He Gave Me a Dahlia

Strangers, we met on a walk through the neighborhood,

going in opposite directions,

a dog with him, me alone.

“Hello,” we each politely murmured;

we noted the weather, his dog sniffed my shoes,

and we started to move on, but…

have you seen my garden, he asked,

just two houses ahead of you?

Oh, yes! I said, and I thank you for it;

it is a delight.

I smiled and started to walk on.

But you must see the newest dahlia!  

And, grinning with a quiet pride,

he turned himself and his little pooch around

to walk in my direction, just so I would be sure 

not to miss the newest garden wonder. 

*

I oohed and aahed with him,

snapped a picture or two, thanked him again,

and said my good-byes.  But not so fast! 

Pulling a garden knife from his pocket,

he insisted on clipping for me

a dahlia of my choice.

*

A stranger.  Offering me a flower

from his garden.  A dahlia that sits now

in a glass on my kitchen table.

I look with wonder at this purple beauty;

graciousness between strangers

in a world of so much fear and distrust,

courtesy and kindness not forgotten

in a culture filled with so much vitriol

and hate-filled speech.

This dahlia sings for me

the hope of what can be,

and I am stilled.

He gave me a dahlia…

and so much more.

Easter Triumph

Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen.

Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Christmas Vulnerability

The Newborn Child (also known as The Nativity)

Georges de La Tour (17^th century)

I know.  At the Council of Ephesus in 431, I was declared Theotokos, Mother of God, and in the centuries that followed, many followers of my Son called me the Queen of Heaven.  But I can assure you that I felt far from queenly on the night that I gave birth to Jesus.

Georges de La Tour has captured so much of what I really experienced after giving birth to the Christ child.  Wonder and awe, certainly.  But also vulnerability and uncertainty, questions—oh, so many, and an abundance of fears.

My downcast eyes and my tentative hands in his painting speak to all that shadowed this momentous birth for me.  Who was it, really, whom I held in my hands, wrapped in those swaddling cloths that almost mirrored a shroud?

There had been such expectancy about this birth.  Such grand preparations in my hometown of Nazareth among those with whom Joseph and I had shared the news of my unexpected pregnancy.  But then the edict came from Rome for a universal registration, and Joseph and I were forced to travel to Bethlehem in the late days of my pregnancy.  Not easy.  But surely, we thought, God would find for us a safe and comfortable place for me to give birth to this special child.  Not.  As you know so well, we ended our weary journey in a cold, dark cattle shed, and that was where I gave birth.

What had gone wrong?  What had I misunderstood?  Surely, if everything the angel had told me was really true, this birth should have happened in some grand place, with trumpets blaring the good news to all the world.  Or, if not that, at least in my own home, with friends and relatives and our own rabbi there to support and reassure.

But a cattle shed?  God seemed so distant the night of my birthing.  So oblivious to all that I was going through.  Had that angel visit been merely a strange dream I had?  Was the joy I felt when I visited my cousin Elizabeth and sang my song of joy simply a false hope? Where, oh where, was that angel now?

Of course, I felt all the fears most new mothers have.  How will I care for this tiny, fragile being?  How will I cut his tiny finger nails without injuring him?  How will I know when to feed him, when to put him to sleep?  But I also felt the additional fear of caring for this child if he really was, as the angel had said, “the Son of the Most High,” “the Son of God!”  How could I possibly handle this responsibility?  “God, where are you?” my soul cried out.  “I simply can’t find you here in this miserable stable!”

I know that many people in this difficult time in the world are feeling as alone and as vulnerable as I felt after delivering my first born.  God seems so distant in these thorny days, so oblivious to the trials and tragedies so many are experiencing.  A pandemic has swept across the globe, claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.   Fragile democratic governments teeter on the brink of becoming authoritarian autocracies, with leaders putting themselves above the law.  Poverty and hunger are on the rise as economies collapse and people lose their jobs, their businesses, sometimes their homes.  “God, where are you?”  I hear the cries from every corner of the globe.

