In pursuit of Christmas

If you don't know what a chaturanga is, allow me to divulge.  It is a low plank, or in other words, the bottom of a push-up.  It is having your back, knees, heels, and shoulders in a line that is being held inches aloft by your toes and your arms, which wiggle and scream and do this Shakira-like jiggle as your elbows are bent to ninety degrees.  You stare at the ground and watch your sweat drip, drip onto the ground.  That is a chaturanga.  

It is a yoga pose.  It is part of the practice that I can feel in nearly every muscle of my body.  My cheeks get to rest, and that's nice, but then the instructor will say something funny and I'll start to smile... and then even my cheeks are straining.  Today, when we were in our chaturanga pose, and holding it for quite a while, Libby asked us to remember that this was why we showed up.  It was nearly the end of class and our bodies were exhausted.  Holding that chaturanga was a bit like reeling in the last few inches of line holding a ten pound fish.  She reminded us that we came for the end, for the arrival, for the realization that this was hard and that was the point.  She also asked us to call to mind our "intention", that is, why we came to class.  It can be anything- for health, for peace, for the mental space to be kind to our family members, for the patience to get through the work day.  As we gritted our teeth and tried to keep our breathing at an even pace, we thought of our intentions. 

The work of December exhausts me.  From the time Thanksgiving wraps up to the time we gather under the tree on Christmas morning I feel like I am sprinting.  There are gift lists and party lists, PTA meetings and church meetings and text threads that feel like meetings to plan meetings.  I have one hundred fifty two reminders in my phone to make a craft or deliver a baked good or pick up the sticky hooks to hang wreaths on the windows.  Then, invariably, the craft store is out of stock, the baked good is left on top of the refrigerator where we hid it from the dog, and the wreath hooks are irrelevant because the ladder isn't tall enough.  What is my intention in all of this?  What am I sweating for?

As I drove around today I thought about this.  I thought about this because while I stretched my muscles and challenged them and listened to Libby coach us there was a small space in my brain that opened up and gave me pause to ask myself, "What is Advent?"

Walking toward Christmas, for me, means walking toward the manger.  It means imagining the strain of pregnancy on Mary.  I think of her long journey on donkey back, which cannot have been pleasant if I compare accurately my nine month pregnant self to hers, and the girth of a donkey's back.  I think of the wise men and how long they wandered and hoped and wondered what it was they would find beneath that star.  I think of the shepherds and their awe at finding a baby born in a tiny, musty room, heralded by angels and yet so lowly and ordinary in his wrinkled skin and tiny features. 

Mary, the shepherds, the wise men, and I.  None of us know exactly what we will find at the end of the road.  All of us know our intention.  It is a conglomeration of discovery, hope, relief, and love.  It is faith.  

When I look back on my Christmases- as a mom, as an adult still trying to chase the wonder without kids, as a college kid who needed a respite, as a child... I realize that Christmas morning has always come.  What is left up to me is how I walk the road to it. 

As I attempt to grasp hold of Advent, to share it with my kids and remember it myself, I will think of that moment as I sweated through a chaturanga.  What is my intention? I came here for this moment. 

I had a lot of ideas about how this Christmas season would look.  I even stated them, emphatically, to my husband.  

"There will be wreaths!," and I probably gestured grandly with my hands toward the windows. 

"We will shop beneath the lights at Friendly Center!," I said with dreamy eyes as I thought of the two of us, on a date night, happily strolling in pea coats through the shopping center as we picked out perfect gifts for family members. 

The fact of the matter is, we can't get the damn wreaths to hang. Also, we did shop at Friendly Center.  With kids.  No pea coats. (Josh doesn't even own one.)  We purchased absolutely nothing because we found absolutely nothing.  Refer back to the fact that we brought the kids.  

Here's the thing, however.  Letting go of the wreaths and the dreamy Christmas shopping experience feels like work.  It feels like the good work of preparing for something that is bigger than presents and pea coats.  There is something magical about spending an entire month, especially in this age, to get ready for one beautiful day.  We breathe in and laugh about wreath hooks not hanging.  We breath out and smile as the kids turn the shopping mall into a personal race track/playground/jungle gym.  We strain our muscles, trim our tree, hang our heads a little when the pose doesn't go quite right.  We sweat and we show up.  We get here.  We do the work.  We remember that for some the work is even more painful, in its loneliness or its loss or its lack.  Day by day and labor by labor we arrive.  

