Thinking about the power of gratitude practice and spiritual practices like the examen to curb our negativity bias, aiding us in really letting the positives in our lives sink in, reminds me of this old country music song. Hope it helps you focus on how to take time to “remember” and “not forget” the blessings life gives you, blessings our Christianity spirituality acknowledges as flowing from the lovingkindness of God.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
As I take a detour from Exodus 3, to reflect on what Psalm 103 shows us about who this one named in Exodus 3 as Being and Life itself, the “I Am who I Am, is, I am struck by the command the Psalm gives us:
“1 Bless the Living One, O my soul,
and all that is within me,
bless God’s holy name.
2 Bless the Living One, O my soul,
and do not forget all Their benefits—“
“Forget not” is such a striking phrase. In the powerful book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom, Dr. Rick Hanson explores the ways in which evolutionary tendencies have shaped our brain wiring and spiritual practices help re-wire our brain for greater happiness, contentment, and compassion.
In his book, Hanson explains that at one point in human and animal evolution, focus was wholly on survival. This meant behaving as if food was scarce, since to survive we had to constantly be searching for the next food source. Drought, torrential rain, and other animals who ate the same food as us threatened to remove our food source if we were not careful. Also survival required being on edge, always highly mindful of potential threats, for dangerous predators often roamed nearby that could threaten our ancestors’ lives with no medicine, nurses, or assistive technologies to aid in healing the body from disease or damage.
This created a negativity bias in our brains so that, unless we make a concerted effort, what is stored most readily in our memories are negative words, negative experiences, feelings of threat and anxiety. This is why we can have a dozen wonderful things happen to us, yet that one word of judgment or one experience of rejection can ruin a whole night. It is also why we can have countless happy surprises over the course of a year, yet our one shock to the system which creates fear or sadness we do not expect can cause us to expect danger around every corner.
This negativity bias had benefits in the wilds of the savanna where our ancestors came to consciousness, but Hanson argues, to live whole and full lives in our modern world, we need better ways to cope. In fact, it is such negativity bias which, when unchecked, leads us to so easily fall into prejudiced ways of thinking and acting without realizing it, and contributes toward our choice as a society in moments of fear or uncertainty to choose exclusion and violence against those different than us, rather than paths that bring reconciliation and healing.
In this thought-provoking book, Hanson explains that by choosing to regularly spend time focusing our attention on experiences of goodness, unexpected grace, examples of compassion in action we see or hear about, and positive feelings, we can actually begin to rewire our brains so that this negativity bias does not dictate our responses.
Hanson fleshes out practices from Buddhist spirituality and modern mindfulness research which, when done regularly, can begin to allow us to more fully see the positive, the good, the life-giving, in our own lives which can help us cultivate more joy and compassion every day.
Is it any wonder then that the Psalmist suggests to us if we want to connect with the One revealed to Moses as Yahweh, the Living One, the One Who is, the source of Being and Life itself, we ought to “not forget”. We ought to practice paying attention to the benefits that flow from life and being, which are gifts of the Living One, the great I am whom Moses experienced in this burning bush moment and who Christians see embodied in Jesus’s life.
It is easy and natural if we do not take time to intentionally, mindfully, pay attention to the good gifts that our life brings to us, to fall into this negativity bias and see life only in terms of challenge, loss, heartache, and pain. It is easy to not even recognize the goodness before us each day in the beauty of nature, the strength of our bodies, the warmth of our friends, the love of our partners and family. It is easy to only feel our struggles and not the sources of strength within us and others that make us able to face these challenges with confidence.
Taking time to see, remember, and celebrate these gifts in our lives which Psalm 103 calls the benefits of the great I-Am who guides our days, is essential.
How can we do that?
Some practices which many people find helpful are:
Various types of mindfulness meditation exist. At heart this type of meditation is simply sitting with and paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, and emotions without judgment. As you do this, you will notice both areas of concern but also positive feelings, experiences, and memories
I talk about Ignatian meditation on this blog post: https://progressiveredneckpreacher.wordpress.com/2016/08/09/practices-for-embracing-our-many-sided-lives-examen/
At heart Ignatian meditation, or the examen, is a practice in which you take time every day to sit with the experiences of the day. As you do so, you pay attention to life-giving and positive experiences where you feel the presence of the Living One shining through, noting where you experience them and with whom. Then you notice areas of pain, heartache, and sorrow where you feel far from what is Life-giving, and you ask where, when, and with whom you experience these. As you do so, you reflect on what allows you to get through such experiences.
I have only done this spiritual practice in a limited way, but when I have done so I have been amazed how much I began to notice even on my worst days that were life giving, were gifts, were positive moments.