I didn’t get any clear answer from the skies when I asked where God was on the night I gave birth.  No angel re-appeared to assure me all was well.  I did receive the strange consolation of shepherds who came to worship my baby boy.  Also the comfort of wise strangers from afar, foreigners who bent the knee before my child and offered gifts fit for a prince.  I would have preferred another angel, but I pondered what I was given.

So to all of you who are crying out, “God, where are you?” I hope you’ll step into La Tour’s painting with me.  Know that I am feeling with you all the vulnerability and uncertainty that you are feeling, even as I hold the Christ child in my tentative hands.  Listen with me for those who have heard the song of angels in their lives.  Learn from wise friends who have seen a star you may have not noticed. 

Listen.  Learn.  And even in the midst of all of your questions, fears, uncertainties, sense with me the holy wonder of this child.  Believe with me, that in this child, the God who seems so absent at times is indeed at work to scatter the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, to bring down the powerful from their thrones, to lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things, to send the rich away empty.*

*paraphrase from Mary’s Manificat, Luke 1:46-55

Five Long Months

detail from The Visitation

Domenico Ghirlandaio

(1449-1494)

Note:  March 25 was the church’s celebration of the Annunciation to Mary of the coming birth of her son Jesus.  My focus this week, however, is not on Mary, but rather on Elizabeth, Mary’s older relative whom Mary visited right after the angel’s announcement to her.  Elizabeth was 5 months pregnant with John the Baptist at the time of “the visitation.”  The following passage tells us that during those first five months Elizabeth had remained in seclusion.  I found myself wondering why.

After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.” Luke 1:24-25

***

          Five long months.  The longest five months of my life.  I know.  I expect you assume that I was very excited and very happy during those first five months of my late-in-life pregnancy. 

          But there was so much more to it than simple happy excitement.  Part of me was happy, to be sure.  Part of me really did believe that God had looked favourably upon me, and I did feel a deep gratitude to God.  But a part of me was pretty skeptical too.  Was God really at work in my life, in my body?  We had tried for so many years to have a child, and now, at my age, was it possible that I was to birth a very special child who was to prepare the way for the Messiah?  I found it difficult to let myself really, really believe that it was all true. 

          Where was my faith, you ask.  Quite honestly, it was buried under years of disappointment.  There had been a few hopeful times when I had been “late,” and we had let ourselves get excited.  Back in those long-gone days, I had even dared to whisper once to a few of my women friends that maybe, just maybe, I might be pregnant.  Only to be disappointed one more time. 

          This time, I was simply going to keep to myself at home, busy myself with my daily household routines, and avoid, as much as possible, the ever-present grin that haloed my dear husband’s trusting face.  I decided not to go out to the market or the town well (let my husband take over those chores), as I simply couldn’t face the questions I knew would await me there.  Why was my usually rather dour husband so happy, even after he had lost his ability to speak?  And what was he trying to tell them in his silly pantomimes?

          Yes, I did watch my waist-line give way to a bit of a bulge, but wasn’t that what happened to all women who were my age?  And yes, my breasts did become a little fuller, but there, too, maybe I was just putting on a little extra weight, without my usual exercise of daily walks to get our water and food.  I remained skeptical. 

          And, to be quite honest, I was just a little bit angry with God as well.  I mean, why couldn’t God have given us this child when we were young and energetic and so eager to be parents?  Would that have been too much to ask?  Why did I have to bear years of scorn from my neighbors because I had never been able to bear a child?  It all seemed so unfair.

          So for those five long months I sat in my house and simply waited.  Alone.  Dubious.  Anxious.  Angry. 

