Then we followed the “little girl,” teenaged Mary. As if on reality TV, we put a camera in her face; beside her pillow, in the quiet of her mind, in her darkness as her fearful tears (that were written out of the pages) fell silently to the ground.
We followed her as she rose. As the song within her spirit wove with those of her ancestors, named and unnamed, barren and laboring alongside her each step. We followed her as she raised her spirit with her body and chose to let LOVE in. The LOVE that threatened to undo her, to ruin and devastate the only life she had known.
Mary’s strength and vulnerability are as integral to what is happening in the manger as her absence, innocence or abstinence.
Mary, the Mother of God whose womb and witness were stolen, scapegoated and tempered for millennia, made a choice. And what was thought to be absurd turned out to be astonishing! LOVE born, here and now.
In Joseph’s eyes, we found the same looming fear. Mashed together with a longing for freedom from the half-truth, the unknown and the need to know.
A young father, a hopeful husband and an heir to the line of God’s future reign both wrote and were unwritten from the story. For him, waiting for the magic of the manger to be real, meant waiting for it to be over.
When would this cloud of suspicion cease to hang above his head? When would the star fade into the morning light? When would he be “seen” as part of his own story? And the hopeful promise of God’s future reign?
Sometimes, waiting for LOVE means letting go of what is behind us and looking up to receive what awaits us in the morning.
So here we are. The wait is over. The baby is here. Now what?