2015.02.01 It's a Feast Day! It's Sunday! It's SUPER Day!

Awaking this morning, I first thought: it’s Sunday. Then I thought: it’s the day of the parish Annual Meeting. Then I realized: NO, it’s Superbowl Sunday! This is a day, all hallowed for most Americans, coast to coast—the day we praise our national sport: Football. (Look Ma, not deflated!)

My heart sank, not because I have an outsized aversion to football as such, but because I felt a  familiar feeling: that of being left out—just like I felt when I was young and my mother and sisters would join in trimming the tree while my father dozed, and I fought back tears. Dad was left out, and I felt left out for him. I now understand that I felt love for him and sadness about his remove, and that there was nothing wrong with me. Still, that old feeling sometimes haunts. 

Today it made me think about me and football. When I was a young teen our family religiously went to the Yale/Harvard football games. Daddy was a Yalie. We could easily get to the Yale Bowl for home games. When football Saturday dawned, there was excitement in the air. THE GAME!

We got up early to help Mom pack a magnificent picnic lunch in a hamper:every good food each one of us had ordered for the feast, plus plenty of soda and beer—and something in a thermos that was not for kids. This was the Feast of the Tailgate—station wagons lining the stadium parking lot with their tailgates down and all the goodies displayed. Some people brought candelbra and set tables.

These days bring fond memories, not so much of football, which never seemed like a game, and which, despite many explanations, I could never understand, other than that a first down for our team was good, and our team was good. I did love the pudgy bull dog mascot and watching the male cheerleaders leap in the air, leading us in cheers and song: Boola, Boola, Eee-Lye-Yale. In short, it was a totally enjoyable ritual: all of us together and Dad happy.  I fell asleep in the car on the way home, happy myself. Thanks to football.

Recently, I attended a talk by Steve Almond, author of Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto. Almond, a former Sports writer for the Boston Globe is one of my favorite writers. He’s honest—and blunt. I went because I was curious about football, having read all the hullabaloo about players winding up with concussive disabilities for life. I also went to come to  terms with my own distaste for the stupid violence of this non-sport-like sport everyone loved. I did not agree with the testosterone outlet rationales. Why the holy magic of football, so obviously a “game” that depended on collision?

Almond said that his truth landed when his mother suffered an “insult to the brain.” Learning about the brain, its beauty and its fragility, unearthed the dark side of his own, and the nation’s, fascination with football. He called it “a national addiction which fosters tolerance for violence, greed, racism and homophobia, and part of a larger tribal system.” 

A few key points:
    -We create fantasies that this “game” can be made safer, but there are harmful physiological consequences + physics problems: mass x acceleration = force. The average player weighs 300 pounds, exceeding NFL limits. They have to gain weight to keep their jobs. 
    -The accretion of sub-concussive events is alarming. Argument has been made that men who played pro-football had already had previous concussions, and somehow don't count?  Studies monitoring brain functioning in high school football players indicated that there was diminished brain functioning after play, even when there had been no concussive symptoms beforehand. Not one blow, but a series of hits, concussion or no, reduced brain function after playing.
    -Football is a cash cow, and we build moral rationales to adjust to it. We build stadiums, keep cheering our lungs out. The consumer market is well-reinforced. Too much hype and cheer creates irrational pressure and expectation for more and more and more, with little room for failure. (I thought of the presidential inauguration in 2012 when near-ecstatic (hysterical?), overflow crowds filled the D.C. mall to overflow. What kind of exalted expectation did all that praise create for the office, not to mention the man?)
    -Will take a famous player to confess his disability fully before Almond’s goal can be fulfilled: the disruption of the narrative of complacency we’ve built around our fervent consumption of what amounts to sanctioning conditions of war.  And what about our heroes after we’re done with consuming them briefly as entertainers? (I told you I liked his blunt speech.)

Are even Christian values satisfied when we see a wounded body fallen for a higher cause? In football, those values are greed, lust and violence. What are the values in our Christian faith? I wonder about the high priest Caiaphas, Roman-appointed High Priest of the Jerusalem Temple and a co-conspirator in Jesus’ death. Caiaphas, according to John’s gospel (11:49,18:14), advised the Temple authorities that it was better to have one man die than destroy a whole nation. I’m not saying that this story is fact; I am saying that it contains a moral sanction of scapegoating violence that has become a part of Christian belief and liturgy. (See Gil Bailey’s book, Violence Unveiled.)

