It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Verse 4

For lo, the days are hastening on

By prophets seen of old

When with the ever-circling years

Shall come the time foretold. 

 When the new heaven and earth shall own

 The Prince of Peace, their king

And the whole world send back the song

Which now the angels sing. 

 Won't that be a thing to see?  I hope someday I'll see it -- either from Earth or returning with the heavenly hosts that follow.  Personally, I think our world has a lot more proving itself to do before we are ready for the new version, but what do I know.

But personally, I think we need to learn more of the melody before we're ready to sing along, much less send back, the song of the angels.  We need to do more listening for the song and more living its music.  We need to learn our own version and create it from scratch if we insist on doing it ourselves.

But then again, this is the time of year to remember that that work has really been done for us.  We've been redeemed and saved through no real effort of our own.  Jesus came and took care of that.

There's a story that, ironically, is deeply atheistic that I have thought about this time of year ever since I first read it.  The main character is obsessed with ending death for everyone, taking it out of the equation of the universe.  It's not demonized or what sends him spiraling into evil, for the record, it's just a scientific worldview that doesn't believe in an afterlife and therefore sees death as an abhorrent thing.

A lot of the "tests" presented in that work affected me deeply at the time, but I was glad to have faced them because I believe I passed them.

But that's not what I think about.  That character has an inspiration speech (mental speech to himself) about how someday science will conquer death and we will have a world where no one loses their loved ones and we don't live knowing that each day could be our last and we are all a good deal better people for knowing that we'll be around forever.  And someday we'll be frightened to tell our children that such a thing as death ever really existed.

This time of year, I remember and fully realize with this atheist writer's accidental help, that that world is promised to us -- in prophecies long ago, fulfilled in a baby in manger sometime in March (for all we celebrate now).  That gift is already coming to us, through no extraordinary effort of ours.  Just as a free gift from a loving God.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Verse 3

O ye, beneath life's crushing load

Whose forms are bending low

Who toil along the climbing way

With painful steps and slow: 

 Look now for glad and golden hours

 Come swiftly on the wing.

O, rest beside the weary road 

And hear the angels sing. 

This might be the verse that sealed the deal in the whole Favorite Christmas Song contest.  Because I may have lost the Psycho Christmas Imp switch from my childhood -- a fact that I think my family is desperately glad of but I personally miss -- but Christmas music still has all the same power over me.  All that to say that the contest for my favorite carol is steep, but this verse seals the deal.

 Starting with the "ye" because that is the formal, respectful form of the pronoun we just use "you" in all its forms for now.  So all those sad, tired, and poor -- the people who have born the worst that this world has to offer and have walked on and on, climbing their way out of a desperate situation in weary, aching steps and dangers...those are the people who deserve our utmost respect.  Those are the people we talk UP to, not DOWN to, if we are like the angels.

I wish nothing more for the Syrian refugees than I wish that they can hear the angels singing to them, and that the window that helps them rest beside the weary road and hear it is human kindness spreading to the governments taking on open, generous policies.

This verse describes a lot of people in our world right now.  The homeless I saw huddled under the highway on my drive today, the innocents or innocent-until-their-loved-ones-were-attacked people caught in war torn worlds, child soldiers drafted into battles they never should have been near, and most clearly right now -- the Syrian refugees.  They are the ones the angels sing for.

The angels don't mind if we listen, but it's mostly in the hope that we are inspired to help the ones that the song is FOR.  The people who have the respect even of the angels, who address them formally.  To speak UP to them, while so many people and politicians are talking DOWN to them like dangerous scum.

The very song of the angels is for them.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear Verse 2

The beauty continues, still in that one glorious moment:

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled

And still their heavenly music floats 

 O'er all the weary world.

Above its sad and lonely plains

 They bend on hovering wing

 And ever o'er its Babel sounds

The blessed angels sing. 

Or so it seems at first!

Because what else would you follow up that one perfect moment of transcendent beauty with?  Why, the next perfect moment of transcendent beauty.

Because if there's one thing we should remember at Christmas, it's that Jesus coming down to be with us wasn't the only time that God was here with us.  It's just the time He had to roll back the curtain of the sanctuary entirely and un-mystify the whole deal so that we would understand.

That the glorious song of old feels familiar because it's playing right now.  All around us.  The lonely plains, the weary world...above us the angels' harmony is soaring.  Still they dip through the skies, still they bend on hovering wing, just beyond the touch of our narrow little view of reality.

But the line that really gets me in this verse is "And ever o'er its Babel sounds" because not only does it specify that the song is happening "ever", but it goes to my favorite theme of the song communicating to everyone.  Because the Tower of Babel may be the mythic legend that I once had to explain to a theatre student should not be cited as historical fact (much less the reason we invented theatre), but it's one that gets to the heart of the human condition on Earth.

The source of most of our evils throughout the ages has been, I would argue, simply this: an ongoing process of trying to define "people" as "only certain people".  All of the terrible -isms (racism, sexism, anti-semitism) and their ilk are fantastically useful to this purpose as they cut through whole swaths of the population and designate them as unworthy of our resources, our compassion, our mercy, our love, our honor.

The reasons humans give for why they do this -- when they realize that they are doing this -- vary from greed for our resources, fear they are scarce, fear of attack, and the simple inconvenience of alternative worldviews confusing us or contradicting the accepted dogma of those in power.

But the truth is that over all of these arbitrary divisions, all of these ridiculous labels and designations that we assign to different groups in this terrible process, over all of that Babel screaming, the blessed angels sing.  For all of us.  Above all of our petty squabbles and all the things we fight wars over.  Over all that noise is celestial music.

And someday the music will win.  Until then, some days perhaps it's enough to know that if we close our eyes and listen, then perhaps we will be blessed to hear it.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

This may be the most poetic and complex Christmas song out there.  It is beautiful.  The melodic line is just challenging enough to be fun for carolers and choirs without being impossible for a congregation.  It might be my new favorite.

It came upon a midnight clear

That glorious song of old

From angels bending near the Earth

To touch their harps of gold

"Peace on the earth, good will to men!" 

 From heaven's most gracious king.

 The world in solemn stillness lay

 To hear the angels sing.

In this verse is as much as I've talked about any three previous entry in this series, right?  So impressive.  And yet, this entire song is really imagining just one moment -- the appearance of the angels in the skies.  So it's kind of made for me -- a beautiful description of a major but not central moment examined in all of its many different significances.

A beautiful still night, but the first really exciting phrase is "that glorious song of old".  And the simple meaning -- of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise -- is portrayed as a celebratory music.  But not just that -- it's "that song of old" which is a concept that just breaks my heart.  It's why I have never gotten through the Viva Marseilles scene of Casablanca without crying and why "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" is such an important song to me.  I will always cry at the songs of a lost world being sung in the new.  That impossible longing.

And then "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" completes it properly -- that there's a song we don't officially remember, have probably never actually heard -- that has that same feeling.  That stirs our souls, longing for heaven.  It's not a new inspiration the way so many other things out there are.  It's an old song we've never heard before.  It's an ancient but true song our souls recognize anyway.

The song of the angels.

