Jack Hardaway
]
I am a big fan of all the Christmas stuff that surrounds us. All the customs, all the tacky things, the cheap sentimental tripe and treacle, the cheesy and the shallow, the crowded masses of humanity shopping endlessly, the crass commercialism.
Yep. I love all that stuff. I am constantly amazed at the crazy ways we keep coming up with to celebrate the season.
I love Jesus is the reason for the season. I love the true meaning of Christmas. I love the wild colored lights and the more tasteful subdued white lights for the Southern Living crowd.
The Santa hats, the TV specials, all the old songs, the remakes of the old songs, the new songs, the endless playlists.
All the parties, all the gifts, all the sharing, all the giving to the poor, the cards.
The family gatherings. O my.
And that sense of solitude and loneliness that pervades it all. I love that too.
I can’t keep up with it all, and I love that I can’t keep up with it all, it’s overwhelming, discordant, dissonant and harmonic. All the contradictions, paradoxes, the moral splitting of hairs and the slippery slopes of ethical grayness, betwixt and between, two things at once and neither.
God’s world. The endless variety.
I used to be angry at everyone missing the point. But it was me missing the point.
God chose for the universe to be teaming with life, and the messiness of it all.
Into all this too muchness, God enters into the world.
Holiness. Adoration. Fear. Awe. Wonder and praise.
Into all our too muchness God piles on even more.
The too muchness of God swaddled in the too muchness of humanity.
Fear not! Good news. For everyone.
That is the birth of Jesus into our angry fevered world. The Savior. The Messiah.
Do we have room? Room to be in awe? To be humble before the holy?
Too see that goodness? In the middle of all our sordid scorn and mockery, our endless offended-ness, do we have room in the Inn? Even just a little straw manger for the holiness that made us and that chooses us?
Good news, for all, all the time. How do we live that?
It is easier to believe lies and to rage at the world than to be humbled before the holy, to trust deeply in God, to love anyway, to be good news, all the time, for everyone.
That is too much. So we do something easier and understandable.
We treasure our seething fear and confusion and we churn it into poison to spread like rancid butter.
It is too much. This holiness that has chosen us in this child. Chosen our darkness.
I love that I have no idea how to go about being good news that really is good news, not sort of good news for some, but good news that really is good.
The too muchness of God. It is more than I can handle. I love that.
I can’t keep up with it all, and I love that I can’t keep up with it all, it’s overwhelming, discordant, dissonant and harmonic. All the contradictions, paradoxes, the moral splitting of hairs and the slippery slopes of ethical grayness, betwixt and between, two things at once and neither. Fully human yet fully divine.
God’s world. The endless variety.
I used to be angry at everyone missing the point. But it was me missing the point.
God chose for the universe to be teaming with life, and the messiness of it all.
Into all this too muchness, God enters into the world.
The too muchness of God swaddled in the too muchness of humanity.
Holiness. Adoration. Fear. Awe. Wonder and praise.
Into all our too muchness God piles on even more.
The too muchness of God. Fear not! Good news. For everyone.
That is the birth of Jesus into our angry fevered world.
To simply love, to simply be in awe, to simply listen to that lonely stillness that we hide from so well.
Holiness. Adoration. Fear. Awe. Wonder and praise.
With Mary let us ponder and treasure these things in our hearts.
With the Shepherds and the Angels let us make haste and erupt into song.
With the inn keeper may we make room.
With all the craziness of the season, in these crazy times, in this wonderful crazy world may we love deeply, with crazy love.
Blessed Feast of the Nativity of our Lord.