Dear Friends,

 This year, we will be celebrating the Fourth Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve all on the same day. The task of making a transition between two liturgical seasons in one day has been on the minds of our Altar Guild and I can tell you, it will take some fancy footwork!

 It is tempting to get lost in the logistics of the Christmas season, isn’t it? Not only in our church life, but in our personal lives. That is why it is helpful, at least for me, to take a 15-minute pause at least once each day to remind myself why it is that we do what we do. And today, I circled back to the story of Mary, the young woman whose life was totally upended when God chose her to bear the Holy Child who would change the world. I thought of a poem written by a colleague who founded a collective of homes of women and children navigating major transitions.

 

Even if one of the women hadn’t nearly delivered

her seven-pound baby girl right on the front porch,

I surely would have been writing this poem.

A poem about ill-timed gifts and no place like home

and what a fine mess we’ve got into this time.

A poem about the coming of Christmas.

 

It’s impossible to live so near the homeless heart

and not think a lot about Christmas.

Frightened Marys journey alone on dark and rocky roads

without resources, without reservations (without Josephs)

burdened—Lord! burdened with child and child and child.

Longing for a place—just a space—to be. . . to become.

 

Having so little, yet entrusted with so much,

like Mary, they carry the weight of the world. And the hope.

 

They wait. They listen.

To the angel voice that first pulled them here to the side streets of Bethlehem,

to the presence that now pulls them on toward home.

 

These Marys don’t know that their lives are a poem,

an acting out of the Christmas story,

and I don’t suppose it would matter much to them anyhow.

But daily they teach me of the unexpected arrivals of grace

the mysterious disguises of God

the surprise of the coming.

As I ponder again the words of the angel Gabriel, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God,” I am reminded of the courage it takes to listen and say ‘yes’ to one’s own journey, to believe we too are among God’s favorites, especially when we have been sorely wounded by things like economic insecurity, illness, death of a loved one, challenging relationships, or broken trust. In the words of writer Kayla McClurg, “Here we are—each of us a poem of the incarnation, if we will just let God have God’s impossible/possible way.”

May it be so for us all as we journey toward Christmas, 

Amelie