Mary Christmas Eve

It's dark out, and cold - but there's a star to the East that lights up the normal night like a planet. Outside is a tired donkey tied up to its stable and inside, a more tired family preparing for birth. A virgin mother, red-faced, whose partner thought she'd been unfaithful and who's probably been cast out a whore. Obedient and swollen and with no place else to go, she cushions a trough with bearable cloth. A wooden box meant for pigs and their slop. You better be who Gabriel said you'd be. 

Before there were shepherds or Wise Men, frankincense and myrrh - there was him and there was her. I just know that they must have looked at each other, the peasant girl to the carpenter boy, and wondered if those angels should have chosen anyone else. 

And there was wailing and there was singing and the Son of God was born into dust, breathing in soil and straw and the dirt that would betray him. 

Last Thursday, at church, we finished out the service singing 'O Holy Night'. The piano started and I felt excited, because Christmas. There was an expectancy in the room, the kind that feels light and heavy in the same step. People were either feeling the spirit move or they were about to go see Rogue One, but either way, the place was swaying and it was chilly outside and it had just been a really good night. And then something happened, and it's happening again right now. My dog's watching me as I type, his kind eyes shifting around like he doesn't know how to fix me.

We make it to the second verse and the dam breaks. I'm sobbing and it's one that happens when The Lord tells you to imagine the night that he came here where animals eat and he saved you. He says that you're Eve and that look around you...they'e Eve, too. He knows that you had no chance of feeling free until he came and your soul knew its worth and banished your shame. He takes your head in his hand and tells you how he knows you're sick of being hurt and trying to make things better and that's why he's come to be born that new and glorious morn. The weary have a reason to rejoice.

Shhh. Do you hear this? It's love and it's peace, there's no room for more! He shows me his hands, lets me touch the wounds on his wrists and says, "For you, I'd do it all over." He says that he'll break the chains of my neighbor slave and reminds me of Aleppo. Before I have time to think, You won't do it, he says louder that in His name, all oppression shall cease, and I'm undone. It swells and people are falling on their knees and hearing the same angel voices that Mary and Joseph must have heard before the Messiah began redeeming. 

It plays like a movie and then finishes with this: one of my favorite images to ever exist and the only one I've seen that tells of the Gospel without words. So, I see myself on the left - he's shown me. Unworthy to be seen, my hair covers my naked and exposed skin. There's lust and pride and doubt wrapped around, all climbing up my leg. I'm clutching tight to my breast the choice that had slain me, flush cheeks and too embarrassed to lift my head. 

 And then, Emmanuel, who does things that don't make sense, who began his work in the world long laid in sin and error pining and who will work until it's restored, he takes my face and tilts it over the the right and says, "But hey, you're Mary, too." He nods, knowing that I'll disagree and says that I'm beautiful with his same beauty and that it's my job to lift people's head. To gather their fingers and place them here - Shhh. Listen, do you hear? The hope of the world, love and peace and nothing else. I know what you're feeling and how they look at you and it's all been covered. He tells me that the "Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest hover over you," and you will help me be the snake crusher for those in bondage. (Luke 1:35) You will go find them in the thickets and let them know of a life to come.

 Here's one of my favorite versions of O Holy Night on *still* one of my favorite Christmas albums to date - Arrival by Cross Timbers Community Church (2007).