A gratitude practice is a regular practice – be that daily, weekly, monthly – in which you take time to list what you are grateful for and possibly even thank those ones in your life through whom such gifts come (be they friend, partner, neighbor, coworker, or God) for those gifts.
Some people write lists each day of what they are grateful for, maybe in a journal or on their fridge. I know some people who do this on their social media like Facebook, Google +, or Twitter.
I think some people actually share pictures on Instagram and Facebook as a kind of gratitude practice: they share with others the high points of joy in their day. Then they return at the beginning or end of their day to look at those high points.
Positive psychology research has found that just taking time to note through a gratitude practice 5 or 10 things you have experienced you are legitimately thankful for greatly changes your outlook, giving you a capacity to better recognize blessings and connect with the positive in your life. This makes you more emotionally and spiritually resilient.
These are just a few ways to recognize and celebrate the goodness each day brings, a practice of “Blessing” in which the Psalm invites us to take part. Such practices in able us to see the life-giving parts of our own lives, both when we are experiencing easy and comfortable moments and when we experience difficult ones. These life-giving parts of our life are also where we see God, for if God is I-Am, the One who Is, or the One Who Lives, that means that where life flourishes, God is present.
How do you resist this negativity bias in your life and open yourselves up to the ways the Living One breaks forth throughout your life? Please feel free to comment and let us all know.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Here is a message I gave some years ago, about the life of Christ and its lessons for us. Hope it blesses you.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Luke 2:22-40
22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.”
25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:
29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
30 For my eyes have seen your salvation,
31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”
33 The child’s father and mother marveled at what was said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, 35 so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
36 There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. 38 Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.
39 When Joseph and Mary had done everything required by the Law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee to their own town of Nazareth. 40 And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him.
This reading comes just a short time after the story of Christmas – roughly a week after Jesus is born to Mary, when his parents take him to the Temple, to celebrate his birth and for him to be blessed by the priests who are there. And blessed Jesus is! The old wizened priest Simeon falls down, amazed, to see this tiny child held in Mary’s arms. Anna, an old widow who has served God for years, has her heart leap for joy and cannot stop praising God for the wonder of this little one.
So often, coming after the Christmas celebration, such a story can be for us a way of thinking of how different and wonderful Jesus is. After all, he is the Son of God come to save us. This is a part of why Anna and Simeon turn from there quiet prayers to songs of praise and celebration.
But I cannot help myself from thinking of the joy surrounding seeing other babies blessed in the house of God – of seeing my little nephew Mark at my brother’s home church, when one Easter he awoke with a shriek of surprise as cold water fell on him at his baptism; of when Kat took oil and anointed my god-son Jordan, praying God’s blessing on his life, of when Rebecca and Christina’s god-son was blessed at the church earlier this year.
Though Jesus is unique – God the Son come to earth to save – in a way none else have, there is also a way that Jesus being greeted with these songs of praise when he is brought as a baby to blessed at the temple ought to awaken us to our own blessedness.
So often we can think we are so broken, so hurting, so weak, so sinful, that God is way up there and we are down here. But in Jesus, God showed us – God always comes to us as God with us, God entering into our life. The early Christians liked to say, that what God becomes, God heals.
And so in this little crying baby who is greeted by Anna and Simeon, God has come … in the flesh. In his crying, and his burping, and his diapers, God has come. In skin and bones, and blood beating in a tiny heart, God has come. In vulnerability, so vulnerable he cannot eat or walk without his mother nursing him or carrying him, God comes. In someone who must learn as we all did how to speak, how to crawl, how to walk, how to read, how to dress himself but until he does must have others do it for him, God comes. In Jesus God comes into every aspect of our lives, God comes as the innocent child, God comes as the toddler crawling on dusty floors, God comes as the little boy learning to play, God comes as the young man finding his way. God comes and blesses each of every aspect of our lives.
This means that there is not a part of your life or my life that is not holy in some way. Not a one of us are a mistake, but in a way very similar to Jesus, each of us have entered this world as promised children who can say with the Psalmist in Psalm 139,
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Each of us are works of art, our lives canvasses upon which God can paint the most beautiful of pictures. Each of us are children of God and in us, as in Jesus, God can be made flesh in our lives by us choosing to take each moment that lies ahead of us as a place where we can encounter God and let God’s light shine through us.
In the next several weeks I hope in my sermon series to look at the way different aspects of Jesus’ life shed light on how our own lives can be places where we encounter God every day and also where we let God’s light shine through us in others. But what I want to challenge you with as we enter this time is to embrace the fact that your life is special, that you are a unique child of God, and that you are someone in whom Christ’s light shines most beautifully.