Almond suggests ideas for the future: to press for weight limitations in national competitions, training for coaches, mandatory academic grade requirements for players to graduate, and a look at our own cultural values.

Many in Almond’s audience shared fond memories of family connections, especially with Dads. Which brings me back to where I began. I established connections with my dad as an adult that were far more satisfying than the bonds of football. I knew he wasn’t a fan either, except that he, like me, loved being part of the group.

When I learned to play touch football—for girls, they said, I made touchdowns without tackling anyone.

And........it doesn’t escape my notice that we don’t call God “super.” (The rock opera, “Jesus Christ Superstar” is mocking. The rest of the lyric is: “Do you think you’re what they say you are?”)

I’m of a mind to say that nothing/ no one should be called SUPER. We don’t call God SUPER, so what the blazes are we doing to humanity with our collective need for false heroes?

2015.01.25 Tribute to Marcus Borg—and Mom

Happy 102nd birthday, Mom. Thank you for having always encouraged me to try new things, to speak out for what I believed, even if they were all your ideas. To let you know, though, I have found my own convictions, many of them in favor of women having pride of place in all ways and in all places. That one was your idea, and I agreed. I bet heaven is full of women who now enjoy full inclusion in the wide embrace of Godde—you too!

So about Marcus Borg......  I think my mother would have liked his almost casual approach to big fat unmanageable theological concepts and his humble stance about his considerable scholarship and the mystery of God and Christ he wrote and spoke about— and admitted he didn't "know." Once he was asked by a listener, “How do you know that what you say is true?” After a pause, he said, “I don’t.”

When I first read Borg’s, Meeting Jesus Again For the First Time, I was thrilled that the Jesus I’d come to know through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, was acknowledged by a Jesus scholar of history and culture. I’d fallen in love with this feisty Jew of Nazareth, with dirt under his fingernails and dust on his feet, who spoke pithy, provocative wisdom in one-liners. Thanks to Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and John Shelby Spong, I knew Christ wasn’t just a figment of my own fertile,  idiosyncratic, prayerful imagination. And I fell in love again.

Borg was a Distinguished  Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University and the Canon Theologian of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. He was not ordained, except maybe by the Holy Spirit of Godde. Ordination is not a requirement for a canon. According to Borg’s wife, an Episcopal priest, to be a canon you only have to be a “big shot.” Boom, boom!

He died on January 21, 2015, at the age of 72, two days after the day we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Both men were prophets of transformation, King for racism’s evils, and Borg, I would say, for the liberation of the Christian religion from “barbaric” ideas that denigrate the very heart of what Christian’s call God’s Love. What is loving about a God some call Father, who demands payment for sin through the death of a beloved son as a condition for reconciliation and forgiveness?  At a talk in March, 2013 at All Saints, Pasadena, Borg called this understanding of Jesus’ death “a destructive corrosive notion.” I call it devastating theology—unjust to God and humanity, just like racism, et. al.

Even as a child I thought this notion was “really dumb” and bet my own father would never even think of such a thing. I’d also had a very different foundational experience of a God I knew wasn't like this. This helped me discount just about everything I heard in church. But as a kid I was too busy memorizing and reciting all those elaborate Presbyterian definitions, for which I earned awards—little pins I still have. This I did for myself, not for God, although maybe God appreciated my earnest efforts, as any loving God would.

The payment-for-sin idea came in through Anselm of Canterbury in 1098, whose theology prevailed as doctrine, against the objections of his opponent Abelard. Abelard thought better of God and humanity. No wonder the late Madeleine L’Engle, author and faithful Christian, named her dog Abelard! Animals and people are God's gifts for us to love and be loved by— not to kill for God's sake.

The earliest Christians realized that animal sacrifice in the Temple was an offering, a gift, not a payment or ransom. Today, if we're generous, we sacrifice (the word means to make holy) money.  We carry it forward to the altar on plates at the Offertory, and it gets blessed, just like the bread and wine. Money serves grace, not the reverse.

