I Don't Know


Dear Eugene,

This morning I was ready to take my 2018 calendar off the wall and then realized I didn't recall where the new one is and then woke up further to 2018 not being quite over yet.

This is what Christmas is, isn't it, if we take it to mean what it's meant to mean: a new year, a new start, the inception of God's most definitive speaking into our life--as is, as we hoped it be, would rather it not, and everything in between--the beginning of the end, the homeless carrying us home?

If I take Jesus as God's most naked, first and final revealing of who He really is and say I now place my trust in that, then there are many I-don't-knows I can no longer say.

I can no longer say I don't know hatred and violence never worked and never will, that love and compassion though seem to be forever elusive are choices I am empowered by the life and death and resurrection of Jesus to give one more try.

I can no longer say I don't know scorn and contempt in me would first kill myself before they go viral to kill others in the name of my pride and that would be my legacy, one that speaks against Jesus and declares I don't trust God's Way after all.

I can no longer say I don't know life is not about making a name for myself, even just a small name, as, say, the father of a household, coming home on Christmas day with small tokens of my giving to make everyone and everything well and declare with my small voice, a little pride, that I have done well all by myself.

I can no longer say I don't know it's not possible to say I trust God and trust no human being, made in His image.  I can no longer say I am just growing wise to know when and from whom I should withhold my trust based on prior experience and evidence and instinct, that I can discount or even write off a person because of all the I-do-knows about life and human nature and the ugly past of that very person I know so well.

I can no longer say I don't know the way of the world, its definition of power and glory, comfort and security, is death-seeking, that it is in seeking to die the death of Jesus that I can truly live for once, for the first time, the life He created and continues to create for and in me.

These I-don't-knows are some of the lies I am learning to unlearn, starting now, on Christmas day, a new beginning.

I don't know how I can unlearn these lies, I've been telling them too many times, for way too long.  I don't know how broken I will need to be to take even one tiny step away from my old ways.  I don't know if a certain devastation will turn my heart cold all over again and how I can face my ugly self once more one uncertain ugly morning in 2019.

Last Christmas I wrote: 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 a terrorist 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 [the terrorist] 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.

In the love of God the Child, Merry Christmas.  Alex

Comments

  1. KateDecember 26, 2018 at 7:39 AM

    Dear Eugene,

    “This is what Christmas is, isn’t it... a new year, a new start... I don’t know how broken I will need to be to take even one tiny step away from my old ways.”

    For me I did not know this Christmas in its darkest would be my merriest one so far.

    I did not know pain must persist to love deeply, live robustly in the endurance of self-loathing.

    On this Christmas Day driving along I-5 freeway for 3 hrs, I did not know I’d be greeted by the predawn horizon, a swathe of new light searing through the dark of old, a crease mending now and then in time and space, a pulse line in tiny cracks on the skies.

    Not knowing can seem kinder than knowing. I know I have been dejected, declined, deceiving, destructive. I don’t know how the homeless Child would most unequivocally help me hobble my way back home repeatedly mutilated Christmas after Christmas through all my I-don’t-know savagery.

    I don’t know about 2019 when I could barely understand 2018 or my history.

    “And from birth to birth, we’ll each end up bringing to the world the child of God that we are.” (Of God’s & Men)

    Now with knowing about this rebirth on Christmas, I can no longer loiter in my not-knowing comfort zone. I can no longer heap hatred first on myself and then wreak payback on others. I can no longer dismiss the cries of strangers and neighbors as if they are foreign affairs within my cushy enclave. I can no longer gaze no higher than my navel, running but never arriving, dreaming in vacuum, erupting in resentment, climbing to die.

    Take me down and back in to the rebirth of a coming New Year of more unknowns, knowing, not knowing about the wondrous gifts and sorrows meant just for me to hold in tiny quivers for His glory.

    Merry Christmas. Kate






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