I Wonder...

It’s Christmas morning, and the Nativity Stable is crowded.  

My friend Dave shared a thought that really threw me.  “If Mary and Joseph were not able to find room at an inn because of all the people traveling to the census, there must have been lots of other people in that stable, too. In Detroit there are “warming centers” where the street homeless can come in out of the cold.  There are no beds, just rows of folding chairs.  The room smells of sweat as clothes worn for days without access to showers begin to raise the humidity in the bare room.  There is no apparent joy in the room that I picture, in a place that used to be called the “24-hour walk-in center”.  There are dedicated people who staff that room during the day, helping people try to find housing, healthcare, and maybe the odd job.  But at night, it’s just the security staff, whose gift to these lost is not encouragement, but merely alertness and equity.  The chairs are as hard as the life that these lost live, in a city to big and too poor to give them hope.

When Dave reads the Gospel story, I hear that the Shepherds leave and spread the joyful news.  But I’m still stuck in the 24-hour walk-in center, and the smell is in my nostrils, and it is worse than a stable.  What sends the shepherds out with enthusiasm? 

He said that in those times, guys who could not find other work often were hired as shepherds.  These guys might have been day-laborers, the bottom of the manpower barrel.  For the last ten weeks I’ve been working with a crew of homeless guys.  Eleven guys started out at Goodwill Inn, half of them Veterans, just three of them who have remained through the program.  What has made me feel like a failure in working with them is that despite their considerable talent and goodness, I can’t seem to lift their sights higher than mere survival. 

So these three are the ones I see as shepherds in my imagination, and I think “what in this scene succeeded where I have not; what has given them enthusiastic hope?  This morning Kathy and I will go to the morning Mass, what is called “The Shepherds’ Mass”.  The church will not smell like the walk-in center, and none of my three day-laborer companions will be there…not physically.   But I am inhabited by these images, and they will enter the church with me.  

Wonder will enter the church with me this morning.  Not wonder as in wonderful; wonder as in I wonder.  I need to experience whatever those shepherds experienced, so I can leave not in disappointment and despair, but with excitement and joy, eager to spread the story of whatever they saw in that crowded stable. 

Promise…Reality…Legacy

photo courtesy of Washington Post

Mary and Zechariah both learned something that I need to remember.  Patience, people!

Zechariah sees this angel, you know?  

Angel says, “Hey!  Zech!  Elizabeth’s pregnant!” 

Zechariah says, "My old Lizzie, she’s too old!"

Angel says, “God can do it, and God did.  She’s six months pregnant, dog!”

Zech says, “No way!  Can’t be!”

Angel says “Shut Uuuuuuuuuuup!” and old Zechariah, he shut up, all right, ‘cuz he can’t speak.  God thinks “Hmmmm…I gotta let this talker think some on this.

And so Zechariah thinks for three months, reflects on things, goes about his work in silence.  And by the time Elizabeth gives birth to a son three months later, Zech has changed his tune.  He’s changed his thinking, and adjusted his view.  He had opened his mind, and when Elizabeth’s body opened up and produced a son, Zechariah opened his mouth and pronounced his name: John.

Mary sees an angel too, and she says yes, and then her body is closed around the child forming in her, closed for nine months.  These days people get ultrasounds, and post fuzzy images on Facebook.  But then it was just mystery, just trust.  Nine months.  She had said yes to something that would change the world.  Her life changed.  But do you suppose that when the angel disappeared and she was alone again there in the recesses of her parents’ house, that she felt any change?  What about the next week?   I would have had doubts.

These weeks I’ve been working with a group of guys; talented, promising…and homeless.  Like the first homeless person I’d known in Detroit and thought I could “fix” when I saw how good he was, I have found myself suffering disappointment by what I see as a lack of progress.  This morning I came upon an article in the Washington Post about 79 Seat Pleasant Elementary School students.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/local/seat-pleasant-following-the-dreamers/?hpid=z2 The video is a great start; please watch it.  

But the three titles of the three articles are what helped me most. 

The Promise

The Reality

The Legacy

Mary and Zechariah waited, each in their own way, from the promise to the reality.  But just as they suffered the reality, the not-quite-as-I’d-hoped-or-imagined, and just as we do, you and I, all of us are held to discover the legacy only as it unfolds…and keeps unfolding, generation after generation.  Whether homelessness or salvation or family…patience, people!

Celebrate Disillusionment!

image courtesy verticalblue.net

Father Anthony Citro shared that today’s readings (4th Sunday of Advent) regard three main characters all of whom were disillusioned.  David thought he’d build a Temple for God, but God said he had something greater in mind – the House of David bringing forth the Messiah.  Paul of Tarsus thought he’d be a hero of the status quo by persecuting the Christians, but got knocked off his high horse and ended up preaching the salvation of Christ.  And Mary of Nazareth thought she’d be a traditional Jewish woman, practicing virtue in the recesses of her home, and the Angel called her to a true light.

None of them, Father Anthony said, ended up with what they had thought.    They all had to let go of the false light (il-lusion, from lucis, the Latin word for “light”) of their preconceptions in order to move into the bright light of truth, and become their true selves. 

If someone came to me and said that they were disillusioned, my response would be sympathy, and I would be inclined to console them.  But to become disillusioned literally means to be relieved of a false light.

This is the season of light, celebrated in many faiths in the northern hemisphere because the days are shortest now, and darkest, and we long for brighter days.  For Christians, it is looking to a star, and following that star to the Bright Babe, who would grow to learn that being the Chosen One would be…different than he might have expected.  He would follow the true light to the Cross, and then beyond the grave, and knock at the tightly shut door of our hearts, we securing ourselves in the darkness that is our illusion, our false light.

This is a time of illusion being stripped from most of the “developed” world.  We are learning that our prosperity is not what we expected.  Our misconception has led to a miscarriage, and our false dream is stillborn.  Mary conceived, and soon hope will be born…again. 

Shall we abandon our sparkly darkness and step into the light?  I think we’d better hold hands.  It will take our eyes some time to adjust to being able to SEE as we come to discover the joy of our humanity, our true selves, our real brightness, our translucent humanness.

Wait, Watch...or WORK? The Call to Christmas

“Waddya waiting for…Christmas?”  My dad would say that if somebody was in his way in traffic.  That was before “road rage”.  While it didn’t seem to faze the driver in front of him, it certainly linked “Christmas” and “waiting” in my psyche.  And didn’t we, as kids, have a hard time waiting?  But we were stuck with it, and so we learned…to…WAIT.

Maybe that’s why last Sunday I was surprised by the word “Watch” in the Gospel.   I guess my default position is more passive and indifferent, a vestige of my childhood – to wait.  I found the call to watchfulness a perturbing call to a more adult engagement in Advent, and my immaturity surprised me.

But this Second Sunday of Advent calls us further.  It calls us to past waiting and even watching.  It calls us to work.  “Prepare the way”….  Oh, yeah?  How?  Make the high places plane and fill in the low places, so that the son of justice can quickly come. 

We read daily about the growing gap between rich and poor.  The high places are getting higher and the low places lower.  How do we turn it around?  How do we?  Who can we lift up?  How can we bring the cry of the poor to the ears of those living so high that they do not hear?

There are 25 working days 'til Christmas.