Editorial Note: We conclude our Advent series, Incarnation, today with this reflection to carry you through the season of Christmastide. Thank you to all the contributors who made this Advent such a rich time of anticipation, as we opened the gift of your words and images, your hopes, sorrows, and joys each day. You have helped us as a community journey from the possibility of Advent into the fullness of Christmastide. We hope you’ll join us for a new season of Vita Poetica in 2021. Blessings to you all!

Listen to Lisa read her reflection:

Christmas—no longer waiting, fulfillment is here. Emmanuel. God come to earth as flesh to fully embrace our weakness. Christ's birth ushers in redemption and restoration, yet we live continually looking to be redeemed and restored. Advent and Christmas happening together every day of the year.

We're all waiting for something—that life-changing opportunity at work; the relationship that will make us whole; for the angst to stop and the joy to move in. Holding on in expectation that tomorrow will be better than today—that our failures, demons, sadness and dislocations will be redeemed, removed, replaced and restored. Hoping that the time will come when we move from Advent to Christmas.

2020 has not been an easy year. A global pandemic has ravaged families; social revolutions have wailed for justice; continued and newly started wars; economic devastation in the wake of affluent extravagance; this year ends with so many without safety, shelter, health, food, belonging, love. In the 'rich' West more people will be availing of charitable donations of food & clothing than before and homeless shelters bulge at the seams.

I have family and friends & the means to buy presents. I've a home, clothes on my back and more than ample food on the table. I am blessed to feel love, acceptance and belonging because I'm me not because of what I do, what I've achieved, how much money I have, who I know. What else could I want?

I wonder what would happen this Christmas if the ones who have much were to give gladly to those who have little—no strings or conditions attached? What would that do to the economics of safety, shelter, health, food, belonging, and love? What if we were to play a part in helping someone else move from Advent to Christmas; from waiting to new life, hope and purpose?

Christmas—the great gift has come, Emmanuel, God incarnate. Christ sets himself aside and becomes a man. He holds nothing back. Those of us who seek to follow Jesus are called to do the same. We must set ourselves aside, enter into the life of the other, and hold nothing back.

In this painting, the birth of Jesus according to Matthew is portrayed, which offers insights into the messiness of Joseph's perspective in the whole story. He learned that his betrothed was pregnant and sought to quietly turn away, walking away from this young woman, filled with fears. But in a dream he learns more and is told that this is truly the fulfillment of the years of waiting, that his betrothed was in fact the virgin who was carrying God with us inside of her. Creator God blessed these two to unite as a couple, even as the Holy Spirit overshadows her and she becomes bearer of the Word made flesh, God with us. This embodiment and incarnation came with a cost for both Mary and Joseph as they stepped out in faith.

The complexities of this birth story of Jesus according to Matthew are distilled into an abstract painting. The presence of the Trinity is conveyed with the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary as a dove, Immanuel filling Mary's womb, and the Creator God encircling the space and uniting her with Joseph. The circular form reflects the covenantal relationship in the image of a ring. The simplified form of Mary is attentive to the new life emerging within her while also reaching out to Joseph. He is angled away, considering quietly walking away, yet also receiving insights through a dream and ultimately reaching back toward Mary as they step out in faith.

Anno Domini MMXX has revealed that the American nation and the global experiment have been one long page of Missed Connections. Somehow, in our fervor to become more and more connected, we have become less and less so. With familiar and formal relationships fraying under our fingertips through the schism-makers of politics and pandemics, faith and philosophies, it is easy to despair of ever understanding another human being again. For those with faith in Christ, however, we have a linguistic and a relational precedent that just might save our lives (and, in fact, already has).

The Gospel of John opens with a startling image that holds me in perpetual astonishment: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14). John’s incarnational metaphor reveals a God who has and gives the power to make impossible connections. It’s not just that God chose incarnation to redeem the world. It’s that he inspired John to use a metaphor, and this metaphor in particular, to describe it. This is an astonishing literary and redemptive act. It creates two kinds of bonds: the linguistic bond of a metaphor, and the physical bond between speaker and utterance. And it is these bonds that make communication with God and one another feasible, making impossible connections between wildly different people.

A metaphor, by its very function, is a great equator. It brings together two extremely different things and declares, “You are now one.” It is a match-maker of sorts, leaving in its wake all kinds of impossible marriages: the world = a stage, eyes = windows to the soul, the Church = a bride, etc. In doing so, many of the attributes we associate with one “marriage partner” become associated with the other “marriage partner.” The men and women in this “stage-of-a-world” become “players,” and so forth. A metaphor, then, takes two diverse contexts and binds them together into an entirely new one. 

The beginning of John’s gospel erupts with the most remarkable of all metaphors, one which proclaims a fusion like no other, either in literature or reality: Jesus Christ = The Word Made Flesh. The person of Jesus Christ binds the context of God with the context of humanity, the context of perfection with the context of fallenness, the context of eternity with the context of mortality, the context of love with the context of rebellion. Because John’s gospel is not fiction but divine revelation, this linguistic act literally makes it possible for us to draw near the throne of God through Christ. We are bound to God and God to us, and through God to one another.

