On the preparation for Christmas
“No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God — for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come to their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.”
— Óscar Romero
Óscar Romero (1917-1980) was born in El Salvador and was an advocate for the poor and marginalized, and he was vocal against assassinations, torture, and the increasing war between left-wing and right-wing politicians. In 1980, he was assassinated while performing mass by a right-wing extremist. In 2010, the UN declared Mar 24th as a day honouring those affected by violations of human rights and as a day advocating for a ‘right to the truth’ concerning human rights obstructions, both in honour of Romero. In 2015, he was named a martyr by the Catholic Church, and in 2018, Pope Francis canonized him as a saint. {More here.}
I can often think Christmas is about gathering with family, of being close, of being connected. This reminds me of how I can also think of a “close family”—eating meals together, doing things together as if those are the things that make a family close. And this reminds me of how I can often think of my marriage—sharing meals together, doing things together, and being in each others lives. If only x, then y will happen.
But if I equate time with intimacy, togetherness with closeness, then I’ve got it wrong. And I have, and still can forget, what I learned four years ago when my husband and I were separated: none of those things I thought brought us closer together actually do. (Of course they can contribute—but doing those things alone cannot, for the love of God, bring anyone closer together.)
I have learned for myself that the only thing that can unveil one face to another is the very face of Existence, of Life, of Breath, of Love. The Holiest of Spirits. The Holy Spirit which illumines the face by radiating the free heart that is usually hidden. No spouse, significant other, parent, friend, no word, no situated context, no therapy can ever illuminate the soul. The spirit. Only, the Spirit. (And if a spouse, significant other, parent, friend, situated context, therapy work for some, lovely—but that can only happen from the Wind letting it be. A benevolent gift from the made world. My path had all of those experiences, and still it ended in a death to myself as I learned to walk with this Spirit of Gentleness and Humility—and this Way of Life that helped me to see my way. That regardless of whom I married, I would have ended up with the same issues because my heart is shaped a certain way, regardless of the other. He and I went perfectly imperfectly together.
No amount of togetherness brings life. Space in one’s heart starts, ironically, from a recognition of one's own way which then opens the space for the impossible: a newly created, beating heart like a new child has. In space there is a grace, a re-turning, a re-orienting into something bigger, different, into the very likeness of Love. And Love changes.
And herein lies a changing of form—a transformation that happens like a pea going underground for a few days only to transform and be unrecognizable from the previous circular soft pepple it once was.
The unfurling forth of this beautiful plant is absolutely different, yet had its seed in something earlier that had died to itself in the Soil of Life. To grow—by the nature of her plantness—not because she did something, but because she didn’t. She finally surrendered into Love, the darkness, the moistness, the unknown. All while being held.
This is a poverty of spirit that then unites with others in the pain, the loss, the still transforming, the inadequacies, the misunderstood, and the not seen. And mysteriously, a life here—in this soil of humility, loss, and pain—bears fruit, bears life that it could have never done before.
This is where I find the Child meets me and invites me to return…to re-turn…to turnabout and into a different way—the way where life unfurls forth because trust has happened from a courageous and deep surrender. The kind where surrender isn’t a choice inasmuch as it is a posture of living: a dying that brings forth an unrecognizable existence from what it previously was and with it, recognizable signs of life.