When I celebrate Eucharist and say the words of atonement, I no longer wince, as I first did. (There are revised prayers now, but entrenched doctrine dies hard.) In my mind I change “for our sins” to “because of our sins.”  According to Borg, the word can translate “for” or “because.” And by God, Jesus surely died because of human sin. How often do we crucify Love? Daily I suspect.

I first read Borg in seminary, a little article on Jesus. This man has something, I thought, and watched for more Borg. His work enlivened my Christianity and refined my understanding of the God of grace I first trusted. Well, once I cheated and betrayed my own theology. I answered a canonical examination question about atonement theology, defending the traditional doctrine. I’d had enough trouble with the Church and wanted to get ordained. I wrote something icky I knew the examiners would love: Wouldn’t it make sense for a guest to wear the proper attire for admission to God’s banquet? (The proper attire would be Jesus Christ, lamb of God, sacrificed to save us— the ticket to get in.) I don’t know if any end justifies specious means, but I was so happy and proud to get ordained that I presumed on divine forgiveness. 

Experientially, and according to personality and circumstances, there are Christians of the First Person of the Trinity who directly experience the sacred in the Creator, and Christians of the second (Christ/Son) and third (Holy Spirit) persons. This capacious articulation protects me from being judgmental, or spiritually competitive. Borg identifies himself as a First Person Christian, having never had a direct experience of Jesus.

So, dear Mom, do you remember that once I asked you if you believed in Jesus Christ? It was at the peak of my Jesus zeal, and worried you might not even be a Christian, because all you ever spoke of was God. “Of course, darling,” you said, and that was that. Well, now you’re in the heavenly rest place of all our yearnings, and you might meet a man named Marcus Borg. If so, he is a First Person Christian, just like you.

Thank you, Marcus Borg.

P.S. I've read most all of Borg's work, also what he and Dom Crossan created together to illuminate for us the path of Christ lived by Jesus, the remarkable man of God. I plan to read Borg's latest and last book, Convictions.  Borg recently said that he gets suspicious if he meets someone of 40 who has several firm convictions, but if, by 60, one has no convictions, it might be time to worry. When I was 4, I had a conviction or two, connected with what mattered to me. By the time I was 40, I had no clear convictions, except one: to find a conviction, or two, and go for it. 

2015.01.18 Images of Boca Grande

Greetings from Florida where I thought it would be warm. Well, it's warmER, but my expectations were off again. So, what's new? I'm on a tiny (10 miles long and a few wide) island called Gasparilla.

It's part of a chain of small islands, including Captiva and the more famous Sanibel, and named after a pirate of old called Gaspar, who led raids and got his name into history. The town in which this small isle is located is called Boca Grande. Its means Big Mouth in Spanish, a designation that refers to the big mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and its inlets. Thanks to the weather, I now have a Boca Grande sweatshirt— advertising my own big mouth.

Thanks to the recommendations of Google-god who spit out my name, I came to lead a women's retreat at St. Andrew's parish. We took a few vacation days as well. On this isle people get around mostly by golf cart, so we have the parish rector's cart on loan. Guess who drives?

And guess who gasps and yells slow down, STOP sign, and other harassments from the front seat?

Someone didn't charge our cart long enough, and the other someone called, "We're out of gas!" as our cart began to buck and jerk. The mate screamed back, "There is no gas; it's a battery, and I charged it!" Not long enough apparently. Nevertheless, we are grateful to the rector, the Rev. Michelle Robertshaw, who came to rescue us in her CAR, which we then could use to continue our touristic adventures while she got help to charge up the little cart. Good to go!

Here is our regular morning visitor, a scavenger. Handsome feathered fellow, well fed. And the little feral cat who, with its many buddies, all trapped, spayed and readied for their cat job of keeping the island's rat population manageable. Makes good eco-sense. Islanders are grateful and feed the cats well. They hang around restaurants purring pleasantly, a feline strategy of begging. It works. 

                                         

Fascinated with all the flora and fauna in this clime, but specially the wild and thick mangroves which keep the island safe and protected from the waters. Also the noble banyan tree, destroyed by hurricanes yet returning bigger and stronger than ever, some of the branches actually growing downward to plant roots below for another outcropping of the tree. Imagine!