And its message?  Peace to everyone not just you or the people you already consider us.  Have good will to everyone.  God Himself says this is the right course, not all the things you make up yourselves and even do in His name (you know, the one He told you not to take in vain and you mistook as a prohibition against cursing).

And there was one night where the whole world listened to the original performance.

Away in a Manger Verse 2

The cattle are lowing

The baby awakes

But little Lord Jesus

No crying He makes. 

 The stars in the sky

 Look down where He lay:

The little Lord Jesus 

Asleep on the hay. 

I was thinking about this verse on the way home from a Christmas party tonight, and I realized that while I always found this verse a little strange and even off -- I apparently have very strong feelings about it.

I think this verse really clarifies the struggle that we have to really accept that God became man in two ways.  It reveals that we can't fully wrap our heads around the concept.  We reject it even as we seem to embrace it.

So the idea that Jesus didn't cry as a baby.

I remember a religion teacher in grade school telling us that, yes, Jesus was a baby, but He wasn't like other babies -- He was looking around, aware of what was going on.  At the time, I just kind of nodded along -- that sounds right.  That sounds like how God would improve on the general process of Being a Baby.

But setting aside how terrifying that concept really is, why do we need to assume that Jesus would improve on the essential human experience of Being a Baby?  Babies are impressive.  They are figuring out the world moment to moment based on a shockingly low range of visuals and a thoroughly confusing set of other sensory data.  They get the basics down really fast and their learning curve is just exponential.

Why wouldn't we want God Made Man to have that?  Or to experience that?

Someone omniscient going back to what we experience as absolute zero like that...man, right?

The second thing that makes me worry about this verse is the unspoken assumption that a Good Baby, like clearly Jesus would have been, is a Quiet Baby.  That babies that don't cry are the Good Babies.

I mean, the non-crying babies are who every parent prays they'll get, and I would never want to deny a new parent sleep and hope of sleep.  But crying doesn't mean that babies are being bad.  It doesn't mean anyone of any age is bad, actually (male or female), but that's not this post.  

A baby crying means that this little helpless creature has made the enormous mental leap to figure out that its needs will be met if it makes loud sounds.   And maybe that's the second thing that we can't really comprehend about what happened on the first Christmas day.  Omniscience becoming ignorance...and now omnipotence becoming a helpless creature entirely dependent for life and resources on two exhausted people who fundamentally cannot understand Him.

Those ideas are far too fearful, apparently.  We shy away from that reality.  The enormity, the mundanity, the sheer sacrifice and loss of what God did for us in becoming man...

It's so much more important than imagining a good and fully sentient baby toddling along trapped in a body that can't express any of His thoughts.  God so loved us He became helpless and small and started learning the world from scratch just like we all had to do in a time so bewildering and dependent that we've all blocked out the memories.

But we should never forget how very far God was willing to go for us.  The manger was nothing compared to the childhood.

Away in a Manger Verse 1

Away in a manger

No crib for a bed

The little Lord Jesus

Lay down His sweet head

The stars in the sky

Look down where He lay:

The little lord Jesus, asleep on the hay. 

I have a lot of really beautiful, complex media running around in my head tonight.  I'm about an hour away from having seen The Force Awakens -- no spoilers, but overall I approve.  And I will say that it's shot and constructed much more like the original trilogy than the prequels.  But I'm leaving it there at least for a few days.

And then, of course, the musical Hamilton recently came into my life and made me nearly break down weeping in the middle of the metro rail car and keeps me thinking about it constantly.

And that's not even to mention the complexities and ultimate disappointments of Doctor Who and  Once Upon A Time's penultimate arc.

So what I want to appreciate today -- the day that I wrote up course curriculum and start to fully realize that I'm starting fresh with new students in January -- with a new cast no less...is the beauty of simplicity.

"Away in a manger" is simply that.  It is a sweet, lullaby-like song.  And what a thing to think of this message -- God made man and not even an important one, how even our finest apparel and trappings would look like a manger to this being -- as a lullaby.  A comforting thought before bed.

I get so lost in the glory and incomprehensibleness of it.  I think I forget that it was a simple act of love at its heart.  A thousand things swirl around all the best stories -- but they're worth nothing if at the heart of them is not a simple story of love.

A baby in a manger.  A man walking slowly across a bridge.  A woman with a broken sword.  A man punching three times at a barrier, knowing he won't make it.  A man's hand being covered by his estranged wife's -- tentative and scared.*

*Did I make those jumbled references obscure enough to not give anything away?

If the core is there, if it is right, the swirling mess is just noise and bonus.  We need songs that remind us of that.  Which is why movies have themes that bring us to tears just hearing them.  "Away in a Manger" is that -- the theme of Christmas.

The First Noel Verse 6

I actually don't remember this verse, but I found it looking up the exact lyrics online yesterday, so hey.

Then let us all with one accord

Sing praises to our heavenly Lord

That hath made Heaven and Earth of nought

And with His blood mankind has bought 

 Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel

 Born is the King of Israel.

Man, that's a message we could all use this time of century.  This time of political season.  This time of international crisis.

And since the first two lines are fairly simple and necessary, I'm going to just let them be.  They are important.  We should remember them.










The second two lines are one of the mysteries of God I've never really been able to get a handle on -- much less begin to unravel.  There are a lot of mysteries of God I've thought about and prayed about that get more complex as you look at them or twist on you or otherwise prove their infinite depth through careful study.  This one is more that it slips from my grasp like that silly children's toy any time I make a grab at it.

If God made the universe and all it's rules -- why did He have to die to save us from them?  What is so precious about the rules that they were worth His sacrifice?  Why set things up that way in the first place?  What is so precious about what/who it makes us?  What is so important about the gauntlet our world presents us...

Or is it nothing to do with us?  Is there something beyond us going on that God had to deal with and step in to save the bit players in the grand celestial drama because He couldn't bear to see us be casualties -- collateral damage -- to that fight?  To be honest, that's the closest I come to seeing any sense in it.

Which just shows that these blogs are my way of really meditating on the nature of the universe and God's grace.  Just throwing thoughts up here until something sticks in as good faith as I can manage.

But whatever the reason -- I think it makes Jesus's sacrifice of Himself, His willingness to change the nature of God to include a death, even a conquered death -- I think that the choice element of the equation just makes it all more remarkable.  God didn't make the choice because He was backed into a corner and chose to protect us.  He set up the system, knowing what He would have to do for us.  He set up the gameboard, whatever its ultimate purpose, knowing that that was a move He would have to make for our sake.

I've thought about this on a smaller scale.  Because it grosses me out to think of God interfering with the system to say, reverse someone's sickness via a miracle.  Because if He does that, if that's a thing He does, then He and I are going to have Words about Him not doing that for my dad.  To be really, really frank: I get mad as hell when people talk about God stopping a sickness or, at the faculty retreat this semester, stopping a bullet on their behalf.  If God interferes with the system, then...I really can't think beyond that.

And Mom, when you read this, I know that your reaction will be to try to talk me around it.  Please don't do that.  I am not ready.  I don't want to talk about it.