I believe Christmas is the arrival.  It is what we come for.  It is the cool lavender-scented towel we drape over our sweat-caked face as we lay down our tired limbs and smile at the work we did, the space we created.  Perhaps Christmas is the reward for the hard work, but it also is the work.  It is right and okay that preparing for this one day every year be difficult.  For nothing beautiful, nothing worthwhile, was ever born of ease.  If I am honest, Christmas morning itself is not easy.  It was never meant to be.  

If I may be so bold, I would venture to say that Christmas was meant to be a sign of hope, and peace.  If that is the case, and we are now preparing for one day that embodies those two virtues, we better be sweating and aching and burning in the pursuit.  

I voted in 2016

Two days ago, in church, Josh tapped my elbow.  He whispered in my ear,

"He's singing."

I looked past him, trying not to be seen by my eldest son.  Sure enough, there he was, holding a piece of paper with the lyrics to the songs we sang as a congregation.  He was standing, leaning against the chairs in front of him, his auburn hair brushing across his forehead, his freckles dotting his nose that angled toward the words, and his lips were subtly moving.

Jonathan does not sing.  Jonathan does not stand up in church.  Well actually, Jonathan did not sing and he used to never stand in church.  It is something that has irked me slightly, this inability of mine as his mother to help inspire in him a desire to worship, to participate, to feel the passion in the words we sing.  Nonetheless, I have tried to let him just be him.  I have stood next to him as he sat, sprawled, or slumped in the rows of chairs.  Suddenly there he is, joining in to the voices, singing of his own accord.

I smiled, eased back into my spot, and sang with my heart full, so grateful for my son's ability to set aside his discomfort and give this a go.

Today we went to the polls as a family.  Frost topped the grass and we watched our breath as we piled into the car and huddled into our coats and sweatshirts.  I felt anxious as we approached the little church where we have been voting for various races over the past five years, not knowing exactly where I lean this year and wondering if I would feel proud of any result.

Then I thought of Jonathan singing in church.  I thought of the courage it took for him to stand up in a sea of legs and hips that become a forest around him, to stand up and then sing at that.  I thought of all of the thousands of minutes when he sat in that church and wished he was anywhere else, and now here he was standing up and taking part.

Perhaps it is in the walking into the polls, in the taking that last breath before casting the ballot, in the moment of deciding what is it that I believe in, what is it that I cherish, and then proclaiming it for myself in the quiet that comes from being surrounded by people doing the same.  There is something so powerful about standing in those cloistered ballot spaces, knowing there are people in front of and behind you making these choices and helping by increments to build the leadership of our country.

We sponsor a child in Uganda and he and I write to each other occasionally.  I told him in our last correspondence that we are going to vote for a new president and that I was not very excited about either candidate.  He responded that he was grateful to vote for his new president as well, and grateful for the lack of bloodshed this time.

That got me.  This boy who is half my age expressing gratitude for the great gift of voting and for the blessing of no bloodshed.  I realized then that I have so much to celebrate.  I am raising a son who can worship without prosecution and who can follow his parents into a polling place and walk out to the smiling faces of women handing him an "I voted" sticker.  We went to Krispy Kreme and watched the doughnuts be drizzled with sugary glaze and rock down the conveyor.  I ate my free "I voted" doughnut with my bright eyed boys and I felt satisfied that we had this moment as a family, to go to the polls and talk about why America is great.

That is what Jonathan asked me this morning.  He didn't ask who I voted for.  He said,

"Mom why does America win everything? Why do we win everything in the Olympics?"

I am sure there are one hundred answers to this question, and that some of them are cynical, but this was mine:

"America was built to take care of its people.  Some countries are built to take care of their king or their dictator, but we were built to take care of our people.  When you take care of your people, they are healthy.  When people are healthy they are better athletes."

This satisfied my inquisitive eight year old, and he stared out the window for a moment in contemplation.  I added that we have a lot of money, and that helps us with fancy pools and nice sneakers and good coaches, but I do believe what I told him about why we thrive.

There was a moment today when I doubted this.  I wanted to blame someone for the candidate list.  I wanted to go home and not vote.  Then I thought about what I believe America to be, what I want America to be, and I realized I don't have to have faith in what America is, but I have to take pride in what I believe America has always striven to be.  Let there never come a day when I refuse to vote because I can't find a perfect option, for there have been too many who did shed blood so that I could stand up in the forest of others doing the same, and quietly cast my voice into the chorus of those around me.