          And then that moment of spiritual transport in the early days of my sixth month.  It happened on the day my relative Mary came to visit me with her news of the angel’s promise that she was to give birth to the “Son of the Most High,” a child who was to sit on the throne of David in a kingdom with no end.  Clearly our Messiah!  I had always been devout, but never before had I experienced a time when I simply felt overwhelmed by God’s Spirit and felt God’s Spirit actually speaking through me.  But I did feel a certain ecstasy as I cried out to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?  For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy.  And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

          I was genuinely happy that day.  Happy for Mary with all of her good news.  And happy for myself also, for when I felt my baby give me a swift kick that day, I finally knew it all was so very real. 

          At the same time, if I’m really honest, I have to confess that along with all that happiness, I did feel just a bit of jealousy.  I mean, why was this young teen-age girl called to be the mother of our Messiah, when I, with all my maturity and wisdom of age, had been called only to be the mother of our Messiah’s forerunner?  Ghirlandaio captured some of my ambivalence, I think.  Mary is gently looking right at me, but my eyes are just a bit averted.  Trying to take it all in–the enormity of what was happening, as well as the weight of all my emotions.  Oh well, my jealousy was pretty fleeting, and overall I really did feel blessed.

          But with all my lack of faith, my anger at God, my short-lived jealousy, I certainly want to confess that I was no saint.  I know.   I was declared a saint by the early church, and my feast day is still celebrated 2100 years later on either November 5 (Roman Catholic Church) or September 8 (Greek Orthodox Church). 

          But the reality is that I was simply an ordinary woman with lots of doubts, questions, jealousies, angers, and fears.  A saint?  I hardly think so!

          Or was I?  I’ve been talking to the apostle Paul through these centuries since my life on earth, and I think he has me almost convinced that all Christ-followers really are saints.  He spoke of this so often in his letters to the churches back in the first century, and he’s still hammering away at that idea all these centuries later.  Trying to convince me that, even though I certainly didn’t wear a halo, even though I was far from perfect, I was, in God’s eyes, a saint because God was at work in my life.

          He does agree with me that I was a pretty muddy saint, to be sure.  All of us are, he tells me, as he ticks off his own failings.  Lots of clay feet and dirty toes.  Lots of mistakes in all our lives.  But I think he has convinced me that we are all saints simply because God truly is at work in each of our lives.  He likes to quote for me what he said in his letter to the Ephesians.  “We are [God ’s] workmanship (the Greek word here is “poiēma,” which can also be translated as “poem” or “masterpiece”),  created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”   I quite like that image.  God sculpting the soiled clay of our lives into a lovely vase or chalice.  God taking the alphabets of our lives to write the rhythms of a lyrical poem.  “Masterpieces” that carry the ancient, ongoing silhouette and song of God’s love for all of God’s creation.

          So call me a saint, if you will.  And celebrate my special day, if you will. But please be sure to call yourself a saint too.  And please celebrate each day of your muddy life, believing, in every moment, that God is carefully and lovingly at work in you, molding and writing beauty in all the messy contours, all the soiled nouns and verbs and adverbs of your not-so-saintly, saintly life.

 

 

  

 

 

Lest We Forget-2

          We don’t all share the same views when it comes to the slogan “America First.”  Some who read this post hear something very positive in this slogan.  Others of us, however, myself included, hear something that makes us uncomfortable.  Uncomfortable, as it seems to encourage us to forget the enormous difficulties so many people are experiencing around the world—wars, violent political repression, extreme poverty, and hunger.  Uncomfortable also because it tends to drown out the words of Jesus, who said that when we turn away from the hungry, the naked, and the stranger, we are really turning away from him.

          To help us remember these people, I am posting each month a picture to remind us of their suffering.  My hope is that, however we view “America First,” we will come to see these people not merely as “immigrants” or “refugees,” but rather as individuals in desperate need.   I hope we will all keep them in our thoughts and prayers, and that we will encourage our national leaders to be open to helping them and welcoming them

 

Just as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers (and sisters), you did it to me.”

Jesus, Matthew 25:40

(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)  Mother and child fleeing Mosul, Iraq