But one of the things I do believe in is God sending little signs and blessings -- because that's PART of the system.  Because that's something set in motion eons back.  And that makes it MORE loving and awesome.  That worked into the delicate creation at the beginning of things, there was a little niggling thought of me that would, billions of years later, send a butterfly to cross my path on a hard day to remind me that everything's okay.  That's unimaginable love.

And there are so many beautiful things that could stir my heart that were worked into the system that the real miracle might be me noticing them in the first place.  And I do believe in God and the Holy Spirit filling us up so that we are more aware of these blessings.  I do believe in Him helping us find the strength and the way to be better people.  I believe in His spiritual interference, in short.  That's all part of the Plan.  Just like His death was, shockingly.

He planned to die.  When He was creating this imperfect world with all its problems and sins -- whatever purpose they serve -- He knew He would someday die for us.  And He set everything in motion just the same.

That's more love than Him looking around one day and only making the decision then.  And even that's an incomprehensible amount of love.

The First Noel Verse 5

They entered in those Wise Men three

Full reverently on bended knee

And offered there in His presence 

 Their gold and myrrh and frankincense.

 Noel (4X) Born is the King of Israel.

There is a lot of good poesy in this song, now that I really look at the details.  The "His Presence" and "frankincense" rhyme is classic skill.  It's much cheaper to do a word that's difficult to rhyme and THEN fumble with "how on earth are they going to rhyme THAT?" before coming up with a strange or pseudo-rhyme.  Good for a laugh in the hands of the right actor (or dramatic reader).  But real skill?

Have a phrase that could easily be rephrased into something simpler and build suspense.  Why on earth go with an unwieldy rhyme like "presence" when...oh...because you wanted to end with frankincense.  Nice!  You made "frankincense" sound like the natural next step in an AABB rhyme pattern.  NOT EASY.  Usually they hide that word right in the middle of a line.

I think that's not as meaningful as other poetic bits I've found in this song, but it's nice to have talented people writing your hymns.  A lot of modern stuff sounds really repetitive, simplistic, and even kinda dumb.  It's heart is in the right place, but honestly -- is that all we're looking for in worship?  Also, Christian rock hasn't resembled contemporary rock for over a decade.  Switch it up.

Moving away from that rant: yesterday I talked about how the Wise Men weren't getting what they were expecting.  You'd never know it from their recorded reaction here.  They stuck to their script, in many ways, even though they were in a stable bending over a manger rather than before a throne or in a palace.  They offered their gifts all the same, honored to be here.

It's strange to think of any reaction to the shocking thing that God did as gracious, but part of me associates that with their story.  It's a kind of grace, after all, to accept God and God's will as you find them.  Not trying to insist that they be what you think they ought to have been.  Even when they seem to make a mockery of the gifts you thought you had to offer.

Boy howdy does teaching do this to you.  All the accomplishments and skills you are so proud of -- so often it's more a matter of "but for the Grace of God" I would have really fouled that kid up.

Those gifts are wonderful (if a little on the nose) for a king, a God, and a divine sacrifice. For a poor child born with his parents on enforce pilgrimage?  In a barn?  The Wise Men must have felt like fools.  Not, perhaps, for traveling all this way, but for having only gilded baubles to bring to this very down-to-Earth (literally!) God.

Will all our precious gifts of the Holy Spirit and talents and accomplishments and hard-won or freely given virtues someday look like that in God's presence?  Will we feel like idiot children who value all the wrong things?  Will all our elegant refined gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh look just as silly as the grapes and tennis balls of the fictional shepherds in Second Shepherd's Play?

Or were the gifts actually perfect in a way human eyes aren't equipped to see?  Will our talents transcend all that and be valuable after all in ways we couldn't have guessed?

What will all of our gifts look like on the day of the Second Coming?  Silly, worthless things for us to have been so proud of?  Or something far more fitting and symbolic and transcendent than we could have originally imagined?

The First Noel Verse 4

There are a LOT of verses to this one, just ask my family.  When I was in high school, I insisted on playing them ALL when I did this song on the piano.  Then again, I think they might have just thought I was being difficult and/or annoying.

The star drew nigh to the Northwest

Over Bethlehem it took its rest

And there it did both stop and stay

Right over the place where Jesus lay. 

 Noel (4X) Born is the King of Israel.

So I've given the Wise Men a lot of credit in the past few days (and it IS right there in the name...), but I still wonder about this moment.  After all "to seek for a king was their intent" even if they were also "follow[ing] the star wherever it went."

What happens when you follow the light of that same star and it takes you somewhere you never thought you'd be?  How many of us, truly, are gracious in that first moment?

Perhaps it's natural to be annoyed.  Even to piss and moan for awhile.  Even saints were angry.  Jonah threw an effing FIT over the fact that a whole town of people didn't die.  I mean, think about that for a minute.  By every possible measure he achieved his goal of saving the town from their righteous destruction by warning them to repent, but he was angry because it didn't happen like he was picturing.

The tree and the worm and the whole thing...I feel like they get disproportionate attention in that story, which to me is ENTIRELY overshadowed by that reaction to lack of mass killing from on high.  The absence of a town destroying natural disaster.

I realize that all of my emphasizers are reaching the point of diminishing returns but just think about that for a minute.

At least the Wise Men had the cat-on-the-roof treatment.  They see first that it's Bethlehem, a little nothing town in, let's face it, a nothing part of the Roman Empire far from the seat of power and not even worth subduing properly.  But it's provided an unexpected king before, if they know their local history.

And they see the barn before the baby.  Their initial reaction isn't on display for the physical form of God (which makes it all less embarrassing somehow even though I suppose it shouldn't but who can live being embarrassed by all the nonsense God sees us do?).

I can't help wondering if Jonah had similar moments to warn him.  I wonder if every time we are thrown a shocking curveball by life, we really should have seen it coming.  What willful denial it would have been, after all, to walk into Bethlehem still expecting a king.  What blind stubbornness would have made you look for a lofty, worldly figure in a stable?

The Wise Men were a rare and beautiful trio indeed.  They had the courage of their convictions enough to set out on an expedition against a chorus of mockers, no doubt (otherwise there would be more than three).  But they were open minded enough not to mind that the journey led them to Bethlehem and an objectively poor newborn.  They were strong in their beliefs, but they didn't cling to them in the face of opposing facts and new revelations.  They were the right kind of stubborn to upend their lives because they saw a Sign from God blazing in the sky and wanted desperately to be near it -- but open enough to not be thrown off course when the end of the journey was not what they expected.

How many of us can truly say that we have both?  That we know when to be certain and when to change our minds and hearts?  That we have the courage to do something bold when everyone is telling us how objectively stupid it is to abandon our comfortable lives to tramp across the desert after a meteor; but we also have no anger or rage when the glorious event we were seeking isn't fireworks and angel choirs (at least not for us).  When humble shepherds got a more mystical display.

To know that we aren't owed a fantastical show or anything that would "prove the naysayers right" at the end of a journey, even and especially one of great sacrifice.  That anything we get is a gift, even shade atop a tree, or a baby in a stable with a bedraggled couple who wouldn't know what to do with the gold, frankincense, or myrrh.