That said, I want to conclude this reflection with the words of Christian writer Marianne Williamson, in her book
A Return to Love, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
As we continue to reflect on what it means to be a continuing Incarnation of Christ, during this season from Christmas Day to Epiphany, I thought I would share a poem I wrote about this theme, “Corpus Christi”. I hope it blesses you!
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Corpus Christi
I lift it up, firm yet pliant, aromatically doughy
hear the rip of it tearing in my hands
and think of the calloused skin
of men toiling under the hot sun
often with little pay
in constant threat,
ever asking themselves:
Will I be sent back as illegal
unwanted
rejected?
despite their long labors
and searching for hope
toiling to plant and harvest the grain that bore this loaf.
As I open my mouth, ready to whisper ancient words
I cannot but think of the body I watched
laying still and quiet
a tangle of cords its shroud
entombed amidst white hospital walls
just as sure as that fated Galilean lay
in rocky borrowed grave
the only sounds surrounding it are
the constant beep of machines
we call life support
which instead of bringing life
simply delay the inevitable
freeing of that one woman’s soul
from a body
transformed from a house of joy
to a stifling prison of pain,
a sound that mingles with
machine-borne labored breaths
which together resound in that room
like water dripping
on stalagmites
deep below Linvern caverns.
“This is my body,” my lips whisper
and I cannot but have my mind transported
to the hills and seas of Uganda
where Idi Amin left bodies
piled in the sun
of little girls
just like that African princess
who is like a daughter to me
whom he thought defective,
and the smoke clouds of Aushwitz,
which rose engulfing all those
whom madmen called unworthy
while good people watched unmoved.
“Broken” I whisper
and think of the man
whose life remains shattered
by one he trusted as a boy
who left scars no , nor time itself, can heal.
“Broken” echoes
as I remember little girls and mothers
hiding for their life
from the ones that left them bruised.
I take the cup, I raise the glass,
and realize
in each of them the Sacred Light burns bright
just as surely as it shined in Mary’s baby boy
and in me.
This is my cup, I hear him whisper as I say his words
poured out in you and many.
As I hear Him, I remember
how often we fail to see.
We say “keep those dirty souls out of our parks”
not letting love win for the likes of them.
We say “send them back”,
forgetting that it is in their eyes,
eyes of the stranger
the broken
and the poor,
that the Savior’s eyes shine back upon us.
We say “they are too far away”
while so many baby girls
fall under tyrant’s tank
and terrorist’s bomb
their fathers likewise
helpless to save them.
And I fall to my knees
broken
remembering
all those I turned away
not seeing
calling crazy, faggot,
wetback, and gimp
heart broken wide,
face wet with tears.
And somehow, somewhere,
in the music of the moment
I hear a whispered reminder
This, broken, is my body.
This one poured out bears my life.
Be my body, broken with the broken,
be my life, poured out to the empty.
Let us lay a table together
in the valley of death
so your cup overflows
with drank of healing
for all my who lie broken
trembling in fear.
As we continue in the 12 Days from Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus to Epiphany, which remembers both the arrival of the Magi (or Wise Ones) to Jesus as a small child and the baptism of Jesus, I thought it would be good to share a poem about the Continuing Incarnation, which is the task of our lives at least for those of us who ascribe to Christian faith.
Incarnation means a taking on a flesh and bone, blood and heart. It is the technical term in theology for the miracle Christians believe happened in the Christmas story: in a unique and complete way, God took of flesh and blood, bone and heart, in the life of the man of Nazareth, Jesus son of Mary and Joseph. Somehow in his life he embodied the life and love of God in a way that endures through the ages, demonstrating in his life, his teachings, his death, and his follower’s later experience of him alive beyond death through an experience they called “resurrection” who God is for each of us and who we all can be.
Yet far from pointing to some special uniqueness of Jesus, this experience of Incarnation is a call for each of us to in our own way join that man Jesus in the journey of Incarnation. We, too, can become ones in whose live the guiding lovingkindness which can shape our days, which Christians call “God”, can take on flesh and blood, bone and heart. By living out this same lovingkindness in our own incomplete way we too can become embodiments of the grace and justice which Jesus revealed in his life: grace as the lovingkindness which surrounds every life freely, before and besides anything good or bad we can do, which calls all people and all creation into an embrace of loving acceptance. Lovingkindness also as the way in which we are called to treat ourselves, other people, and all living things. And justice which is, as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, a tearing down in our own life every barrier we encounter within ourselves, our relationships, our life together in our community to that lovingkindness being fully expressed to ourselves, to other people of all types, to all living things in the web of life which surrounds us.
