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| Saint Brigid's cross surround by elemental water, fire, air , and earth |
Advent
2012
Touch
Holiness: The Elements of Mystery
Advent is the season in which we prepare for the
birth of Christ, the presence of God incarnated in earthly flesh. I am hoping
that this season can be a period of discovering the Divine in the varying
aspects of our own lives, bodies, and world. Using the classical four elements
of ancient tradition, we will offer ways of encountering the Divine in
down-to-earth (or air, or fire, or water) ways, using Celtic traditions as
framework.
“Mystery” in title does not refer to the Sherlock
Holmes kind of mystery: a puzzle to be solved. It speaks of that deep mystery
we encounter at a sunrise, the Grand Canyon, or a lover’s embrace. It is the
presence of Life that is beyond all words or colors. It is the ineffable that
the name “God” in all its hubris tries to contain but cannot.
Christmas Eve will culminate with an
invitation to be midwives at the birth of Christ in our world. Advent is an
opportunity to help midwife that birth in ourselves, in our own lives, to touch
that mystery within ourselves that links us to the Mystery of the Universe.
Week
One: Water – Holy Wells
John
5:1-9
Some
time after this, there was a Jewish festival and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now in Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate, there is a pool with five porticoes; its
Hebrew name is Bethesda. The place was crowded with sick people—those who were
blind, lame or paralyzed—lying there waiting for the water to move. An angel of God would come down to the pool
from time to time, to stir up the water; the first One to step into the water
after it had been stirred up would be completely healed. One person there had
been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus, who knew this person had been sick for
a long time, said, “Do you want to be healed?” “Rabbi,” the sick One answered,
“I don’t have any ne to put me into the pool once the water has been stirred
up. By the time I get there, someone else has gone in ahead of me.” Jesus
replied, “Stand up! Pick up your mat and walk.” The individual was immediately
healed, and picked up their mat and walked away.
Just as we are beings of fire, we
are also water creatures. Our bodies are somewhere around 60% water, and our
brains more than 70%. Lack of water, dehydration, can cause illness,
hallucinations and eventually death. We are conceived in water, and gestate in
water. And like fire, water is a biblical symbol that points to the mystery of
the Divine. Water seemingly already exists when the creation story begins in
Genesis. Water divides, appears from a rock, is changed into wine, gets walked
upon, and waves behave like a well-trained puppy. These are all signs of God’s
presence.
In Irish lore, wells are holy
places. The presence of water coming up through the ground is a signpost of
spiritual geography. There are many wells throughout the Celt lands that have
saints’ names attached to them. One is Saint Brigid’s well.
Among the stories told of Brigid’s
well is this: Brigid grew to be a young woman of surpassing beauty and was much
desired by the men of power in her region. She refused to accept marriage and
all the limitations, obligations, and constraints that came with it. So
determined was she that she disfigured her own face in order to make herself
undesirable. She entered the religious life and established the first house at
Kildare. When she washed in the well there, her face was healed and her beauty
was restored. Brigid became known for her compassion for the poor and her healing
touch.
Water continues to be a sign of the
Divine power of healing. I have always imagined that in the story from John
just before Jesus asks the person if they want to be healed, that he reached
down into the waters and stirred them up himself. Can we touch the holiness of
our own makeup, of the waters of our bodies, the wells of our own spirits? Can
we allow the coming Christ to stir those waters so that not only may we be
healed but that we may become a holy well for the healing of others? Advent may
be a season of appreciating the holiness of water, the source of life. We can
begin this season of preparation by receiving and offering the healing of
water.
Week
Two: Fire – Holy Light
Exodus
3:1-5
Moses
was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led
his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There
the angel of God appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked,
and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must
turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned
up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out
of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then he said, ‘Come no
closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are
standing is holy ground.’
Fire is a biblical symbol of the
presence of God. The burning bush, the pillar of fire and smoke that led the
Israelites through the wilderness, the tongues of flame at Pentecost all
indicate that God is present. God is right there.