The First Noel Verse 3

And by the light of that same star

Three wise men came from country far

To seek for a king was their intent 

 And to follow the star wherever it went.

 Noel (4X) Born is the King of Israel

The same light comes to everyone.  I've been fighting really hard for almost exactly the last 24 hours to ignore a man on Facebook who is spewing hate speech about Muslims.  I started to engage with him against my better judgment yesterday because I didn't want to stand silent while such things were publicly said.

The man is an idiot who can't string together a coherent sentence, let alone argument.  A reasoned, multisyllabic response was really just being mean.  Trying to make him feel small so he'd shut up.  Not trying to help him see better.

The nicer spin on it is wanting him to know that his views are Not Endorsed by others -- especially educated others.  But even that goes sidesways on you really fast.

One of his incredibly rude "corrections" that actually made a little sense (instead of just inexplicably saying, "You probably believe in Climate Change so what do you know?" or what I think was an instruction to read the Constitution and/or his summary of it (DEFEND THE COUNTRY) or "You may have seen it, went through each word, but you apparently haven't read it, understand it and digested its meaning."

That last one, I don't even know what it means.  Except how dare I disagree with him despite having read the same document?

Which brings me back, after an unfortunate detour, to a positive thing his otherwise incoherent and hateful ramblings brought into my life.  One of the memes claims that Islam has contributed absolutely nothing to the world in 1400 years.  "Except arabic numerals" I chimed in helpfully.  He responded with a mostly-coherent suggestion that arabic numerals were created before Islam.

A little research found this to be true and that arabic numerals come from India.  Already I am profiting from this.  And as further proof that my dad's theorem that no true thing can truly hurt you or your case, I stand by the statement in general since they were brought to the Western world by the Arabs and popularized by Islamic scholars at least in Western texts.

But on the wikipedia page, there was this quote:

"I will omit all discussion of the science of the Indians, ... , of their subtle discoveries in astronomy, discoveries that are more ingenious than those of the Greeks and the Babylonians, and of their valuable methods of calculation which surpass description. I wish only to say that this computation is done by means of nine signs. If those who believe, because they speak Greek, that they have arrived at the limits of science, would read the Indian texts, they would be convinced, even if a little late in the day, that there are others who know something of value."[

They would be convinced that there are others who know something of value.

By the light of that same star.

Foreigners, people unlike you, people fundamentally different to you in every way that your time period defines you, can follow the light of the same star.

Just because they don't know the history of why the Messiah is coming doesn't mean they don't follow the light of that same star.  Just because they, like the Jews themselves, expect a political king at the end of the journey doesn't disqualify the goodness of their intent to follow the star wherever it went.

In fact, those wise men did better than anybody in Israel except the shepherds from the first verse.

I think anyone reading knows the main metaphor I'm going for here -- which foreign peoples we fear because we have decided they are too different to follow the same path toward the light that we imagine we do.

It's also easy to see this as a lesson for HIM rather than for me, but really it's a lesson for everybody.  Especially those who think they have it all figured out too often, which is about the only thing that describes both me and my temporary Facebook nemesis.

Just because we look different to modern eyes doesn't mean that we won't both end up in the same Christmas play someday, if we follow the light of that same star.  Our job is to follow the star wherever it went, not pass judgment on people along the way or claim it as our birthright.  The same light shines on us all.

The First Noel Verse 2

They looked up and saw the star

Shining in the East beyond them far

And to the Earth it gave great light

And so it continued both day and night 

 Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel

 Born is the King of Israel

To be honest, I'm not sure who this verse is about.  The first verse of the song is explicitly about the shepherds and by the third, it's explicitly about the Wise Men.  But the verse starts with "They" as if we're still talking about the shepherds who cannot be said to have travelled "day and night" to...yeah, not feeling as wise and like I've got a handle on this verse tonight.

You probably have to go straight to metaphor on this one.

Then again, a part of me wonders if part of the surplus of supposed messiahs my religion teachers always talked about during Jesus's time were because of these spectacular signs in the heavens.  Everyone about Jesus's age could claim they had been for his birth, after all.  Even if you just take people born on the same day, give or take one or two, that's still a sizable population with ready made propaganda to shill.

Which puts me straight back in graduate school rehearsing a scene from Henry 4 With 4 where a character cannot stop showing off his impressive birth story even to sign a war treaty agreement.  And a knight obsessed with out-Knighting Lancelot himself (although he never officially says so) gets annoyed and starts dismantling it and shouting about how it can't be any such thing.

Everyone in the scene and just about everyone watching the scene is trying to telepathically scream at Hotspur (the knight) to just let it go.  Of course the Earth didn't really shake at his nativity.  Everyone knows that sort of thing doesn't happen.  Besides, even if it did, he's on your side.  So why act the fool?

But I wonder now why Hotspur found it so upsetting.  He doesn't have a "let it go" bone in his body, of course, and he likes people to speak plain and to the purpose.  And I wonder if what was really frightening to him was the idea that Glendower was speaking the plain truth.  Because if that was the case, his whole world would be different.

Which is the situation that each of those shepherds and the three wise men were all facing.  The shepherds saw gorgeous proof and the wise men saw a glorious star lighting the sky both day and night -- rivaling the sun itself!

And either of them could have gone about their days.  The shepherds could have shrugged it off -- a vivid dream, surely.  Things like this don't really happen.  Of course the skies don't open to the heavenly sounds of the celestial hosts.  Everyone knows that sort of thing doesn't happen.  Besides, even if it did, no one will believe you.  So why act the fool?

And how much more the three wise men?  They didn't have to make their decision in a moment, which is both harder and easier.  Surely they sat in debate with people with alternative explanations because the truth was ridiculous or at least fantastical.  Miraculous.  Of course God doesn't really come to Earth, His passage marked by a brilliant star appearing out of orbit.  Everyone knows that it's best when gods stay in their heavens and even if it would be better it doesn't matter.  Besides, even if it did, the god is just as likely to zap you.  So why act the fool?

For a long time, I envied the people with proof.  The Doubting Thomases or the ones who saw visions for the clarity of their purposes.

But even those who saw, who touched Jesus's wounds, have to make the choice to believe.  And to change their lives because of that belief.  I will remember all my life the story of the boy in Mejugorie who saw the first of the visions of Our Lady but didn't go back the next day because "seeing visions is for children."  Who didn't have enough bravery to admit that the world was different and these were the signs.  To star at a brilliant, brightly shining star and know that the world was different now...and that we should follow that beautiful light to something better.

Maybe that's what faith is always and still required: anyone can look up at a sky full of the heavenly host and know that the world has changed.  Faith is believing that the world has changed for the better.

The First Noel Verse 1

This one has lots of verses to deconstruct.  Only some of which I still have memorized.

The First Noel the angel did say

Was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay

In fields, where they lay keeping their sheep

On a cold winter's night that was so deep.

Noel, noel; noel noel. Born is the King of Israel. 

So just now is actually the first time (in my memory at least -- did I bug you as a kid with this question, Mom?) that it's occurred to me to wonder what "noel" means.

