Uttering the new name of your exultation
Deep in the vitals of your soul.
Make ready for the Christ,
Whose smile, like lightning,
Sets free the song of everlasting glory
That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.
Thomas Merton
Picture: Gustav Klimt, The Kiss
Gently, relentlessly as fine dew, the Divine soaks into a wanting humanity. And we welcome the marriage of heaven to earth. The great opposites unite....Through the mystery of the incarnation, the flesh taking of the spirit, matter is made equal in value to the spirit...[In] joining every split in opposites ... masculine and feminine, matter and spirit, darkness and light, are united and equally important in the creation of the new, the redeeming. Gertrud Mueller Nelson, To Dance with God
A mysterious union
Advent is that particular season where we are drawn to focus on the nitty gritty business of flesh and earth, on the here and now. In the incarnation, life as we know it has been kissed by the transcendent God. All of life is seen as intrinsically and intricately bound up with the everpresent God/man Jesus. Advent and Christmas is at least about Mystery, of the Incarnation, and also by extension of the gift and the struggle for oneness; a journey toward the joy and pain of heaven and earth joined as one in human hearts.
Responses?
So, as we weave in and out of these Biblical journeys we note responses of the earth to the advances and song of heaven. The extraordinary and the familiar intermingle. Harmonies and collisions ensue in the midst of dreams and prophecies, censuses and labour, intrigues and worship. Perhaps in their stories we will see some of our own responses to the wooing of the Divine, of harmony and also of collision!