We are creatures of fire. Each cell
of our bodies is a burning engine. God is present, then, in every cell. Like
the individuals candles lit on Christmas Eve, those sparks illuminate the
darkness and remind us that God is within us.
And like those little candles that
we hold in our hands on Christmas Eve, fire exists outside of and around us.
That fire casts light and helps us discern our path in life. It may even change
our path, as did Moses when he turned aside to look at the lights burning in
the bush. His whole life turned back to Egypt and eventually toward the
wilderness and the lip of the Promised Land. The light of the star steered the
Magi from their home in the East toward Israel. The ancient peoples of the
British Isles trusted that starlight and even built Stonehenge to gauge and
capture it.
So the question to entertain this
Advent is: Can we find the light of God’s presence around us in the busyness of
this season, and can we touch that same light and fire in ourselves?
Week
Two: Air – Holy Inspiration
John
3:1-8
Now
there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by
night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from
God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’
Jesus answered him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God
without being born from above.’ Nicodemus said to him, ‘How can anyone be born
after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and
be born?’ Jesus answered, ‘Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom
of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is
flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I
said to you, “You must be born from above.” The wind blows where it chooses,
and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where
it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.’
In the bible, the Hebrew word “ruach”
means breath and wind and spirit. The Greek word “pneuma” means the same thing.
These words do not mean one or the other of those things. They mean and, all
three, at the same time. Wind is spirit, breath is wind, spirit is breath. It
is our Western languages that differentiate the three separate things.
So there is some actual linguistic
room for confusion when Nicodemus has his conversation with Jesus. Jesus might
be saying that breath is breath and flesh is flesh, or maybe he is making a
Greek dichotomy between earthliness and spiritual things. Likewise there is
wiggle room in the Greek words translated as “born from above.” Another
accurate translation is “born again.” When the gospel of John was written, “born
again” did not have all the evangelical baggage that has weighted it down for
the last several generations. I believe that Jesus meant that we must
experience another kind of birth, a new creation like that described in Genesis
when the wind/breath/spirit of God brooded over the waters. Jesus then tells us
that spirit/wind/breath blows where it chooses, untamable, uncontrollable,
unpredictable. So it is with everyone who is born of that Wind/Breath/Spirit.
From our first birth, we are
dependent upon air for our lives. Borning cries suck air in and howl it out as
we transition from the amniotic world to the atmospheric world. If the Divine
Mystery is some way known in wind/spirit/breath, then we draw God close every
time we inhale.
The Celts had a keen sense of the
closeness of the physical and the spiritual worlds. They spoke of holy places
where the borders of these two worlds became transparent as “thin places.” Thin
in the sense that the border had become thin enough to pass through. Thin
enough for the winds to blow from one to the other.
Some Christians tend to tell us that
these human bodies are devoid of anything God-like. They are evil and corrupt
and in need of a spiritual redemption. But this Advent I propose that our
bodies are actually the thin places where flesh and spirit comingle. We are
literally born of the breath/wind/spirit every time we breathe. We are invited
to become those wild, unpredictable creatures of divine and human Spirit/Wind/Breath,
freed to blow where we choose and unconstrained by the expectations of a world
addicted to domination and control.
Can we experience the Divine Mystery
in the blowing wind, in our breath, in our bodies as receptacles of breath? How
might we embrace the mystery of the Spirit that conceived the life of Jesus,
and in that sense our lives as well?
Week
Four: Earth – Holy Bodies
Luke
1:26-38
In
the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called
Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of
David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings,
favored one! God is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and
pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be
afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in
your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and
will be called the Holy One of God, and God will give to him the throne of his
ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his
kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since
I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and
the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born
will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in
her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who
was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said,
‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’
Then the angel departed from her.