A quick google search reveals several potential translations -- which is why I have little patience for Biblical literalists in a nutshell.  After all, "The First Noel" is a much more recent text and look at the choices I have:

"Christmas"
"A shout of joy or Christmas song"
"birth"
"nativity"
"news"

I really like the idea of a lot of these translations.  The "first birth" certainly ties this song more neatly to Advent than I would have expected going in.  And the "first news" is amazing for the story of Christ in general -- the very first piece of the Good News that Jesus came to spread on Earth.  How cool!

Apparently "noel" meaning just "Christmas" is something we can thank medieval Europe for.  But even they reserve the alternative to mean a "shout of joy" -- which is, of course, how we should greet the first birth which presages the second coming when we shall all be newly born and is the beginning of the Good News.

And all of these things were given to mere shepherds.  It's funny though, because most of the verses of this song are about the Three Wise Men.  You'll see in coming days.  But the verse that's always sung, the verse that you know if you know anything about this song, is all about the shepherds.  In terms of just the song itself, the story of the Epiphany wins out.

But in popular memory it's all about Christmas night itself.

And I thought I was going to a more inspiring "Christ comes to the lowly" place when I started this, but I actually think it's very telling about our country and our larger culture.  So many people with large microphones have positioned religion as the natural opponent of science or even learning as a whole.  On both sides really.  Fundamentalists have set the stage for nonreligious liberals to believe that religion is the enemy of logic and learning.

We both forget that the Three Wise Men used their wisdom, yes, but also their astronomy and navigation and engineering skills to reach Jesus's manger without official celestial guidance.  It's good to know -- and properly humbling -- to realize that the simple shepherds reached the same place soon just by listening.  That God will provide a BIG sign if we miss the star in the heavens.

But I wish we talked more about the ones who saw the signs and used their intelligence and gifts to find God.  So that we honored all the paths to God, just as the song in its entirety honors both of these two paths to the Christ child.

O Come, All Ye Faithful Verse 3

Yea, Lord we greet Thee

Born this happy morning 

Jesus, to Thee be all glory giv'n.

Word of the Father

Now in flesh appearing.

O, come let us adore Him (3X) Christ the Lord. 

One of the things people don't get about Shakespeare is the thou versus you distinction.  I love teaching it, actually.  Basically, you and thou used to serve the same purpose in English that usted and tu do for Spanish and a host of other languages with similar patterns.  Usted, in Spanish, is the formal pronoun you use with strangers, bosses, etc.  The people you don't know well or aren't on equal footing with and who like for you to recognize that.  Tu is informal, for friends and also underlings, with a slight flavor of contempt.

Thou used to be the informal, tu, form.  You was the formal, usted, form.

I still remember a graduate school moment when a classmate gasped at what might look like an innocent line, "She just thou'd the prince!"

It's basically the opposite of how we respond to errant Thees left in sacred prayers and songs from a time when we had a codified distinction rather than relying on vocal tone.  We see it as fancy and alienating rather than a proof of familiarity.

But I see a wealth of potential contradiction turned into hope in the cohabitation of the words "Lord" and "thee" in the first line; not to mention the "to Thee be all glory giv'n" in the third line.

What a gift Christ gave us, just by coming to earth.  By becoming human, even if He did nothing else.  Even if He hadn't died for our sins and defeated death.  He brought us close enough to Him that the "Thee" is appropriate.  We are familiar, of the same kind now.  The "thou" is appropriate.  We are called friends, as Jesus later told his apostles.

And yet God has lost no glory.  He has not lost His Godly nature.  He is our Lord while also a person we can "thou" without offense.  He is to be given all glory, but we give it as to a friend, a fellow.  The best of us, unquestionably.  God and Creator and Teacher and Guide...but ours.  Not beyond our reach even if He is beyond our comprehension.

Equality is impossible, but familiarity is not.

O Come, All Ye Faithful Verse 2

Sing, choirs of angels

Sing in exultation!

Sing all ye citizens of heaven above.

Glory to God, all glory in the highest.

O come let us adore Him (3X), Christ the Lord. 

I had the pleasure of singing this along with the IWA Choir at their concert last night (after which my Internet failed).  That'll put you in the Christmas mood instantly.

Again I can't help seeing the second coming previewed here.  The shepherds sent down to greet Christ in the manger are the only mortal men in history to have a true preview of that day.  The heavenly hosts blasting their heavenly music in welcome and glory of God.

What a sight it must have been.

And the things about glory is -- it is also frightening and even terrible in our eyes.  I've thought a lot on this most recent round of blogs about how much we stand to lose when the world changes and how much faith and hope it can take to trust that the world will be better.  But losing our fear of glory...that part seems like one of the things that makes it easy again.

Let me clarify a little bit here.  We accuse people of wanting glory, and I think we all have a taste for glory.  At least of the "one moment in the sun" variety that can stand safely in our memories.  Not all, but I think most of us would realize the fearfulness of perpetual glory for ourselves.  And that's one fear we'd lose.

But more importantly, I think we'd lose our instinctual fear of glory in others, even and perhaps especially God.  How many times have we seen the story play out?  Sometimes the fearful ones are like the older son in "The Prodigal Son" but quite often they are the heroes being Rightfully Cautious.

And even in God, we fear His Glory at times.  Isn't that where "God-fearing" comes from?  Because it seems really upsetting if it means "constantly fearful of God's punishment".

It reminds me of an article (making a very different point) I read yesterday which talked about how we would rather believe in a world where nothing is random -- even terrible things that happen to us, even when that makes us think it's our fault, we prefer the non-random world.

But I wonder -- do we?  Do we really?  In practice, prefer a world controlled by an Almighty Power?  Are we hardwired to trust in God?  Is that why the hands-off, free will policy is so necessary that's worth the price in wars and death and petty cruelties?

So that is a barrier to God I look forward to watching fall on Judgment Day.  In the meantime, I suppose all we can do is take one brick at a time out of alignment and wait for a section to fall.

O Come All Ye Faithful Verse 1

O come, all ye faithful

Joyful and triumphant!

O come ye, O come ye to Bethelehem 

 Come and behold Him

Born the King of Angels. 

O come let us adore him.

O come let us adore him.

O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord. 

This song seemed like a compromise between Christmas and Advent, which is apparently the theme of this week.  It's always sung at Christmas, usually with the gospel about the shepherds, but it could easily belong to Advent.  A few minor changes and (perhaps) a transposition to a minor key would easily adjust its place in the musical canon.

 Because it's easy to see how this would be not about parading to see a child with a suspiciously timed birth appear in a stable.  Which makes you wonder just what the neighbors thought of the three kings showing up, now I think about it.

It's easier to see, in many ways, as a story about the Second Coming, rather than the first.  But then -- all this glory and impressive language and events...they were for this very ordinary thing.  On this very ordinary, even lowly thing, the fate of the cosmos and of every human soul depended.

If we really, truly understood that, we would be clamoring night and day over it.  We would be begging as surely as this song is begging to be allowed (by whom I'm not as sure) to worship Him -- always sure that there must be a higher level to which we can gain admittance and finally do the event of Christ's birth true justice.

