks.

But they make a lot more sense when you realize that  life is less about reaching a specific destination (not to disparage destinations, of course) and more about loving: it's more about treating the person behind the counter delivering the bad news or the child in the backseat throwing up as more than an interruption.

Then love becomes action, interrupting our very messy, ordinary time and giving it meaning and hope and plenty of reasons to laugh at ourselves.

Things I Learn Only When I Am Sick

I love life. I love pure existence. I love the seeing snowflakes fall gently on the ground and the sound of raindrops and the smell of fresh-cut grass and the feel of ocean sand. I love music and dancing and reading and learning and feeling.

And then I get sick. Suddenly the only thing I love is a warm blanket and a bed. It can be just a cold, or a particularly low-energy week brought on by my low-thyroid, but either way, suddenly existence doesn't seem so great.

But sickness is part of life, and so I've decided to embrace it and write about it because we all get sick. It's so human. We might as well find some meaning in it, maybe even a little joy in it.

Mostly, I would say that sickness has been a school of humility for me. It usually happens when I've been doing too much, or not taking care of myself, and my body reminds me, "You have your limits." Also, I find that all of the things I might be tempted to take pride in -- being a patient person, being a good listener, being a good worker -- well, they don't come so easily when I am sick. Any credit that I was giving myself for being a good person usually has to go out the window when I'm sick; the slightest bit of a cold always reminds me, rather comically, that all it takes is some congestion and I am not really that pleasant to be around.

And I do think that there is a joy to be found in humility and in limitations. Humility, at its core, is freedom. There's an old-school prayer called the Litany of Humility that says as much. It's a beautiful prayer, although when you first read it, it sounds a little bit harsh. It is all about how humility is deliverance from a desire to be more than what we are. That desire to be more than what we are, to rely on ourselves completely, to control our lives and what others think of our lives completely -- that desire is ultimately not going to bring us to true freedom. True freedom is a freedom to be small and rely entirely on God and give ourselves completely to him and to others. And it gives levity to life, too, forcing us to learn to laugh at our smallness, to take ourselves less seriously.

Nothing reminds us that we are not what we want to be, we are not without our limits, more than sickness. The truth, the core of our existence, is we are entirely reliant on God's love. And that realization is ultimately freeing and liberating, even though I wish it came with fewer sneezes.