Nothing is lacking, except gas stations. This the Johann Fust Memorial Library, restored, beautified by our friend, Alice Gorman, and a dedicated team and lots of generous people. It is a gift to minds, young and old. Cicero said: "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." True!

We fly home tomorrow to northern climes. All in all, it has been a grand visit to a very unique place, filled with retired seniors like us, but with a lot more wealth than we have—a LOT more.

Oh, the retreat.....Spirituality 101, held in a sumptuous home, quiet contrary to ascetical practice, but with a gracious hostess, lots of laughs, and poetry, and wisdom, and bright women who want to know their own soul-worth more deeply and enhance their connection to God through the work of Christ Sophia, the feminine face of the Holy Spirit. Here is St. Andrew's church—a blessing.

Nathanael asked about Jesus of Nazareth, aka the Christ: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said, "Come and see." 

I ask: Can anything good come out of a small church on a little island? Come and see!  

2015.01.11 Let's Start a Post-Fear Era

“Fear has in this moment, a respectability I’ve never seen in my life.” 

Marilynne Robinson said this in an October 5, 2014, NY Times Sunday Magazine, interview conducted by Wyatt Mason. Robinson, 2013 recipient of a National Humanities Medal at the White House, is one of the few contemporary writers who is not afraid to speak out about fear. She is also not afraid to speak out about being religious—a “bent” she seems to have been born with, she says. Even clergy these days are hesitant about their religious "bent" and couch their religious faith in currently acceptable terms of spirituality. 

It’s post-Christmas time. It’s post-Christian, post-modern, post-everything, as far as I can figure out. For me it’s post-menopausal, at the least. What’s ahead? I get tempted to “respect” fear too much when I let it hold me back, when I over-anticipate negative outcomes. What if?—and the like. 

Every Christmas season we engage in our annual ritual of watching the film, “A Christmas Carol,” based on the 1843 novelette by Charles Dickens. We watch the 1984 version with George C. Scott playing the aging Scrooge, frozen in his ways by self-preservative strategies, derived from a cruel and humiliating early history. Fear ran Scrooge's show—fear posing as greed. Scrooge shut out the clamor of the world, amassed as much money as he could, never looked back, or forward, or round about him. 

We sat on the edges of our seats, pulled along by the old familiar story we knew by heart. Or did we? It was like Holy Scripture—everyone’s story in all its naked ugliness, yet without any easy answers or security that it will, in fact, turn out all right, just because some people notice what is holy, good, and, yes, divine. But will they (or we) choose good?  Will Scrooge? Oddly, our hearts were never quite sure until Scrooge ended up on his knees, weeping and full of grace. It was the emotional incredulity that kept, and keeps us every year, watching to make sure fear does not have its way entirely and looking forward to pure rejoicing, once again, at the end.

This year a phrase, or idea, from the script I hadn't noticed before struck me. Call it Scrooge wisdom. It went something like this: remember your past well, in order to live fully aware in your present, for these two combine to influence the yet unknown future you are creating. All three of Scrooge's Spirits are connected. The past, the present, and the future are never completely separable one from another in the human psyche. I call this the healthy internalization of one's personal cycle through time. As in Scrooge's transformation, the impact of all three time "zones" had to be known and integrated before his heart unlocked, defrosted, softened, and turned from fear to love.

Marilynne Robinson writes similarly compelling narratives. Her characters evolve and change, less dramatically than Scrooge, but then Scrooge needed several brickbats. Robinson's assessment of our current cultural condition isn’t too far from Dickens’s, however: that we have become overly fearful, and that our fear has become a respectable excuse for not acting as we should.

My gosh, I can identify with that when I hurry by the many beggars I pass on the city streets in Boston and hastily drop money into their cups or guitar cases. I’m generous, yes, a kind of good thing, yet I confess that I feel fear underneath. I’m not sure exactly of what. The future perhaps? These folks are always courteous and always say thank you, or God bless you, and sometimes have a musical offering. 

