Dec 4, 2022

  This Advent, we simply tell the story, start to finish, and without the usual jumping back and forth in the timeline. The beauty of the Christmas narrative, however, isn’t simple. It isn’t just one person’s story during a single year. It’s the story of Mary and Joseph, shepherds and magi, Elizabeth and John, but it’s also the story of Ruth and Jesse and David and Isaiah, all of these individual threads over centuries woven together into the story of God’s unconventional in-breaking.                      

  And the Christmas story is our story, too. The tapestry God is weaving did not stop in Bethlehem. Our own threads, from generation to generation, weave into the narrative of God’s incarnation in the world that proclaims the Advent promises of hope, peace, joy, and love.

  This week, we ponder alongside Mary. We sit with her in the magnitude of whatever we carry with us.

We don’t need to pretend the angst isn’t real. I wondered myself as I began again the practice of a body prayer of Julian of Norwich. She presented herself before God earnestly against great disruptions in her world. 

  The prayer involves four bodily actions. First, hands together actively awaiting the presence of God. Followed by upward and outstretched hands allowing with welcome God into our very selves. Next hands cupped over heart in a movement of acceptance for whatever is in the moment that God will hold with you. Finally, hands reached out, offering divine love, attending to that which we are called, in a Peace that surpasses all angst. 

  In spite of the fear Mary must have experienced in her wondering, she would await, allow, accept and attend to the activity of divine love and justice being birthed. Generation to generation the people of God have said, "Yes."  What is our fear? What is our yes?