Ease in the work

Today during yoga class the instructor reminded us to "find the ease in the work".  She ticked off the working groups, "Plant your feet, turn on your legs, straighten your back, pull your shoulders in and down," a checklist of contracting muscles and bones and joints.  With a clear voice she told us to feel our muscles working, then settle into it and find the lightness there.

The funny thing is, I had just read a quote by CS Lewis today that communicated the connection between work and ease.

"The Christian way is different: harder, and easier.  Christ says 'Give me All.  I don't want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You'... Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.  You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy.  He says, 'Take up your Cross'--in other words, it is like going to be beaten to death in a concentration camp.  Next minute he says, 'My yoke is easy and my burden light.' He means both." 

CS Lewis and my yoga teacher seem to be in cahoots, and when something like this happens I tend to think it is God whispering.  Embrace the work and lean into the grit.  Yesterday at the pool I was chatting with another mom and commenting on how I often tell Josh, "I just want to wake up and make it through the day the way I planned it.  I want everything to work the way it's supposed to."

Aside from smiling a crooked smile as he is working on something else in the house I've asked him to fix, Josh's typical response is, "Yep, I know it babe.  That would be nice."

That would be nice.... or would it?

Last week the yoga instructor had us change up some of the routine.  She never teaches the exact same class, but I can usually see what's coming and know that if my body is twisted this way right now, it will move into X pose next.  Well, on that particular day she had woken up energized, giddy even.  She said she was "excited to live life" or some such inspiring (read: terrifying) claim. I found my feet over my head when they were supposed to be planted in plank pose.  I found my hips in the air and my shoulders over my ears when they should not have been.  In short, sweat was dripping all up in my face space.  I felt beads of it streaming from my neck onto my hairline and into my eyes.  It stung and I couldn't reach my towel or I would have fallen clean onto my nose, so it stayed there, stinging.  I was blinking so hard I thought I'd have a headache.  As Libby continued to move us through her excited-for-life madness series, I was trying to figure out how to stay with her cues but still predict what was coming next and how to reach my daggum towel.

My brain stopped trying to catch up to my body, and finally accepted that we were on a different playing field.  Then, as if by magic, it was as if my brain sat back, popped a Corona and said, "Heart, lungs, do your thing.  I'm taking the back seat." It was clarifying.  I let the expectation drop and just decided to like the sweat in my ears and eyes.  

In any job there is the mundane, the expected, and then there is the wildly unexpected bordering on chaotic.  As I raise my children I am coming to expect both, and finding myself resenting them equally.  Make the bed.  Wipe down the counters.  Unload the dishwasher.  Why is it never done.  Take the suddenly feverish baby to the doctor.  Sweep up the broken china plate.  Hear the news, "Honey I think it's time to buy new land and move across town." Clench, breathe, clench. Cry. 

Nevertheless, there are moments when I realize I actually love the mundane and I cherish the surprises.  I was wiping down my gorgeous granite countertops the other day thinking how satisfying it was to watch that grime disappear.  I folded laundry and realized that sitting in the sunroom with an excuse to do so for an hour was soothing my harried mind.  The car had to go BACK to the mechanic and somehow I was more grateful than exasperated.

Is this what they mean?  Is this what it means to lean into the work, to find the ease there and to settle into the elbow grease of life as if it is the big comfy chair?  I am wondering if I stopped running towards rest and rather pushed back the branches in my mind and reached for the tool belt-- would I find that I prefer it?

Try as I might, I can't think of a single story in the Bible wherein the protagonist goes on vacation and achieves nirvana.  In fact, I can't think of a single story like that in my own life or the lives of my friends.  I can think of a lot of stories in which a person has striven for excellence and found, more than the achievement of their goal, a growth of self.  Furthermore, I can think of a dozen instances wherein a curve ball produced depth or a shock to the system turned into the greatest gift.  I am not naive enough to believe that every bit of unexpected news or droll work will bring happiness- the world is too broken for that.  I did not expect, however, for sweat in my eyes to become something I look forward to.  Realizing that I can feel the ache and reach into it for more makes me think that I can probably discover more of this delight in struggle.  Perhaps I can even find myself singing while I scrub a toilet... for the third time that day.

