The starting point

When our view of the cross is that God demands blood in order to redeem, it is little surprise we have a country and culture that wants to see people suffer even more before help will be provided. But when we understand a God who enters into our suffering, we see that it is that kind of grace through which we are transformed.

Timothy McMahan King, Addiction Nation: What the Opioid Crisis Reveals about Us

“It is when I am weak that I am strong”

                                                              Paul (2 Corinthians 12:10).

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Christmas is just weird

Really

I mean it

If you think about what we say it is

The invasion of Planet earth by the very power that formed it

The entry of light into a world of darkness

The arrival of transforming Love

We might expect more

Than a peasant women

Giving birth to a wrinkled howling child

in the lap of poverty

But there it is

This weird and wonderful starting point

Which reminds us just what is going on here

Grace

The Sacred entering into all that is profane

Entering into this dark planet

Into our unworthiness

Our fear and hate

Our greed and hoarding

Our anger and violence

Our lust of power, and our abuse of power

And being transformative love

Simply being in us

As that sneaky and pervasive Spirit

Doing the work of love

Where did we ever get the idea that the Sacred

Demands some sort of merit in order to love?

Just as I am means just as I am

Not when I give up the bottle

Or my oxycodone pill

Or my lust

Or my greed

Or my hate

It means just as I am

Where did we ever get the idea

That once we have been touched by God

It creates merit

That unworthy we have been made worthy

(as opposed to those who are not worthy yet)

I remember the lovely old saying

That evangelism is a begger showing another begger

Where to find bread

Its is ever more radical than that

We are not the keepers of the bread

We never have been

We are beggers wandering with other beggers

Constantly needing to be given bread anew

Constantly needing the One who is bread

We are withered branches, needing to be connected to the vine

And infused with love

So that we can live

Just as Sacred radically became incarnate in this world

Not demanding anything

In order to Avent

Just as the Spirit makes itself at home in us

Before we are even aware of its presence

Before we have felt the tiniest nudge

So must we love

So must we be there for others

Unworthy vessels

Broken vessels

Allowing the light in, and the light out

Having earned nothing, having no worthiness

Demanding nothing,

Asking nothing

Starting with nothing

Expecting nothing

Just being

Loving

Caring

Healing

A basket of outcasts and deplorables

Hi, I’m an alcoholic

Hi, I’m a greedy person

Hi, I’m an angry soul

Hi, I’m addicted to power

Hi I’m a hater

A circle of the unworthy

A welcoming circle of love

Surrounding the manger with its abject poverty

Surrounding the manger with our abject poverty

And knowing we will never again

Be the same