Incarnation - Dance of Dross and Dream

When I think of the Incarnation you come to mind. 

My friends Bill and Billie (soul-mates named at birth) wrote this on their Christmas note.  Oh, thank God it shows, I thought, that part of me that makes them think this. 

What is “dross,” my friend the writer had asked a few mornings earlier when I had used the word.  I had thought he was kidding; words are his medium.  I had begun to respond literally, that dross is the scum on the surface of something, like tarnish.  But even as I was saying that, I had suspected that he was calling me to a deeper truth.  Calling us to a deeper truth…like these quiet days in the aftermath of the Christmas rush of buying presents and decorating for the season and then the flurry of wrappingcookingtravelingeatingeatingeating.

 The “Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  In-carn-ation.  The perfectly pure Word of a perfectly perfect God became flesh, like us.  And with that he joined us in this – struggle or dance? – of humanity, purity and dross all mixed in. 

Dross is that part of the metal that is not metal, released from its hiding in the solid by the melting process.  The metal is melted to make it workable, to form and shape it into some use.  The impurities, that would otherwise weaken it, come to the surface where they can be skimmed off.

So my friends Bill and Billie see in me something of the pure in me.  It shows through the dross that I know is there.  That’s why I thank God it shows.  But I’m stuck sometimes with my dross, my imperfections, that I and those who have to live with me see.

I think my friend the writer was asking a rhetorical question when he asked what dross is.  I think he was suggesting that to be human is to be word and flesh, eternal and dying, ideal and real, metal and dross.  

Life is to be lived as Christ lived it, in-carnate, in flesh. 

There’s a teenager alive in each of us, more often in some of us that in others, but certainly in me.  We can look in the mirror and on a face with perfectly clear skin see one pimple, and that darned thing ruins our day.  Having an almost perfect complexion becomes having a zit becomes being a zit!

We are not dross.  That is not the ugly truth.  That is the ugly lie.  We are not the sum of our faults.  We are the sum of our humanity, this amalgam of perfection and impurity. 

Thank God that those in our life see beyond the dross, see the good that is in us.  And thank God they are, like God-with-us…with us in this struggle, this dance, of humanity.  Thank God that we can be formed, by their loving affirmation, into something useful.

Coming up

Losing it: new year's resolutions and the crucible of humiliation

LOL: Love On Legs

  FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Mothering, Managing, and Mentoring: Waddling to Swaddling to Coddling to Modeling.

Do you suppose that the Queen of Heaven waddled around in this last month of her pregnancy with Jesus?   

My mother would push up her bottom lip disdainfully and say “Johhhhhhhnnnnnnnn! That’s sacrilegious!”  But Mary was, after all, human and Advent, which I’ll call her waddling period, begins for all of us the human condition of holding in, holding on, and humanizing.

This is not just a mother thing, or even a woman thing.  It’s a human thing.  We all, men and women, are inclined to do it with projects or teams. 

Waddling:  It’s growing large in us – this child or this project or this dream.  It is ours alone, and it is increasing our awareness of our capacity – and we like that.  But as it grows, it begins to weigh us down, inhabit us and inhibit us.  It struggles and moves in us, wanting to emerge and grow beyond our limits and constraints.  It is time for us to release it, and for it to be born.

Swaddling:  Birthing is not a letting go, it is just a letting out, a surrender to the inevitable escape of project or child or team beyond our physical boundaries.  Mothers don’t just drop babies like weeds drop seeds.  Managers don’t just drop ideas through slots in their door so that others can pick them up, interpret, and develop them.  Swaddling is an in-between time when the baby is wrapped tight, its arms and legs held close as they were in utero, so they feel the transition to freedom gradually.  The swaddled child (and swaddled project) is constrained for its own protection.  But it is as dependent as it was within us.  It continues to be an extension of our will.

Coddling:  Soon enough the project or the child or the team begins to exert its own will, to reach to grow beyond us.  Designer or manager or mother, we think (rightly or wrongly) that we are still needed to guide and form and feed and reinforce so that the child or project or design shapes up that we think is best...or is it feel?  This thinking/feeling ambivalence in us is perhaps the staying/leaving ambivalence that the child or team has, but we coddle it – applying sweet rewards to keep it close.

Until now, all of our actions are levels of control.  Perhaps it is we who are called to be born, to be released from the constraints of role as controller.

Modeling:  As the child or project or design begins to “find itself” in this chaos of external influence, we can discover the gift of becoming ourselves, of being present with the child or project or team, of letting it be influenced by us, of finding resonance and rightness within itself in those aspects of us that fit. 

Does this last step sound too confusing or complex?  That’s appropriate.  Once we abandon control and are born into our identity as no longer master but companion, life is no longer dogma, but nuance.  It is no longer math, but music.   “Right” is no longer something we prove, but something we feel.

Years from now, Mary will find her son Jesus in the temple, speaking precociously with the elders.  She thought he was “lost”.  But he was finding himself.  And, we are told, “Mary returned home with Jesus and pondered these things in her heart.”  The boy was out of control.  And, I propose, God looked at it, and said it was good.