Mason asked Robinson: “What do you think people should be talking about more?” She talked then about fear as a default position and connected it, specifically, with faith-fear. Some of her religious students, for instance, come to her because they feel inhibited from speaking about the sacred in life, and they know she is faith-friendly. “How it [fear] has come to keep us at bay from our best selves, the selves that could and should do something”

Robinson is 70 now and has always been unafraid to write openly about internalized religious faith through story. Her characters have “soul voices” struggling to be born as they learn to speak for themselves. They often seek guidance from religious resources, like the Bible, while they are working out the scriptures of their own lives.

Dickens did the same. He was critical of religious hypocrisy and pious practices, so religious faith expressed itself from the inside out. We see Scrooge’s soul go through hell and back. And do we know it’s all a dream? Sort of. Scrooge, like the biblical Saul on the road to Damascus, stands out for his powerhouse, overnight conversion. Robinson’s heroes stand out by a similar process, though more nuanced like the slow awakening that begins for the disciples on the biblical road to Emmaus. 

I'm afraid to be called a crazy religionist, so I take courage from Robinson and Dickens. I share a portion of their fine writerly souls, and delight in the enlightenment that comes to their "fictional" heroes. They help me notice and appreciate the steady stream of transformative moments all around me every day.

Honestly? I take more courage from the solid faith of minor characters, supporting roles, who, though less central, are just as luminous in their steady recognition of the sacred in all life—the medicine for fear-driven living.

2015.01.04 The Eleventh Day—Eleven Pipers Piping

Today is the Eleventh Day of Christmas. On this day the true love receives eleven pipers piping. These noisy celebrants symbolize Christ’s eleven faithful apostles.

I love the old English carol, originally written in 1720, about the partridge stuck in a pear tree, the best Christmas gift imaginable from a devoted lover to his/her true love. Right? The pear-treed partridge was only the first of twelve gifts, one for each day of Christmastide.

Each gift got more grandiose, including eight maids a-milking, a gift that stretches even my soul.   Finally the Magi, wise as they were, arrived at the manger with more practical gifts, cash-redeemable.

Mary Davies Cole, a poet and visual artist, and a friend who lives in Gloucester, wrote her own version. Works for me.
 

The Twelve Days of Christmas

On the First Day of Christmas
I was somewhat depressed, but not drastically so.
On the Second Day of Christmas
I noticed it was pitch dark at four PM.
On the Third Day of Christmas
The dog threw up on the living room carpet.
The living room carpet is an heirloom Heriz,
Rare for the bits of green in it.
On the Fourth Day of Christmas
The tree was already dropping its needles,
Adding to the bits of green in the carpet,
And causing the dog to throw up again.
On the Fifth Day of Christmas
We moved the cocktail hour to four o’clock,
And opened the Scotch. We also moved
The tree away from the fireplace, so as not to
Light the needles and the dog on fire.
On the Sixth Day of Christmas
I noticed there were no longer any French hens
In the coop outside let alone any partridges or even a pear.
On the Seventh Day of Christmas
I lost my gold ring in the wrapping paper
that had just gone to Jesus with the trash.
Happy New Year everybody!
On the Eighth Day of Christmas
We cleaned up after the Seventh Night of Christmas,
And ate black-eyed peas
But no one ever likes black eyed peas.
On the Ninth Day of Christmas I looked in vain
For the Nine Ladies Waiting for the Ten Lords Leaping
On the Tenth Day of Christmas. This led me
To wonder if the Tenth Lord was actually gay.
On the Eleventh day of Christmas
My depression was better, knowing that sometime very soon
The three guys would finally find their way to the manger
And we could, at last, put all this stuff away before
It was suddenly Hallowe’en and you know what happens next.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas my true love said to me,
        What happened to your ring?
                                ©  Mary Cole, 2014

2014.12.28 The Soul Feels Its Worth

O holy night
the stars are brightly shining
it is the night of our dear Savior’s birth
long lay the world in sin and error pining
till he [Christ] appeared and the soul felt its worth.    

I love this hymn, in part because it is quiet and offers a counterpart to the loud confidence of the world, and yes, sometimes the church, thinking itself triumphant. Christians do joy very well at Christmas. We shout out, Hail! and Go tell it! and Gloria in Excelsis!— and much more. These are our favorite songs and stories. I love them, too. The mood soars. My mood soars, too.