For all the theological machinations
that insist upon Jesus’ divine origins, how only a pure and undefiled scion of
God could accomplish the atonement of the world, there seems to be a nagging
insistence on Jesus’ humanity that the church could never shake. Adam and Eve
were the creatures molded of the earth itself, and even Jesus was made of that
same mud. I believe that the most important element of the story of Christ’s
birth is not that God became enfleshed in human form, but that humanity was the
fit and appropriate and even natural place for the Divine to grow. I don’t
believe that Jesus was the only Child of God, but that each and every creature
on earth is begotten of the Divine Mystery.
The Celts sensed that Divine Mystery
everywhere. They erected menhirs and trilithons wherever they felt the nearness
of the holy. They marked the earth because of its inherent holiness.
The apostle Paul told the people at
Corinth that they were temples of God. In biblical times the temple was not
seen as just a place dedicated to God, but as a space where God actually dwelt.
For them it was God’s literal home, not just metaphorical. So to be a temple
was to be God’s home. It was the ultimate affirmation of our bodies. Earth is
the elemental home of God.
And so the birth of Christ is
another affirmation of our bodies as holy. We can be understood as God’s
menhirs erected as sign of hope and divinity even for generations who may or
may not understand what they mean. To proclaim that “Christ is born” (or will
be on Christmas) is to proclaim that we are the stuff God choses to be known
through. And to accept that our bodies are not the corruption of holiness but
are in some deep way the incarnation of divinity is to sit with Mary in the
dark of that room ages ago having that unlikely conversation with Gabriel and
finding the wherewithal to also say, “Let it be with me…”
Christmas
Eve – Midwifing the Holy Birth
Luke
2:1-7
In
those days, Caesar Augustus published a decree ordering a census of the whole
Roman world. This first census took place while Quirinius was governor of
Syria. All the people were instructed to go back to the towns of their birth to
register. And so Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to “the city
of David”—Bethlehem, in Judea, because Joseph was of the house and lineage of
David; he went to register with Mary, his espoused wife, who was pregnant. While
they were there, the time came for her delivery. She gave birth to her
firstborn, a son; she put him in a simple cloth wrapped like a receiving
blanket, and laid him in a feeding trough for cattle, because there was no room
for them at the inn.
We began the season with Brigid, and
we come to its culmination with her as well. It is told that as a child she
worked as a maid and always wore a tattered blue cloak which she loved very
much. One winter evening she went out to gather firewood in the forest and
though she knew that land intimately, she found herself lost. She wandered for
some time until she came upon a rude stable. Outside was a man, beside himself
with worry. Brigid asked him what was wrong and he hastily replied that his
wife was inside the stable giving birth, that he didn’t know what to do and
there was no other woman available to assist her. He asked if Brigid would go
into the stable and offer whatever help she could to his wife. Full of
trepidation, she went in and found the woman as her husband had described in
the full throes of labor. She offered what comfort she could and when the baby
was born she used her tattered cloak as a receiving blanket. She called the man
inside and together the couple told her that the baby’s name would be Jesus.
Somehow the evening had become very thin indeed and Brigid had found herself in
Bethlehem! Soon she bid the holy family farewell and went back into the woods to
find her way home. She heard her family calling for her, since she had been
gone a very long time. They did not believe her tale until she took off her
tattered cloak with which she had held the Christ child and they all saw that
it was tattered no longer, but its faded blue was restored like the night sky,
and it even shone with a thousand stars!
Now to you and I this is a fanciful
tale by far. But for the Celtic Christians, it was one way they connected their
beloved St. Brigid to Christ. She became known as the Mary of the Gaels because
she had been Jesus’ midwife. For the Celts, little details like time and
geography were no obstacles. Their sense of life’s deep mystery and their
confidence in the thin places allowed them to weave this story with all its wonder
and power.
For me, the power of that story is
that we all may encounter thin places in our lives that will allow us to enter
Christ’s story. We can join Brigid and be the midwife of Christ in our lives
and in our world. Hopefully, as we have entertained the holiness of ourselves
and our world throughout Advent, Christmas Eve can become a thin place again.