May God bless us with a more perfect understand of what He did for us 2,000 years later -- where even if we had lived in a clamor both joyful and triumphant, we still wouldn't have made nearly enough noise to do it justice yet.

Soon and Very Soon

Soon and very soon we are going to see the king (3X)

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  We're going to see the king!

No more crying there!  We are going to see the king (3X)

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  We're going to see the king!

No more dying there!  We are going to see the king (3X)

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  We're going to see the king (2X) 

It's a very simple song, really.  But it's fun to sing, so it's popular as a processional hymn during this time of year.  And I like it, unlike many Advent songs which can seem so dour when the rest of America is already celebrating Christmas.

I mentioned yesterday that I enjoy the delicate tension between Catholics trying to observe a solemn Advent and the thorough enjoyment that you can have from a full, long Christmas SEASON.  Light, bright days and mournful, longing nights for a better world.

Today was certainly a bright day -- glowing fiercely.  Yet still we can long for a better world.  There was a lot of that in this day as well.  My students were presenting their final presentations on their chosen social justice issues for us to fix.

Besides the joyful but longing song above, that might be the best illustration of this conflict between Advent and the Christmas season that I've got.  Four minutes (or so) on a terrible situation in our world, followed by a freshman girl's fervent belief in how her classmates can fix it.  Some of them are more realistic and practical than others (to say the least), but the spirit is willing in all of them.

The girls at my current school love so much and so freely.  I saw a lot of that today.

Today the world felt bright, but my Facebook wall was full of darkness.  I didn't forget about the problems in the world.

A dear friend saw my message saying that I hate the time zones that separate us because I wanted to tell her about the joyfulness of my day.  So we gchated, and she let me go on for awhile before reminding me that her week was terrible.  A very close friend committed suicide and she is desperately trying to get her applications through so she can go to the funeral and mourn properly.

But -- and this is how wonderful she is -- she listened first to my joy and seemed to genuinely take comfort in a joyful part of the world.  In what can only be a hard Advent of the Soul (for all she's not catholic) longing for a world without death and tears and this heartrending pain, this wonderful person found a place for a bit of my Christmas-like joy.

Because some days it feels like Christmas to get to be around these students -- enthusiastic and wild and respectful and ready to love and hard-working if not responsible.  And some days you wake up on what you think will be a day of celebration for your college to find your roommate in tears and a room full of your fellow students weeping, and one of your friends has died in the night.

This fallen world has both states.  Advent and Christmas.  But they aren't in conflict.  They aren't even in contrast.  They exist alongside and at once and in the midst of one another.  And I feel them in the exact same physical place in my chest.

Soon and very soon, we will have a world that no longer needs Advent.  But sometimes I wonder if it's there for us just as much as Christmas.  So that we don't forget how special Christmas is (as I'm terrified of forgetting about IWA) or just so that we learn that even the bright and beautiful things of this world must pass away so that the darkness can be banished at last.  So that we can understand that all things bright and beautiful is merely a taste of the better world to come.

It's hard not to think "Soon but not too soon" about our entry into heaven -- but perhaps Advent's real purpose is to help us understand that Christmas was only intended to be a consolation, a bright burning star in the night.  Not a reason to fear the coming Day.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel Verse 7

The seventh and final verse.  I'm going to have to decide to go to Christmas carols or stick with Advent songs after this.

O Come, Desire of nations, bind

In one the hearts of all humankind

Bid thou our sad divisions cease,

And be thyself our Prince of Peace.

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to Thee, O Israel. 

Oh of the many fabulous things about my master's in Shakespeare and the first semester's education it gave me is a profound appreciation of enjambment (I have a funny story that almost no one can appreciate about enjambment.  It's a sad state of affairs.).  That's when a phrase or idea is split between multiple lines of a poem.

When I teach about enjambment to my students, I always tell a story on a friend of mine who likes to tell LONG stories.  And it's not always clear when she's finished with the stories.  So she developed a strategy that I would swear is intentional. She only takes a breath in the middle of a sentence.  Sometimes, for clarity, she breaks for breath mid-phrase or cliche.  And that's enjambment -- take a breath or a break in the midst of the thought.

In Shakespeare's verse it can mean a lot of things, and it's a very natural way that people talk. We do it naturally all the time.

But when it's purposefully chosen in a poem, it means something.

Here what I think it means is pretty cool.  For six verses, we've been praising the past and to some degree the future of God's promise.  We've been meditating on what it would be like to wait for Jesus the first time and how it will be different from now when He comes again.

This verse is the exuberance of celebrating that time.  It's not the waiting or the past -- this verse just lets loose imagining how wonderful and great it will be.  So great it doesn't even fit on a verse line!  So great that one thought flows into the next and everything and everyone is connected and no longer separated by these arbitrary divisions -- poetic and otherwise.

Peace and a joining of mankind -- that's what I see in that overflowing first line of the poem.  And in the crowded lines that follow it -- shoving more syllables into each line of the verse than any of the previous verses.  So much to say about how wonderful peace will be.  How we will all be together.

For anyone who's afraid of losing too much personhood or free will or dark subtlety or indulgent venial sins or everything else we use to keep ourselves from living fully in God and letting it change our lives so profoundly.  There are unimaginable, overflowing compensations for each of these losses to come.  And I won't put the word "losses" in quotes like they aren't real losses.  They are.  And they will probably even hurt.  Maybe a lot.

But the grace that will come in their place will fix all the things we can't.  The beauty and love and peace --- so much more than we can imagine or a single verse line can contain.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel Verse 6

O Come, Thou Dayspring from on high

And cheer us by thy drawing nigh

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadow put to flight.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. 

Today's verse makes me think about some of the things I've thought about doing my other Lenten observance this year.  My friend Clara wrote once about going to a no-artificial light rule in Lent (at the apartment, obviously, I have to teach class).  I'm not entirely doing this -- it's more of a "no overhead light" rule.

But it's proven a significant challenge.  For one thing: my bathroom is NEVER well-lit.  I've started doing my hair only after I arrive at school.

That very challenge of an always-dark bathroom, however, has given me a kind of window into the meaning of this verse.  I imagine what I would think of that room, all the things I would miss about the truth of that room, if candles and/or my lantern or (most commonly) my iPhone light were all that I ever had to judge it by.  What would I think of me, seeing myself mostly in the ghostly reflection of those lights?

I wouldn't think the same thing as I do now, with the benefit of a blazing overhead light that appears whenever I flip the switch.

And it's hard not to see that as a metaphor for how I've at times treated my relationship with God.  A blindingly powerful switch I want to be able to turn on and off at my will.  Rather than living with.

I wonder what I'm missing in the shadows of this fallen world that will suddenly seem clearer and different when the Light of God shines down properly.  For the most part, I don't think I would have essentially misunderstood the purpose of anything -- but I can imagine myself bumping my head against the bit of wall that inexplicably juts out over the dryer without ever fully realizing what it was that was hurting me if I hadn't ever seen it in the full light.

