At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Luke 1:39-41
We seldom notice how each day is a holy place. John O’Donohue
THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST IN US
This picture by Redon plus the scripture leads me to reflect upon the everyday nature of life – greetings and conversations – and the bigger personal moments such as pregnancies too, and all in relation to the presence of God.
The mystics are often mistakenly understood to be all about the ecstatic and spectacular yet they to a man and women say these are byproducts. The chief end is simple, natural, unfussy union with God, without drama and fanfare, within everyday life.
This is it. It’s conversations, it’s birth, it’s death, it’s boredom, it’s routine, it’s joy and it’s anxiety. Everything belongs.
God abides in men, because Christ has put on the nature of a man, like a garment, and worn it to its own shape. He has put on everyone’s life, says Caryll Houselander.
I think of the flock of conversations had over a lifetime and of single comments, such as the one overheard and rounded up by the Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge at a party: ‘All of those days that came and went – I didn’t realise those were life.’
Might the mystery of Christ in us - Jesus growing in Mary's womb, of Jesus wrapped not only in swaddling cloths but in us, wrapped in our day, closely bound up in our human dramas of births and deaths, conversations and plans - hidden under our noses it seems and jumping up and down on occasion, usefully, contemplatively sit alongside the question 'Is this it?' (when or if this appears).
THin spaces
Maybe thin spaces are more common than we think, not merely geographical spaces worn thin through prayer and presence but commonplace encounters too, and this by design and in principle. Maybe thin spaces are mystical conversations, where there is a recognition and exchange of life.
Whether pregnant or not we will likely have had moments when something in inside of us starts jumping up and down. A recognition that ‘this is something’, maybe even ‘this is it’ or ‘this is Jesus’, where synchronicity and harmony emerge.
What does carrying Christ in you mean for you?
Andrew Hook