St. Paul called this ongoing Incarnation being “the Body of Christ”.
Interestingly enough, this concept does not just exist in Christianity. In Buddhism, we see this in the promise in some strains of Buddhism that some can develop a “Buddha mind”, an enlightened awareness of the interconnectedness of all of life which flows forth into compassion. In Tibetan Buddhism the ultimate expression of this is the image of the bodhisattva, the one who discovers enlightenment yet chooses not to leave the mortal realm fully but reach back in various ways to help those stuck in life in this world find similar spiritual freedom.
This exists also in Islam, and is beautifully expressed in the poem of Muslim mystic, Rumi, called “The Body is Like Mary”. May its words draw you more deeply into asking the question of how you can continue to allow God to put on flesh and blood through your life.
“The body is like Mary and each of us has a Jesus inside.
Who is not in labour, holy labour?
Every creature is.
See the value of true art when the earth or a soul is in the mood to create beauty,
for the witness might then for a moment know beyond
any doubt, God is really there within,
so innocently drawing life from us with Her umbilical universe,
though also needing to be born, yes God also needs to be born, birth from a hand’s loving touch, birth from a song breathing life into this world.
The body is like Mary, and each of us, each of us, has a Christ within.”
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Luke 1
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[b]29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[c] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[d] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
As we come to Christmas day, I can’t help but think of the beauty of this rich story and its image of mother Mary, child Jesus, father Joseph. I am struck too, by the point I recently heard my pastor, Rev. David Mateo, make about the Christmas story. He said that often we think of the story in terms of how great and wonderful Jesus is, finding his star and following it. But perhaps we need to see ourselves in this story, asking what star lies ahead of us that, if we follow, we can find our own worth.
I am helped by this analogy by recently having heard the beautiful folk/bluegrass rendering of Psalm 131 by bluegrass singer & songwriter and sometimes theologian Charles Pettee:
This song joins this beautiful Hebrew Psalm in inviting us to imagine ourselves as a child cradled in God’s arms as if God is our mother, quiet and trusting. In a way, it pictures us becoming the Christ Child with God the loving mother Mary was to Jesus.
To me this beautifully pictures the theological idea about which Count Zinzendorf of the Moravians wrote. Jurgen Moltmann, in his book, The Source of Life, writes of Zinzendorf’s contribution:
“If the experiences of the Holy Spirit are grasped as being a `rebirth’ or a `being born anew’, this suggests an image for the Holy Spirit which was quite familiar in the early years of Christianity, especially in Syria, but got lost in the patriarchal empire of Rome: the image of the mother. If believers are `born’ of the Holy Spirit, then we have to think of the Spirit as the `mother’ of believers, and in this sense as a feminine Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is the Comforter, as the Gospel of John understands the Paraclete to be, then she comforts `as a mother comforts’ (cf. John 14.26 with Isa 66.13). In this case the Spirit is the motherly comforter of her children. Linguistically this brings out the feminine form of Yahweh’s ruach in Hebrew. Spirit is feminine in Hebrew, neuter in Greek, and masculine in Latin and German.
“The famous Fifty Homilies of Makarios (Symeon) come from the sphere of the early Syrian church. For the two reasons we have mentioned, `Makarios’ talked about `the motherly ministry of the Holy Spirit’. In the seventeenth century, Gottfried Arnold translated these testimonies of Syrian Orthodox spirituality into German, and they were widely read in the early years of Pietism. John Wesley was fascinated by `Macarius the Egyptian’. In Halle, August Hermann Francke took over `Makarios” ideas about the feminine character of the Holy Spirit, and for Count Zinzendorf this perception came as a kind of revelation. In 117411, when the community of the Moravian Brethren was founded in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Zinzendorf proclaimed `the motherly ministry of the Holy Spirit’ as a community doctrine for the Brethren. He knew very well what he was doing, for he wrote later: `It was improper that the motherly ministry of the Holy Spirit should have been disclosed to the sisters not by a sister but by me.’
“As a vivid, pictorial way of explaining the divine Tri-unity, Zinzendorf liked to use the image of the family, `since the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is our true Father and the Spirit of Jesus Christ is our true Mother, because the Son of the living God is our true Brother’. `The Father must love us, and can do no other; the Mother must guide us through the world and can do no other; the Son, our brother, must love souls as his own soul, as the body of his body, because we are flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone, and he can do no other’ (see also my book The Spirit of Life, pp.158-9). Zinzendorf then also describes the influence of the Spirit on the soul in romantic terms of great tenderness. And in a German hymn, Johann Jacob Schutz describes the leadings of the Spirit similarly as a guiding `with motherly hand’.