The physical bond of the Word Made Flesh is no less important. A word is never just a “thing” on a page; it is a living vessel of meaning, memory, and relationship. We have become so accustomed to “seeing” words that we forget their intrinsically physical nature. Not only does spoken language require the motion and coordination of the mouth, throat, and body, but the very need for words arises from physical impulses and experiences. The next time you stub your toe, watch a puppy video, or swerve to avoid an erratic driver, think of this. Words are given and received by the body as sound waves travel across space and time, from one heart to another. God knows full well the imperative bodily-ness of the Word. He spoke creation into being, translated the dust of the earth into human flesh, told his story through the mouths of Middle Eastern nomads, and entered into humanity as the supreme act of communication itself: A Word Made Flesh. Normally, utterances, once they leave the body through either the voice or the pen, become detached from the utterer and the life which gave birth to them. They seem to die, waiting on a page for someone to recognize and resurrect in them the life they once had, the life they were made for. In the case of Christ, this disconnect, this death never occurs. God’s creative Word never becomes a mere utterance, devoid of life. The Ultimate Utterance of God, his undeniable “I AM,”, is eternally bound to flesh and blood. It is impossible for God to “ghost” or “troll” someone on the internet, to drop an inflammatory remark and then just disappear. He is what he says he is. He is fully present in everything he says because he is his own Word.

How droll, to wear a thatch-work cap

in your unmade bed, half-strewn

with crumpled leaves. Were you

your mother’s favorite

shrug, earthward, tumbled

between the seasonal cleave

and leaving? Huzzah,

feral tickle of taproot, encoded

with primeval fizz! Little scuffed nut,

your essential self, denuded,

rockets forth—one shoot

amid the forest graveclothes,

as if all you are may yet erupt,

may devolve or burgeon, dazed

as a spindle splintering

into rungs, arms and legs,

yet brash with sap, dreaming

the chair, turned against

each year’s lathe,

like any artisan, becoming all throne.

Time-lapse video of an acorn sprouting underground, filmed over 8 months, by Neil Bromhall

Advent invites us to live humbly as we journey towards Jesus’ incarnation and deeply consider what our place is in the story. How do we receive the invitation to claim our incarnation as we do our best to walk in Jesus’ footsteps?

In our currently troubled times, the quote included on this piece from Eleanor Roosevelt gives me much pause for thought:

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Today marks the start of Hanukkah.

As a child I confess I did expect the angel Gabriel 

To appear in my bedroom one night,

A flutter of wings, an explosion of glitter, 

Unfurling a scrolled message from On High, 

His stellar entry a confirmation of 

The mystery I’d long suspected:

That such harbingers of glad tidings lurk 

Around every corner, just waiting to be 

Believed, and then seen. Yet

For all my believing, I still have not seen, 

Though the night sky makes me wonder 

If maybe all is not as it seems. 

This is why when the doorbell rings, 

My heart jumps far above the veil dividing 

Heaven from earth, God from man

Eager to entertain angels, though perhaps unawares— 

For I was young once and have not forgotten 

The teenage girl deemed worthy of an Appearance 

Lo! Such great magnitude.

Today is the feast day of St. Juan Diego, who is known for confirming the authenticity of apparitions.

During a time of year that celebrates excess and novelty, Christ's humble symbolism as the "bread of life" returns our attention to the One who can truly feed and nourish us.

"Jesus said to them, 'Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.' “

'Sir,' they said, 'always give us this bread.'

Then Jesus declared, 'I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'" ~ John 6:32-35

For now (in this time of imperfection) we see in a mirror dimly (a blurred reflection, a riddle, an enigma) but then (when the time of perfection comes we will see reality) face to face. (1 Cor 13:12 Amplified Bible)

As the days in the Northern hemisphere get shorter during this winter season, glimpses of light and the short hours of daylight become filled with wonder. Following a walk at the beginning of this season, with the intention to take a break from the home office, I was soaking in this wonder of light and reflection. It seems that during the dark winter season, the light and shades of light and reflections become more intense and noticeable.  

Through this drawing, I have tried to capture these shades of light and reflections in front of a building in Oslo, Norway. In the process of drawing and by taking the time to look closer, I realised that it would be impossible for my eye to capture shades and reflections without a bigger light behind it. 

C.S Lewis writes when explaining our idea of justice, “just as, if there were no light in the universe and no creatures  with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.” In other words, darkness cannot be noticed without a comprehension of what light (justice) is. 

As we move through this advent at the end of 2020 and see the reflection of darkness and injustice of the year behind, may we remember and rejoice in Your Light that has come to this world. Immanuel.

I saw the vein’s blue channel swelling far

below. I saw the landscape of my forearm:

fertile peninsula, hair-forest

irrigated by the map-blue rivers

of blood. Freckles and warts

like mesas or mined-out quarries.

My giant finger reached down to goad

the channel up and back, reversing the flow,

causing a flush, a flood in the Land

of Hand and leaving an indented

dull-pink bloodriver bed,

tendons, a dry arroyo.

Then I removed my damming fingernail.

The channel ran blue again, plumply swelled

against the sky’s skin. I felt

the warmth and push of my own blood.

Mighty-fingered god,

I birthed into a body,

the terrain became, terribly, my own flesh,

my left arm, myself. God, how can we be

linked by liquid, twined at feeble

joints, so softly covered, so cobbled

together out of wetness

and heat? And be ourselves?

Originally published in Other Poetry. Reprinted by permission.

Today is the Feast day of St. Barbara, patron saint of artillerymen and miners.