In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
-John 1: 1-5
Clear and cold here at Wyldswood this morning. We've already opened presents and I sit here with a belly full of eggs florentine and champagne, two traditions of Peg's I've happily folded into my holiday routine.
The cows seem cold. They're all bunched up out there in the sun, not too far from where Mike dropped off a few bales of hay for them a day or two ago.
The cats have crawled inside the fireplace screen to curl up next to the gas flame. I keep expecting to see a flaming Maine Coon Cat come fly past us in the kitchen any second.
The cold weather seems to bring out the fox squirrels--this morning I saw all three of them out toward the fish house. That little speck in the center of the shot is one of them racing across the yard, mindful no doubt of the hawk watching its every move from a branch nearby.
Peg has elected to open presents and cook breakfast in a long-sleeved t-shirt. Period. I'd be forced to move out to Splinters if I posted a photo of her padding around the kitchen in bare feet, so I'll leave that to the imagination. It's a happy scene. Such a lovely, warm, wonderful part of my life, that one.
For those of you curious, last night's gumbo was nothing short of phenomenal, loaded with oysters, scallops, stone crab claw meat, sausage, and chicken. We feasted while watching the National Cathedral's Lesson and Carols service on TV--it was beautiful, but I have to say I enjoyed the one at Holy Nativity so much more. Maybe it was that last night's offering was a pandemic L&C performance, in an empty space, social distancing, with everyone wearing a mask. Part of what made those nights at HN so magical was the life of the moment, the smiles and the hugs and the folks we hadn't seen in a while. There was a glow of something divine over the whole scene.
Which makes it all the harder for me to confess that I am a Christmas apostate, a disbeliever in the whole nativity story. Jesus lived, and therefore was born. We can all agree on that. But the Christmas story itself is, as I've written before, an extreme stretch to the extent we treat it as literal. Maybe that's one of the reasons I'm drawn more to John than the synoptics--his sweeping yet wordy narrative doesn't even bother with mangers or magi or shepherds. Jesus is, flatly, God, there from the beginning of creation and for a brief moment manifested among us, until he left it to us to finish the story.
But if we can see past our human proclivity for taking myths, which are inherently true descriptions of the human condition, and making them false by insisting on their literal truth, the Christmas message cannot help but bring hope. God loved his creation in a way that he chose to become a part of it, however briefly, and experience the joy and pain of human existence. The aloof, sometimes cruel God of the Hebrew Bible becomes a little kinder as he develops empathy toward the human condition and all it brings.
Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps God manifest means a God who's not necessarily going to help us find our car keys or make grandma get better, but who will abide with us through this mortal journey; a god who cares enough to experience our existence at its very worst--death on a cross--to remind us that our covenant with him extends to whatever depths we might plumb along the way.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.
-St. Patrick's Breastplate
None of that can be true without a God as much immanent as transcendent. Regardless of the good and bad that inevitably populate our brief time on earth, a faith born of the objective fact that God walked among us, entering the human milieu not as a king but as the son of a construction worker and his teen bride, is the greatest blessing we take away from the scene around the manger. And that's true whether the visitors on his arrival were magi or angels or drummer boys or just Joseph's drunk Uncle Jesse, wandering in from the fields where he keeps his sheep to see what the fuss is about. All of it amounts to a liminal moment for humanity, a revelation of God's nature, God's love, in a place that could have been any place, a time that could have been any time. And the world's been a better place ever since.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Merry Christmas.
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