Facebook Publication Date: 12/25/2021 0:12

Sharing this message for the third Christmas.

This time, I am thinking about this as I finish the series on the Magnificat, which will also post up later today and for the rest of this Christmas weekend.

In one of the videos (which will all also be transcribed, I used my fictive imagination to imagine Mary as Lizzo and Elizabeth as Adele.

It can seem a cruel turn of events, can’t it? Even though Mary had an idea of the gravitas of the role she was playing, and was affirmed by Elizabeth, even though Mary’s Manifesto (as I call it) spoke to giving primacy to the poor over the wealthy, still–could she have been fully prepared to birth a child in as modest of circumstances as she did?

Again–fictive imagination. Did she doubt? Even for a moment? Did she the assurance which she carried with her from Elizabeth wane as she labored in a manger, or here in this paraphrase, behind a trash bin?

Promise is not always pretty. Destiny sometimes comes behind dumpsters. It is hard to hold on to promise when it seems, on the face of it, that that promise is truncated, or that the One who promised has abandoned you.

This year has been hard. But I have had many Elizabeths in my life as I have gestated and labored. I had to cling and cleave to their assurances and their hope even as I myself could see no good future outcome.

And this: now what? For far too many of us, we consider the story/myth to be fulfilled once the Child was delivered; not to be thought of again till the culmination of Lent.

But I wonder; I have to wonder, if Maria and Jose were thinking ahead. Thinking about how to feed and clothe and teach. Thinking about basic survival once the shepherds and the ones bearing the gifts for the impromptu baby shower had left. Two young people, kids really, with the responsibility to fulfill promise they did not fully comprehend.

Destiny and call are easy when they are affirmed and reinforced. When others, like Elizabeth, see what could be. When you know that there will indeed be a payoff at the finish line. A world changed because promises were believed.

But did Mary and Joseph fully know that? Did Maria and Jose? When all the hoopla had died down, when the last slice of pizza and last gulp of soda were finished, what were they to do?

Welp.

All there was to do was to repack their donkey–or reload their bus passes.

All there was to do was to keep walking. To the next stop. And the next. And the next.

Till they found Home.

As must we. We can do no less.

Merry Christmas.

______________________

Dispatch from Behind the Dumpster

I wrote this to complement the original post by Jason Chestnut, which you will also find below.

This adaptation, showing how God is found in dirty rags used to wipe up Slurpees and those awful 7-Eleven hot dog juices stopped me short.

This birth was not in a pristine birthing room at Scripps La Jolla.

Nor was it in a warm home with a midwife and a doula and scented candles enchanting, with loved ones present to receive the Blessed child.

Their donkey was a feral dog, their sheep were rats.

Mary wore jeans she hadn’t been able to zip up in months. Joseph’s tattoos, visible through his stained white T-shirt and plaid Pendleton,
trembled as he held this baby–so very tiny, but he was consumed and aware with the weight of the gift Mary had birthed.

The shepherds, the custodians who cleaned the office building next door came, and the prostitutes all three of them in their gaudy finery, who spouted wisdom in the dirty Denny’s down the street after their work was done for the night, brought bearing gifts, their favorite gold earrings, the perfume they sometimes used to cover what the world would call shame, and glitter in all the colors iridescent silver purple for the royalty green for New Beginning red for fire. Later, at the Denny’s where they gathered, they would decide not to tell Daddy Herod about what they had witnessed. But they would remember.

The assistant night manager of the 7-Eleven brought out pizza and big gulps for everyone and they communed together.

And the poor people in the Forgotten part of University Avenue that had not yet been gentrified, not yet filled with $10 tacos and single malt scotch and shared workspaces and trendy salons; the poor people who were coming home from the third shift oh, the poor people waiting for the bus outside the 7-Eleven, they all felt a shift in the air and the brightness of a star above them and they were both chilled and warmed and knew to their marrow that there was a Presence that loved them too.

That night, they also received a taste of the pizza and the Big Gulp. And they were fed and filled.

And then the bus came and they all went home, back to the two bedroom apartment they shared with the 10 people, back to the Johns and the hecklers, back to dumping the trash and cleaning the elevators for the workers who would come tomorrow completely unaware of the miracle that had happened behind the dumpster right below their cubicles.

Nothing changed.

But everything changed.

Merry Christmas.
___________
From Jason Chestnut:
In those days, a decree went out, an order from the rich and powerful, the ones with means, the rulers and despots: it said that the whole world should be registered, put on lists, placed under tighter surveillance.
Everyone went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph went also, from the town of Nazareth in the Galilee, south to Judea, to the city of David called “House of Bread” (bet-lechem), because he was descended from the house and family of David (this is a big deal).
He went to the forced registration with Mary –– a pregnant teenager he wasn’t even married to, y’all — and while they were in Bethlehem, the kid started really kicking. Mary’s water broke. The time had come.
And she screamed and breathed and screamed again, and finally her firstborn child came out of her, breathing on their own for the first time, given new life in a broken and beautiful world.
She wrapped him in dirty rags and put him in a manger, next to a filthy dumpster behind a sketchy 7Eleven –– because in that town there was no room. Door after door had been shut in their face, accompanied by barely audible mumblings, something about “illegals” and a “wall” and “ruining our country.”
Now in that same region, there were homeless sharecroppers living in the fields, keeping watch over their crops by night. The lowest of the low. And yet, suddenly, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shown around them…and they were terrified.
But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid! I’m bringing you good news! Of great joy –– to you is born, today, in the city of David, a Savior who is the Christ, the Lord.”
The sharecroppers stood, dumbfounded. “To us?”
“Yes,” the angel smiled. “To you. Not to kings or powers or principalities. This news is for you. And this will be a sign — you’ll find a dribbling, farting baby wrapped in dirty rags out behind the 7Eleven. This is where God Herself has chosen to make a home. Right here. Today.”
Well, after this surreal scene, the sharecroppers flat out ran and found Mary, and Joseph, and that tiny li’l baby, wrapped in dirty rags out behind the 7Eleven. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child — and everyone who heard it was amazed at what these homeless sharecroppers told them.
But Mary, with a knowing and humble grin, treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
The sharecroppers returned, glorifying and praising God — YES!!! — for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told to them. Yes, them.
— Luke 2:1-20, adapted

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