Lewis, CS. "June 23." A Year with CS Lewis. 1st ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2003. 191. Print

Easter Observation

Tonight I listened to William say his prayer.  He was reluctant to pray at all.  He said, 

"Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross to forgive us for our sins."

Every "r" came out as a "w".  Then he sighed. 

"That's all, I don't know what to say next!" he explained in tired exasperation. 

I smiled at the floor while Josh explained to him that prayer is our chance to talk to God, that especially today, on Easter, we need to participate.  William started over, said again, 

"Dear Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross to forgive us for our sins,"

added one more sentence for posterity, and then fell asleep quickly. 

As I listened to him pray, get disgruntled about praying, and then try again, I smiled to myself because of how perfectly he was echoing my own feelings at the time.  

Today has been a dreary Easter Sunday.  Josh and I were up for most of the night with a sick Sam, spent the morning apart as I went to church without the fellas, and then the afternoon apart as he took the big boys to lunch with the grandparents while I snoozed on the couch with our littlest.  I have picked up the computer three times to blog about the impact Easter has on my redeemed heart, and each time I have closed it in somber irritation at the fact that I just can't get at the joy of this holiday.  The rain has softly dotted the yard all day, the clouds have hovered low over our city, and I have felt as heavy as soaked denim. 

Last night we read the children the story of the crucifixion.  In years past they have relished this story, have wanted to read and re-read it, have asked questions about how the Roman soldiers were armed, how they hurt Jesus, and what they would like to do to the soldiers in vindication.  Truthfully, I used to cringe at their questions and silently wish to silence their fascination with the story of the cross.  Over time I have come to appreciate their dissection of Good Friday and have learned a lot about my own faith while listening to them drink in the truth of what Jesus had suffered. 

Last night, however, they wanted to move on.  When we finished the story of the crucifixion William asked repeatedly to read the story of the stone being rolled back and the ladies who went there.  He wanted the story to be finished.  He wanted to hear the happy ending.  He wanted Jesus to rise from the grave.  This morning, before I went to church, before the day had fully begun, Jonathan offered to read the story of the resurrection to his brothers.  He couldn't wait!  They sat on the couch and read together the story of Easter. 

I am learning from my children how to grapple with the reality of being human and how to claw at truth, to chase goodness, and to seek the simple yet profound fact of Jesus being IT.  

William's prayer tonight is my prayer today.  When all is said and done and the Easter Sunday trappings weren't exactly as planned, I thank my Jesus for dying on the cross to save me.  When I am tired and disgruntled I thank him for being my Savior, and I put away any more fanciful words. 

Furthermore, the story my boys craved is the story I long to hear.  Again and again.  I want to hear about Jesus rising.  I want to be told that He came out of that tomb.  I crave to remember how the women discovered him absent.  Absent from death, absent from the tomb, absent from the oppression of sin. 

I have been pondering the emotions of Mary lately; how she must have suffered when Jesus went missing for three days at the age of twelve.  I wonder what pole vaults her heart did when she found him and asked him, 

"Son, why have you treated us like this?  Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." 

It has occurred to me that his next words must have reverberated through her life and her mind.

"Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

I wonder, when Mary heard that her son's body was no longer in the tomb, if she recalled these words of his.  I wonder if it occurred to her that her son was on his way to his Father's house.  

Sometimes I expect a day, such as this Sunday on my calendar, or a moment that is packed with holy ceremony, to encapsulate my relationship with Jesus.  I want, each Easter, to be overwhelmed by the joy of the rising.  I want Him to be caught in Easter Sunday like a wintry scene trapped in a snow globe.   In thinking that a day can contain the wide mystery of my LORD's resurrection I find that I am cheapening the miracle.  

Today has not been pretty.  We did not all end up in our Easter outfits.  Yet, and here is the crux of it, we told the story.  We read it to each other.  We remembered the truth.  We accept the gift of Jesus ascending to his Father. 

Our Father. 

The Joy that is knowing Jesus can no more be caught in a day than the wind can be caught in the trees.  The joy is Jesus.  While I am trying to make Easter pretty, Jesus is clearing out the need for it to be.  While I am wishing for sunny skies, He is owning the rain.  As I regret the mess, He is entering it.  He is in his Father's house.  If ever I am at a loss to find the peace and joy that Easter represents, I have only to look at the throne at the right hand of God. 

Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.  Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'"  

Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: "I have seen the Lord!"  and she told them that he had said these things to her. 

John 20:17-18

Yoga, clarity, and being a mom

Today in yoga the instructor asked us to think about why we were there and she told us to take something from yoga, store it up and utilize it "out there".  As sweat beaded on my body and I had to focus on breathing hard in and out so that I wouldn't go cross-eyed, I thought about what I wanted to take with me. 


As my booted feet tromped across the street, my eyes squinting against the blazing sun and my shoulders hunched due to the below freezing temperature, I carried this... what is it?  I carried it with me.  Getting into the car and turning on the radio I carried it.  I rolled down the window to let the frigid air cool off my stuffy, sweaty heat.  Driving down the road I tried to tap into it, tried to find it.  Unsatisfied obligations and undone tasks crowded into my head like so many mosh pitters fighting for the spot right in front of the stage.  With effort I pushed them back, and tried to find the clear spot in my head.  I think this is the thing.  After an hour of sweat and burning muscles and deciding to believe I have one more chaturanga in me, the gift I have given myself is a pocket of clarity in my teeming brain.


I think, for me, that yoga means being alone and quiet.  Even if friends are on both sides and the music is playing and the lights are on and the instructor is loudly challenging us to "dig deep", I find solitude in the practice.  It is a rich opportunity to feel the tendons that connect to my muscles, to discover the length in my spine and the rotation of my neck.  When she tells me to imagine that someone is drawing my head up by a string, I can feel it.  There is a reckoning, an acceptance that my body can do more than it wants to, can go further than it feels comfortable, and past the point of what I think I can do.


That is not all.  I find that there IS a reason I am there, in that studio, in that particular practice of poses.  It is not a nebulous reason, it is as solid as the pavement under my feet.


It is my children.  This is not trite.  This is not a cop-out statement.  Three little lives are blossoming around my feet.  Three young boys are filling up the space around me, crashing through my bubble, leaving foot prints all over my aloneness, and beating drums into my quiet.  In a fast paced crash course in maturation they are growing up next to me.  I am trying to hold them back just a little, speak into their moments with lessons.  These lessons are piling up next to me like papers on my desk.  Millions of teachable moments are filling up our empty spaces, bursting out of drawers and cascading over the side of filing bins in our lives.  I can't hold them back, even if my only goal is to teach them how to run while they run.  They will fly forward while I seem to stand still.  What I want for them is to feel the wind in their hair and enjoy it, and even as I try to slow their roll so that I can make it safer, I know that my best chance is to run alongside them and let go when the string gets taut.


When I say that I exercise for my children it is not that they need me to carry them.  It is precisely the opposite.  They can't stand for me to hold them up, they are fighting to hold up themselves.  Watching them do it is taking every ounce of patience, control, and strength that I possess.  Observing their flight is making tears come to my eyes.  I can't tell if the tears are from the windburn of all of it happening so fast or from the deep ache of it. 


In the yoga studio I find those deep places where the ache dwells.  As she asks me to twist, and my arms and legs are shaky and weak, I can tap into the heart of being a mother.  My heart can pound, my body can move, and all the while I am practicing patience and stillness and the slow, steady rhythm of breathing.

A break in routine

The wind chimes on the neighbor's porch across the street sing a high pitched melody.  It's a repetitive  nursery rhyme, as if it's being sung by a woman in her garden absent-mindedly, the memory of childhood long past.

On my porch the tin cans clank together, my son's homemade wind chime from two years ago, in a lower baritone cadence.

The sun is reluctant to go down in late February, as if it's arguing with the night that it is nearly Spring and that the glow of it's fading light is more romantic for being in a time between seasons.  The hedges catch its glow and bounce it back, and in between the sky and the earth the glare catches in my eyes.  I squint inside my sunglasses and feel the tightness in my forehead creases: evidence of the faintest bit of sun kissed skin.

It is a kind of magic when a season arrives before it is due.  We are supposed to get wintry weather later this week, but for now we sit on the porch and run in the grass in tee shirts and tank tops, easing sweaty socks off our feet to stretch out our winter-hidden toes.

The boys are making criss cross marks in the yard with their bikes and scooters.  Eager to steal speed from the sunshine, they zip around like dragonflies, trading out toys as if their day depends on how many vehicles can be released from the garage.

