Resolutions

   It’s that time of year again, time to look back and forward at the same time.  We tend to be too busy dealing with the now to spend any time doing either one.  Our form of looking back is regret and guilt.  Our way of looking forward is planning how to fit more doing or running into the moments we see ahead.  Our way of looking back is mostly regret that fuels the anxieties that have something to do with the more doing and running.

   Such are not contemplative disciplines of the spirit.  Neither are they effective at pouring the footings for our construction of a creative life style. 

   With this in mind I try to spend some moments, sitting still, considering the successes and failures, the moments of joy and grief.  I try to put them into the context of who I’d like to be and to become.  It takes a while, and sometimes it’s hard to hold myself to the task.  I tend to drift away from the focus.  Anxiety and guilt have a way of tangling us in their sticky webs.

   The results of my excursions produce a list.  They are in reality a bridge from then to there, constructed of hopes and dreams as much as stuff.  They may be grounded in the common, everyday activities.  And they may be potential alterations of the landscape of my life.  Or better, alterations of my pathway through the landscape of my life.  I go back to them now and then throughout the year, to keep my moments of clarity in mind.

   It’s time.  Happy new year.  May it be full of moments of clarity for us all.

Fear Not

Luke 2:1-14

 

   Whenever I hear the words of the King James translation of this passage, chills go up my back.   The season trembles around me.  ‘And it came to pass in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.’  It’s a switch that initiates all the pageantry and wonder speaking from places of shadowed mystery.  It whispers of beings beyond our understanding, presenting themselves to teenaged girls and blue collar workers.  Poetic words that open an epic made of anything but heroes.           

   Woven into the all too human story are these beings from beyond, messengers from the creator of all that was, is, and shall be.  Ever since I was a child I couldn’t buy the way people spoke of and pictured these messengers.  They were cute, sentimental projections of anything but the majesty and glory that messengers from beyond our understanding could be.

   I can understand why the pictures and stories of angels are done so.  There is no way to portray such beings.  It is beyond our capability.  So we give them wings, we give them halos.  But more, we reduce them, because beings of power and glory intruding on us are fearful.  We don’t want to fear in this time of sentiment and affection.  We want the security and affirmation that Christmas stands for. 

   I collect angels.  Most of them are beautiful, graceful human figures with flowing robes, dancing through space.  In this season they change our home into a preserve, a safe landing zone in these three dimensions for these bringers of God’s Word, reflections of the Maker’s glory.  They still tell a story of grace, a very human story begun so long ago, at least according to our perspective.  It is not only a story of one child’s birth, but also of that birth here and now, in this house, in this family. 

   They speak of memories, of songs sung at birth and death, of moments of affection and the new joy of relationships.  They speak of new faith, of heart felt understanding where before there were only words and human traditions.  They speak of the miracles that are ours to embrace.  So the multidimensional conduits of God’s news here and now in these beautiful, yet limited forms speak of our limited apprehension of God’s mystery and glory.  They speak of this incarnate specificity, born to us a savior.  They play human instruments.  They read and sing from manuscripts.  And they remind us that this is a season for us, we limited, needy, broken beings.  And so the multidimensional beings, here and now are beautiful, graceful, winged dancers, rather than reason defying, sense violating, terrifying beings. 

   And the songs they sing allow us to rest in the Good News that we, as we are, are loved. 

 Merry Christmas.

“O rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing.”