Yet . . . do we know what we are saying?  What is Christmas, deep down and really? Is it Easter?

There is nothing more powerful than the vulnerability of a newborn or the suffering of human flesh. Both summon exquisite compassion, divine and human—compassion that can change the world.  

 Oh Holy Night, indeed! 

 

The other reason I love this hymn is that my father loved it and used to sing it in his deep bass voice with dignity and reverence. In fact, he sang it, softly and to his nurse, just a week before he died in 1983 after a short devastating bout with esophageal cancer which left him unable to eat and drink, except by artificial means. When he sang this hymn, something happened. I don’t know what, yet as a child, I thought he was God. I wasn’t that far off.

This year I have been haunted, sometimes annoyed, by one line of this hymn hammering in my brain: Christ appeared and the soul felt its worth. (I replace "he" with "Christ" because, well, "he" is too masculine, too constrictive for the enormity of divine hospitality herein proclaimed.) Over and over, I heard this phrase. Consider it: Christ appeared and the soul felt its worth—felt it, not thought it up. Christmas is a soul feeling its worth, immediate and ultimate, because God takes up residence in mortality. You are divinely human, and all humanity with you. Oh, if only we could ingest and digest this truth.....by God, we'd never harm ourselves or others. 

[NOTE: the original text in French, written by Placide Cappeau in 1843, is a carol about Christ's birth, entitled Minuit, Chrétiens. Literally translated it reads: Midnight, Christians, is the solemn hour/When God as man descended unto us/To erase the stain of original sin/And to end the wrath of His Father/The entire world thrills with hope/On this night that gives it a Saviour.]

The line that has caused my heart to have a meltdown comes, not from this French translation but from an 1855 translation by Unitarian minister, John Sullivan Dwight. I prefer the simplicity of Dwight's translation. The essential meaning is intact: rejoice because your flesh is worthy of God's indwelling. My soul does not feel much worth from the 1843 version about God's wrath and original sin-stains.

What is soul-worth? It doesn't mean feeling happy, nor the thrill of a spiritual selfie, nor a blast of confidence or bravura, nor a burst of extraordinary courage or aplomb. Soul-worth is profound; it come from an inner well which nothing can destroy, eradicate, or desiccate—even death itself. 

Mystics tell us of direct, unmediated spiritual experience. They do not proclaim a God of wrath or an author of sin so indelible that it requires human sacrifice, even if lovingly offered, to erase it. Julian of Norwich writes: "There is no wrath in God." I wonder why we cling to this notion with such tenacity? Or should I say vengeance?  We love sin, especially the sin of others! 

*  *  *  *

On December 14, 2014, I read in the Boston Globe a good opinion piece by Jennifer Graham, headlined: “Holiday nitpickers deserve coal in their stockings.” She made a good point that Christmas, of all times, was not the time to obsess about facts or clear history, but rather to listen and take in the story, like a work of great art. Swallow it whole. 

From Graham’s article I learned, to my amazement, that “O Holy Night” had been banned in France when it was discovered that the composer, Adolphe Adam, was Jewish—just like the babe in the manger, but who would let that secret out in the 19th century? The stated reason for the banning was the song’s “total absence of the spirit of religion.”

The author of the French text was a professed atheist and anticlerical, the composer, Jewish, and the English translator, Unitarian—not exactly star-studded Christians, yet these people understood and communicated the mystery of Christmas within— and beyond —its religious particularity. It seems a supreme irony. Perhaps it is good that Christmas is now a secular holiday, as well as a religious one. Christmas goes beyond Christianity.

It has also been noted that all that “pining in sin and error” was a comment on French politics. Perhaps so, but could the same be said of 21st-century American politics?

In the middle of her editorial, Graham commented that the proper time in the ecclesiastical calendar to obsess about facts would be Easter, not Christmas. “For Christians, everything hangs on the cross, and the Resurrection; nothing hangs on the manger.” My hackles flew up as I raced to my computer to type a letter to the editor, courteous yet firm.