As clever as any deduction I make by candlelight are, there are severe limits to them.  Even to the understandings born of a life lived in faith -- in the light of God's presence.  By which I mean, there are shadows even during the daytime when natural light floods some rooms of the apartment but not all.

And I can get by to do anything I need to do nearly as well (although I have to be more careful about the timing of when I do things).

But there is an essential understanding missing.  Something to remember whenever I am frustrated that I don't have this world all figured out -- or, even moreso, when I begin to think that I do.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Verse 5

I apologize to any new readers I may or may not have acquired in the past few days as I took a hiatus for the Texas Thespian Festival, but I only returned from that epic 3 day field trip with high school girls (who spent a good portion of each car trip screaming at me to pull over for different random sites), and thus this may be a somewhat scattered, weary entry.

But then, I had a teacher once who told me never to apologize before you begin.  Oops.

O come, Thou Key of David, come

And open wide our heav'nly home 

Make safe the way that leads on high

And close the path to misery

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. 

The first two lines of this, I was wondering what in the world I was going to say.  That is, of course, Jesus's mission, and I could continue the theme of focusing on the next world that runs straight through Advent.

But there's something deeply fascinating to me about the implications of the third and fourth line.  Because of course, yes, we should be hoping for exactly that...but doesn't it sound a little like resigning free will?  "closing the path" after all.  Is that what is God's plan?  Or is that what we want?

What would that world look like, and is that what is coming with the Second Coming?  A clear, even path that leads us ever closer to God and no alternative route to look inviting, easier, or on and on.  No way to fall into the terrible depths.

And yet, this weekend, stories have appeared of children born into their parents lowest points in life.  So many people only found the will to reach higher after treading down the path of misery.

Yet again, set against that, is some thoroughly unnecessary and not visibly productive misery suffered by some of my students (they're fine for now, but prayers are always good).

And I'm reminded of two (very different) roles played by David Tennant that touch on this.  His Doctor Who (sci fi show) episode where he rants that the human race is always being taken over by one thing or another (fair within the show) and that he "sometimes think[s] you like it.  Surrender that control and responsibility."  And an even darker version of taking away our choice (to misbehave -- even for our benefit --) in his role in Jessica Jones.

We care a lot about our free will in this country.  In this modern world.  More than when "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" was written.  When there were so many ways to step off the straight and narrow road that led to anything but earthly misery.  Which fits in well with my whole shtick about how hell is only the places that we build on earth.  Then, cutting off the choices and coincidences and chance that could knock you out of a comfortable life must have looked like a Godsend.  And may have been.

But if we are not making the decisions, is it us at all?  Are we free then of the responsibility?  Would we rest and forget?  What would spur us to reach higher?  Would we wander around or stand still rather than traveling that safe way that leads on high?  Is that why we have the paths of misery?  To keep us from standing still as it nips at our heels?  To help us see everything clearly?

Or is all suffering ultimately unnecessary and will someday pass away?

I can't imagine the new world after the Second Coming, the New Jerusalem we await in Advent, in oh so many ways.  But here is another.  When sin and death and the path of misery have been conquered and eradicated, what will the world look like?  And what else will they take with them when they go?

Because you know that even in a finally redeemed world, we'll find a way to romanticize what's missing, no matter what it is.  So I ask the question now.  What kinds of grace and blessing is only available here in this Fallen World?  What face of God is here for us in this fractured place?

And how will it be different from the face of God in the world redeemed?

O Come, O Come Emmanuel Verse 4

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse's stem

From every foe deliver them

That trust the mighty power to save

And give them victory over the grave.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

 Now here, finally, I recognize the God I see in the gospels.  It's still grand stuff, but the victory over the grave -- not temporal powers or any evil doings in the world itself.  That is much more what I want to see in God.

I phrase it that way in a kind of honesty.  Father Michael Jamail recently gave a homily that (like so many of his homilies) has stayed with me.  He warned against turning your own idea of God into a false idol.  Of becoming so convinced that you understand the infinite power, wisdom, glory, and love of God well enough that you create a false idol that bears his name and titles.

It's a dangerous trap, and one against which even the most faithful must carefully guard.

It's related, I think, to what a friend of mine discussed at dinner this evening.  He expressed his frustration at the preference for strong rhetoric and argumental strategy over actual truth.  And he said that everyone's default state is to think about how the world should work, decide what the truth is, then bend the world and facts and essentially anything necessary around that decision you have made.

In the brilliant Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which has been a challenge and a spur to my faith in many ways, the newly reimagined Harry gives Draco a motto to initiate him into the realm of the true scientist (long story):  "If magic is disappearing out of the world, then I want to believe that magic is disappearing out of the world.  If magic is NOT disappearing out of the world, then I want to believe that magic is NOT disappearing out of the world.  What is true is already true."

What is true is already true.  Thinking it is so, knowing it is so, doesn't change that.

God is already God.  Us deciding what He should be doesn't make Him any less who He already was.

And yet, how often are we afraid to look?  The Tudors is creeping in again, reminding me of how many centuries the Church feared ordinary men reading the Bible for fear of heresy.  It sounds ridiculous -- to draw heresy out of the Bible.  But a heresy, at its root, is an alternate interpretation.  We don't call atheism or other religions heresy, after all.  The indifferent Catholic is not called a heretic.  That title is reserved for people of our own faith, who have thought long on the question, who have studied the same holy works as us, and have the audacity to come to different conclusions.

To see another face of God than the one we have seen and decided was all that there is.

The arrogance is perhaps more ours than theirs, when we cry heresy in all of its forms.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel Verse 3

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might

Who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

 In ancient times didst give the law

In cloud and majesty and awe.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

 It's a huge part of the Christmas story, but I think both Advent and Christmas itself don't give nearly as much attention to just how much Israel was not getting what they expected in Jesus's grand arrival.  We talk about the child in the manger being the "simple" reason for the season rather than all this pomp and circumstance; we talk about the humility of Hit birth as a statement.

But it's so easy to forget the Elijah parable where God was not in the thunderstorm but in the soft wind.

I spent a lot of my life waiting for the angel to arrive in glory.  There is a brief period of time in which I mean that quite literally.  I wanted a mission, and I wanted God to tell me what it is.  We all go through a period of wanting to know what our lives are going to be like already -- tired of living in the glorious suspense of where we will end up.  I imagine many true believers have wondered when their angel will appear.

And now I'm back thinking about the This American Life episode "Nobody's Family is Going to Change" which is a brilliant holiday message not because it's uplifting but because it's an important thing to remember post-uplifting holidays so you don't have a dismal, bitter January.

However, one of the stories, at least, is about genuine change.  A young man converts to Christianity and unfortunately gets caught between a confusing power play between two on-campus organizations.  So he does the sensible thing in his budding religious story -- he goes to the highest hilltop and prays until God helps him settle things to his satisfaction.

After several hours, he speaks in tongues and has profound emotions and peace and comes just short of describing it as a vision.  Probably because he used that word with the wrong person one time and had to explain that he didn't need meds.

What struck me listening, what has stayed with me since, is the thought of how many soft winds -- or unremarkable babies born in stables -- he ignored before God and/or his guardian angel just said, "Oh hang it, just give him the lot!"

