From Birth to Birth

Dear Eugene,

I think this is the first year that I really know what Christmas is about.

I know, I know.  When you say something like this people think you are writing dialogue for a Hallmark movie (which really is a horror movie with fake tears wasted instead of strawberry jam).  But I am not granting myself a poetic licence to exploit.

Let me vindicate me.

I used to write a monthly column for a Chinese magazine, for years, and every December I would challenge myself to say something new about Christmas, something that would surprise even myself as  I was writing it.

It is a tall call.  My self-talk, especially about my own writing, tends to be severe.  I don't know how Elvis did it with his Christmas songs, maudlin liquid fat with an air of authentic dignity, sacramental (sacred-minded) cheese-balls.  I was aiming for that every December.

I think my Christmas piece did get better over the years (by the above non-standard).  Still, all these years I've only been writing about what Christmas is not and never for once what Christmas is.  It's not cowardice that I couldn't assert the positive, but true ignorance that I can only expose the negative.

So what do I mean when I now say "This is the first year that I really know what Christmas is about"?  Again let me put on view what I do not mean to reveal what I do.

To begin with, I should add the word "begin."  This is the first year that I really begin to know what Christmas is about.  The implication, of course, then, is that I do not and shall never have a final word to speak about Christmas.  I shall never know what Christmas is all about.  No one ever will.  It is a mystery of an ever expanding galaxy.

All I know is for me this is the beginning of something new.  Like being given birth.  Baby's eyes tentatively opening for the first time.  Light coming through, sharp but inviting.  Murky shapes emerging.  Baby's hands trembling, fearing death and grasping for life.  And more life.

A Trappist monk, in the sublime masterpiece "Of Gods and Men," prayed eyes wide open with his brothers on Christmas Eve, after an invasion of their monastery by an Islamic fundamentalist group, the distance between life and death no longer than a pull of a trigger or two.  This is what he said:

I’ve often thought of that time. That time when Sayah Attia and his men left. Once they were gone, all we had left to do was to live.

 And the first thing we did was… two hours later.
We celebrated the Christmas Vigil and Mass.

 It’s what we had to do. It’s what we did.
And we sang the Mass. We welcomed that Child
who was born for us absolutely helpless and… 
and already so threatened.

 Afterwards, we found salvation in undertaking our daily tasks.
The kitchen, the garden, the prayers, the bells.
Day after day.
We had to resist the violence.
And day after day, I ... I think each of us discovered
that to which Jesus Christ beckons us.
It’s … to be born.

 Our identities as men go from one birth to another.
And from birth to birth, we’ll each end up
bringing to the world the child of God that we are.

 The Incarnation, for us, is to allow the filial reality of Jesus
to embody itself in our humanity.
The mystery of Incarnation remains what we are going to live.
In this way what we’ve already lived here
takes root as well as…
what we’re going to live in the future.

Amen.

Love and peace in Jesus.  Alex

Comments

  1. TimDecember 20, 2017 at 2:07 PM

    From "sacramental cheese-balls" to "the filial reality of Jesus [embodying] itself in our humanity." Once again, thanks for firing my imagination, my friend. I want to begin to learn about Christmas together with you.

    ReplyDelete

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