Winter Song
Dec. 23rd, 2002 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenkFrom Winter Song, a collection of Christmas-season readings by Madeleine L'Engle and Luci Shaw.
When we try to define and over-define and narrow down, we lose the story the Maker of the Universe is telling us in the Gospels. I do not want to explain the Gospels; I want to enjoy them.
[...] God made the rock and you and me, and is concerned with Creation, every galaxy, every atom and subatomic particle. Matter matters.
This is the promise of the Incarnation. [...]
- ML'E
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast. It's good advice. Unless we practice believing in the impossible daily and diligently, we cannot be Christians, those strange creatures who proclaim to believe that the Power that created the entire universe willingly and lovingly abdicated that power and became a human baby.
Particle physics teaches us that energy and matter are interchangeable. So, for the love of us recalcitrant human creatures, the sheer energy of Christ changed into the matter of Jesus [...].
How did the schism between flesh and spirit come about to confuse and confound us? God put on our flesh and affirmed its holiness and beauty. How could we ever have fallen for the lie that spirit is good and flesh is evil? We cannot make our flesh evil without corrupting spirit, too. Both are God's and both are good, as all that our Maker made is good.
God created, and looked on Creation, and cried out, It is good!
At Christmastime we look at that tiny baby who was born in Bethlehem, and we, too, may cry out, It is good!
-ML'E
In the Incarnation, Christ became a living metaphor - the Word. Jesus took the risk of reducing himself to what we could see and touch and listen to, a living message that bridged the huge communication gap between deity and humankind.
-LS
In a "give me" age, things that once had to be earned are now expected as our rights. People, once honored and valued, are taken for granted. Selfism has become the new idolatry, and "I'm worth it" the new rule of thumb. Material values have risen to the top rung of the ladder, and anything we cannot see and touch and prove and use is discounted as irrelevant; spiritual realities are dismissed as impractical and insignificant in an age of upward mobility.
How refreshing it is, in this context, to think of the downward mobility of Jesus, who left behind the riches of heaven, stripped himself of kingly splendor, was willing to be poor and abused and out of step with his age as the most threadbare beggar he reached down and touched with the gift of love and healing. Jesus said, "It is better to give than to receive," and proved it when he gave his life away to us.
- LS
And what good did it all do? The heart of man is still evil. Wars grow more terrible with each generation. The earth daily becomes more depleted by human greed. God came to save us and we thank him by producing bigger and better battlefields and slums and insane asylums.
And yet Christmas is still for me a time of hope, of hope for the courage to love and accept love, a time when I can forget that my Christology is extremely shaky and can rejoice in God's love through my family and friends.
-ML'E
When we try to define and over-define and narrow down, we lose the story the Maker of the Universe is telling us in the Gospels. I do not want to explain the Gospels; I want to enjoy them.
[...] God made the rock and you and me, and is concerned with Creation, every galaxy, every atom and subatomic particle. Matter matters.
This is the promise of the Incarnation. [...]
- ML'E
In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Through the Looking Glass, the White Queen advises Alice to practice believing six impossible things before breakfast. It's good advice. Unless we practice believing in the impossible daily and diligently, we cannot be Christians, those strange creatures who proclaim to believe that the Power that created the entire universe willingly and lovingly abdicated that power and became a human baby.
Particle physics teaches us that energy and matter are interchangeable. So, for the love of us recalcitrant human creatures, the sheer energy of Christ changed into the matter of Jesus [...].
How did the schism between flesh and spirit come about to confuse and confound us? God put on our flesh and affirmed its holiness and beauty. How could we ever have fallen for the lie that spirit is good and flesh is evil? We cannot make our flesh evil without corrupting spirit, too. Both are God's and both are good, as all that our Maker made is good.
God created, and looked on Creation, and cried out, It is good!
At Christmastime we look at that tiny baby who was born in Bethlehem, and we, too, may cry out, It is good!
-ML'E
In the Incarnation, Christ became a living metaphor - the Word. Jesus took the risk of reducing himself to what we could see and touch and listen to, a living message that bridged the huge communication gap between deity and humankind.
-LS
In a "give me" age, things that once had to be earned are now expected as our rights. People, once honored and valued, are taken for granted. Selfism has become the new idolatry, and "I'm worth it" the new rule of thumb. Material values have risen to the top rung of the ladder, and anything we cannot see and touch and prove and use is discounted as irrelevant; spiritual realities are dismissed as impractical and insignificant in an age of upward mobility.
How refreshing it is, in this context, to think of the downward mobility of Jesus, who left behind the riches of heaven, stripped himself of kingly splendor, was willing to be poor and abused and out of step with his age as the most threadbare beggar he reached down and touched with the gift of love and healing. Jesus said, "It is better to give than to receive," and proved it when he gave his life away to us.
- LS
And what good did it all do? The heart of man is still evil. Wars grow more terrible with each generation. The earth daily becomes more depleted by human greed. God came to save us and we thank him by producing bigger and better battlefields and slums and insane asylums.
And yet Christmas is still for me a time of hope, of hope for the courage to love and accept love, a time when I can forget that my Christology is extremely shaky and can rejoice in God's love through my family and friends.
-ML'E