I think it was a sign of hope and respect for us that Jesus came simply.  That he changed the game on us.  That we are growing and maturing as a people.  That we don't need a miracle to be literally happening in front of us to believe that we are in the presence of God.  We don't need to stare down the unharmed but burning bush to know that God is speaking.

And all of the rhetoric about seeing Jesus in our fellow man -- perhaps that's another sign of advancing as a species.  We don't need to see God only in a perfect man, who is also God, but for a brief moment shining out of an ordinary sinner of clay.  Just like us.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel Verse 2

O Come, Thou Wisdom from on high

Who ord'rest all things mightily

To us the path of knowledge show

And teach us in her ways to go.

Rejoice!  Rejoice!  Emmanuel is come to thee, O Israel.

 This verse is particularly strange to read after spending far too much of Thanksgiving break re-watching The Tudors (thank you, otherwise excellent The Creation of Anne Boleyn book, for making me newly curious about that television show).

The fictional (and to all appearances the real) King Henry VIII is forever telling everyone that the natural order is, essentially, that he will be a tyrant and they will like it.  Rebellion, he tells the subjects who protest his shutting of the abbeys, is a sin against God and nature.  To question the king, he tells his court, or God-forbid (literally) insult him!  That is against the natural order and to defy the Word of God.

Oh the things we've done in the name of "preserving God's order".  The things we are still doing.

But when Jesus really did show up and "to us the path of knowledge show and teach us in your ways to go", His message was very different than the natural order set up by any government.  No, Jesus was undoubtedly a radical who recommended an indifference to power, a generosity of wealth, and a sharing of human spirit that look very foreign to the politics currently done in his name.

In fact, these two parts of the verse seem in deeply ironic conflict with one another.  Jesus came down to show us the true way, the path of knowledge and true goodness, and that way was in direct contrast to the established order.  I imagine, especially from the perspective of eternity, Jesus is far more likely to agree with Mosca Mye than any current politician:

The heart of being a radical isn't about knowing all the right books; it's not about kings over the sea or the Parliament in the capital.  It's...looking at the things around you and seeing the things that make you sick to your stomach with anger.  The things there's no point fussing about because that's just the way the world is and always was and always will be.  And then it means getting good and angry about it anyway, and kickin' up a hurricane.  Because nothing is writ across the sky to say the world must be this way.  A tree can grow two hundred years, and look like it'll last a thousand more -- but when lightning strikes at last, it burns, Mr. Appleton.

Nothing is writ across the sky to say that current order is sacred.  That's us doing that.  Those of us with too much of a stake (even if we haven't the ultimate stake) in the status quo making our own insecurities sacred.

Perhaps the hardest lesson Jesus gave us was that the status quo is not our god.  Not the things that it is unthinkable to truly question.  And not always in revolutionary ways.  Sometimes in dismissing them.  After all, it was accepted Jewish belief that God would send a prophet to deliver them from Rome, but instead Jesus said to deliver unto Caesar what is Caesar's.  Nothing is writ across the skies to say that Jerusalem needed to be a political entity.

The Pharisees are condemned, because nothing is writ across the skies to say that they only can lead the people to greater faith.

Rich men are told to sell all they own, because nothing is writ across the skies to say that we must pursue wealth and power or that they are a determinant of good.

The order of the world isn't writ across the skies by heaven's almighty hand.  We did that.  We forget...because we so seldom have the courage to renegotiate the terms we laid out.  The path of knowledge often runs contrary to the "natural order" -- especially when it exposes that there is no such thing.  And that we must combat the world's ways.

If something about the way the world has always been stands in the way of doing good -- burn down the tree.  The order is ours, not God's, that makes his laws more precious than ours.

O Come, O Come Emmanuel

I'm back!

This advent, I want to focus on verses of Christmas and Advent carols. I'll be starting this week with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," which may well be my favorite of the entire lot.  I don't pretend to know much of the history of the carols, although my friend Clara Biesel does.  I'll try to ask her each week for at least a little on that week's carol.  But I want to get closer to Christmas and Advent both this year, and music was what once drew me more than anything else.

O come, O come, Emmanuel

And ransom captive Israel

That mourns in lonely exile here

Until the Son of God appear

Rejoice!  Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

This time of year, my family thinks and talks a lot about my father Judge Tom Mulvaney.  And I often wonder why I don't connect more with a motto of his that should be right up my alley: "The purpose of life on Earth is to make one's self ready for eternal life with God."  Perhaps it's just the formality of his words.  Even on the bench, he seemed much more natural.

But stories of exile are all about longing to return home, are they not?  About being alone.  Ex-patriot stories are different.  Full of adventure and finding of the self.  About claiming a new country and birthright or finding that the foibles and terrors of your culture are not a universal part of human nature but a choice that can be un-chosen.

I've written a novel about the ultimate exile -- sleeping beauty removed from her home by time.  Completely beyond the hope of repeal of her sentence and being reunited with her home and her family.  So I suppose it's no surprise that that is the phrase that connects.

We remember no life but this one.  We build homes and families and ties to this world.  But we are born exiles.  We are born away from our true home.  We are born in a world where we do not fully fit, always aching for pardon and return home even as we build lives here.

We do not belong here.  We are aching for home.

In an otherwise troublesome book, Till We Have Faces, a brand new queen makes her first act on the throne the freeing of her beloved tutor (and true father figure) from his slavery.  She is then dismayed and shocked that the other men of her confidence immediately start congratulating him and offering to help him pack for his trip home.  He later tells her that he has passed the test, and that he will stay to help her out of love rather than stumbling home.

In Winter's Tale, a servant named Camillo who was forced to flee his country in order to avoid the king's order to kill his friend and the king of a neighboring kingdom is willing to cause all kinds of fuss and misunderstandings simply on the hope that he will have to return home to settle the matter later.  He receives his wish and comes home to joyful and magic reunions.

We all connect with this emotion, somewhere deep down.  It is not one that requires a great leap of empathy or the assistance of mighty words to comprehend.  It is the call of our souls.  We are in lonely exile here on Earth.  Trying to build as best a life we can.  Trying to do the best we can.

But ready in a moment to be called home.  Eager for when we will all be there together again.

How much more remarkable to find that Jesus instead came to us.  And that He will come again -- to us here.  That this place will one day not be a place of exile but a home in its own right.

That's why what we do here matters so much -- and why perhaps I struggle with my father's motto.  The Kingdom of God is now and here, I've said many times before in earlier years on this blog.  This feels like a place that is not our home and thus beneath our true interest.  But it's not.  It will be God's home truly and fully someday.  We will make this our home.

So we need to build a Kingdom of which God could be proud -- as well as we can.  We may be in lonely exile, but we are meant to do work while we are there, as Camillo did.  The same worthy service that maneuvered him into a position to do the good work that won him passage home at last.  To be fair, the same worthy service that kept him in exile working hard for the good of an earthly realm -- but that very work also made him fit for heaven.

So yes, the purpose is returning Home.  But it's important to remember that this land will not be abandoned.  So it's just as important to build a home here that we can imagine God choosing to dwell in.