Birds mimic their movements, flying and diving in the sky, singing along with the wind chimes, and bounding from tree to tree as if sharing their song will ignite the buds within.

Today has been a sick day, there have been antibiotics and tissues and the nebulizer even had to make an appearance, but sitting here with dirt on my knees from weeding, a tall ice water by my side that doesn't make my guts go numb with the drinking, this is alright.

Earlier today the dog got at the neighbor's chicken.  There are still feathers floating in corners of my house where they landed off her fur as I chased her to her crate in frustration and sadness, and horror that I would have to tell my neighbor of the death in my yard.  Men came to put new windows on our house and asked me, gently, if I was aware I lost a chicken.  I sadly explained the chicken was not mine.

All through the day I have been guiltlessly putting off folding the laundry, emptying load after load out of the dryer and into the bin by the washing machine, letting it become a mountain of cascading shirts, socks, and pants that seems to laugh at me as I pick a fallen sock from the floor and place it back at the top of the mountain, which is now so steep that it pitches to a point against the wall.

I think this is why I love it when Spring says hello in late February.  There's something decidedly rebellious about it, as if God himself is saying "leave the laundry!"  I don't know, this may be over-spiritualizing things, or looking for excuses where none are needed.  Nonetheless, I am finding the song of the wind chimes, the frenetic play of the children, and the deliciously warm sunlight studded by a crisp winter breeze to be scrumptiously off beat.

It's almost enough to take my mind off the poor neighbor children's lost feathered friend.  It is at the very least enough to keep my head clear enough that I have decided I will take them cookies and flowers and leave it at that.

I suppose the chicken just couldn't resist the temptation to play outside the pen in the early Spring weather.

Neither could my dog.

The star of Christmas

I pull a book out of the basket.  Sam is heavy and warm in my arms, and I stretch my arm down the side of the rocking chair and grab the hard worn cover of The Polar Express.  I turn the pages slowly, smiling at my littlest boy as I point out the large black train that fills the page.  We take our time, replace the book, and pull out another.

The whisk turns speedily through the batter, combining the colors of chocolate brown and butter white.  I click it off, hear the hum of the mixer taper off to silence, and draw the spatula along the sides of the bowl.  There is a satisfaction in watching the rubber slide along the metal sides, slicking off the fluffy mixture.

My coffee starts to cool as I sip it slowly, reading the story of Christmas from a Bible that is soft and malleable in my hands, the leather feeling old and new at the same time.  I remember what it felt like to hear it at age ten, sixteen, twenty-five.  It changes every time I read it; I can identify with the wise men some years and with Mary in others.  I treasure the words, holding them in my mind's eye and drinking them slowly, like my coffee.

At the white hot center of the star is where I find Christmas this year.  From the center is where all of a star's rays begin and where they travel to.  This is the cosmic pause, the epicenter of humanity.

Romans 8:22 says, "For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."

Isaiah 53:7 predicts the suffering of Jesus: "He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth."

Creation groaned for Jesus.  There was inspiring victory and crushing rebellion.  There were so many stories of life and death and the painful renewing of it all, morning after morning as the sun chased the night away for generations, and as the darkness followed the day.

Jesus then groaned for creation, picking up his dusty feet through moment after moment, until we nailed him to a cross.  He died for us and for us He rose.

Consider the pace of our history; the blinding light speed race that has carried us like a baton through the rise and fall of kingdoms, nations, and individuals.

At the center of our story is a moment when the groaning, of childbirth itself, quieted.  Into the night came the cry of an infant.  Look into his face.

Put aside the to-do list, lay down your work and your worry, and accept the offer to hold the baby in your arms.  Accept a smile from Mary and take him, the answer to all of history's crying.

This is the colossal breath creation takes.  All of the star's points lead to his birth, and all of its rays come from him.  Yet, for a moment, everything stops.  Breathe in, breathe out.  There was a moment when everything had to wait.

Tomorrow is, for me, a celebration of this deep inhale.  I cannot stop time from passing, but I can remember that moment when Mary had only to care for him, nurture him, and wait.  My intention is to wait, to experience a moment of not moving so fast, to consent to the fact that in the manger there was the gentle rise and fall of his little chest, and everything that would come had to sit on the shelf.

If only for a moment.