I wrote: “I enjoyed Jennifer Graham's wry humor and her insight about Christmas not being an occasion to obsess about facts ("Holiday nitpickers deserve coal in their stockings," December 14, Ideas.) Graham writes: "For Christians, everything hangs on the cross and Resurrection; nothing hangs on the manger." I would counter that everything, for Christians, hangs on the cross and lies in the manger. It's not by fact but on faith that Divinity dwells in human flesh, even a humble manger.”

There is nothing more powerful than the vulnerability of a newborn or the suffering of human flesh. Both summon exquisite compassion, divine and human—compassion that can change the world.  

They didn’t publish my letter, and one could shoot a million theological/historical holes in my abrupt statement, however, the message of both manger and cross hang (great word) on a theological truth that Godde always appears as life abundant—on birthing bed or deathbed. Christmas and Easter live together. Both assure the soul's worth.

 When God appears in whatever form, souls feel their worth.
 

2014.12.21 Nativity Pageant: Getting Christ Born Again—and Again, and Again

I jumped into something for the wrong reason, or so it seemed. The Nativity Pageant, a drama I have witnessed many times over in various Christian parishes, is a tradition I’ve loved and still do. Taking on the organization of a parish pageant is, however, quite another thing from being an adoring parent watching—and not the usual comfort zone for an introvert like myself. Angels, help!

I can remember when our 4 children were young and used to put on their own home pageants. They would dress up in bathrobes, crowns, aka old hats, a broom for a shepherd’s crook, wire hangers with tissue paper (or ripped pajamas) for angels wings, and a makeshift cradle. I don’t remember what they used for straw. The two older sisters would produce, direct, and have the most important roles, i.e.Mary and the Narrator. The younger brothers would follow orders, very happy to wear crowns and hold crooks, or be Joseph. The reluctant Siamese cat, Coco, was always cast in the role of the baby Jesus, a star role in which she was most uncooperative, scratching anyone who tried to restrain or swaddle her. Mostly there was an audience of one, me. I applauded and adored, as one should for any effort done with such earnest care and cool.

I said I offered to help with this parish pageant for the wrong reasons. What I meant was: I was tempted by my own idea that I could give this great Christian story some extra gravitas within its essential simplicity. Such arrogance!— however, there was a natural break in the adult director roles, so I jumped in, running a phrase from Psalm 107 (translation by Pamela Greenberg) through my mind: They cried out to you about all that made quiver their minds. From all constraints, you lifted them safely away.

I had two agendas. First, that a pageant is a procession with a tableau, not a play. And second, that the story be narrated as it is in the scriptural texts. Oh, one more item: I wanted a swaddled baby doll, not a real baby, to play Jesus. (I was thinking of Coco the cat and the real possibility of a screeching infant. I’m sure Jesus squawked, as all babies do, but just not for this pageant, please.) Others agreed, and off we went. I put together a new script, added a verse of appropriate carols for traveling music to get shepherds, angels, Magi, and the pregnant espoused Mary up the aisle, her faithful, beloved Joseph at her side.

Besides the Narrator, there was only one speaking part for a child. The Angel Gabriel announces to Mary her key role: helping God do a new thing in the world. Our Gabriel, a beautiful young girl of about 10 delivered her one line with angelic flourish and we got a tall redheaded boy to be the Star of wonder. Gabriel's offer was one the young Mary could not refuse. Well, she protested a little. Scripture, tactfully, doesn’t tell us much about Joseph’s feelings, but we can only imagine. My bet is that he helped deliver his son.

Two wonderful Church School teachers and several parents helped, really directed, because I don’t know the children well yet, and I'm terrible at diving into such things, scrambling through mounds of varied costuming variations to locate just the right outfit amongst years of accumulated gear. (I am a good mother, but I'm not as good a mother for young children. I'd rather watch and listen to their amazing antics and verbal precocity, then later listen to their wisdom and their trials as they grow up.) 

The night before the pageant I had a small nightmare: what if we don't have enough wings for all the angels?

But I needn't have worried. The marvelous sea of childhood chaos, earnestness, and innocent wisdom prevailed to offer this gift to parents, to the church, and most of all to Christ. We all helped God get Jesus Christ born again this year.  Thumbs up and high fives....... we did it: Christ is born again in Bethlehem or Massachusetts or Anywhere.  

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

And sure enough, my mind stopped quivering and I felt born again myself!