“It is right and good that contemporary feminist theology should have discovered the `femininity of the Holy Spirit’ and reinterpreted it, and it is quite out of place and a sign of ignorance when official church organs in Germany believe they can scent heresy in this discovery.
“Of course the picture of the family of God Father, God Mother and God Child is no more than an image for the God to whom no image can approximate. But it is much better than the ancient patriarchal picture of God the Father with two hands, the Son and the Spirit. 
For there God is a solitary, ruling and determining subject, whereas here the Tri-unity is a wonderful community. There the reflection of the triune God is a hierarchical church. Here the reflection of the triune God is a community of women and men without privileges, a community of free and equal people, sisters and brothers. For the building of this new congregational structure, the motherly ministry of the Spirit, and the Tri-unity as a community, are important”.
Zinzendorf’s invitation to envision the Holy Spirit as our mother, from whom we are being born, then held, nurtured, and brought to full flowering as Jesus was by Mary; and Jesus as our big brother protecting, helping, companioning, and guiding us; together with the Father as our own father, is a powerful call to us on Christmas.
As mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart once wrote, “We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth which God the Father has borne and never ceases to bear in all eternity… But if it takes not place in me, what avails it? Everything lies in this, that it should take place in me. “
Discovering ourselves as ones born of God into this world, full of purpose and meaning, is I think ultimately an often forgotten lesson of the Christmas story.
What would it look like if you saw yourself as loved, embraced by God? As one with a star ahead of your own life, leading you on to, in your own small way, join Jesus in shaping our world for beauty and healing? In seeing yourself as the Gospels called Jesus as God’s Child, one whom whom God loves unreservedly, one deserving of love, in whom God takes delight simply because you are, and who deserves delight?
For me, two pieces of spiritual practice really picture personally what this looks like.
One is the old Gospel home I often sing with my patients on my hospice line, “Blessed Assurance”:
“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine
O what a foretaste of glory divine
Heir of salvation, purchase of God
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood
“This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
“Perfect submission, all is at rest
I in my Savior am happy and blessed
Watching and waiting, looking above
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love
“This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long
This is my story, this is my song
Praising my Savior all the day long”
Also it I picture it in my own way in a repeated prayer I use in my chaplain ministry:
“Oh God, who is nearer to us than the breath in our lungs or the warmth of the sun on our skin that refreshes us from the cold winter days,
Your word to us is love
It is your love that births us into this world
And to your love we all one day, inevitably, will return
And it is that same love that gives us strength to stand in all of our days
In days of wonder and joy which nearly floor us with gratitude and delight
In days of sorrow, heart, and pain that make our knees knock and legs tremble
And every kind of day between
When we cannot stand, it is that same love that lifts us up and carries us
As a child in their mother’s arms
So your love encircles us and all of our days
As the sun and stars encircle the earth.
Amen”
May you experience this embrace of love, your place in the Christmas story, this Christmas and all your days.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Luke 1
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[b]29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[c] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[d] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
An aspect of the Christmas story that I have to admit is a bit vexing to me, is the whole part about the virgin birth. My own tradition, the United Church of Christ, doesn’t call for Christians to believe or not believe anything in particular about Jesus’ mother’s sex life.
Our statement of faith says:
“We believe in you, O God, Eternal Spirit, God of our Savior Jesus Christ and our God, and to your deeds we testify:
You call the worlds into being, create persons in your own image,and set before each one the ways of life and death.
You seek in holy love to save all people from aimlessness and sin.
You judge people and nations by your righteous will declared through prophets and apostles.
In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Savior, you have come to us and shared our common lot, conquering sin and death and reconciling the world to yourself.
You bestow upon us your Holy Spirit, creating and renewing the church of Jesus Christ, binding in covenant faithful people of all ages, tongues, and races.
You call us into your church to accept the cost and joy of discipleship, to be your servants in the service of others, to proclaim the gospel to all the world and resist the powers of evil,to share in Christ’s baptism and eat at his table, to join him in his passion and victory.
You promise to all who trust you forgiveness of sins and fullness of grace, courage in the struggle for justice and peace, your presence in trial and rejoicing, and eternal life in your realm which has no end.
Blessing and honor, glory and power be unto you.
Amen.”
As you can see, there is no dotted line to sign in my tradition about whether or not Mary really had not had sex before or after getting pregnant with Jesus, let alone if Jesus was conceived by some miracle of God without Joseph (or some other man) being God’s instrument in it happening just as we each are conceived — through a miracle of God involving not just our mother but also some biological father.
This is a helpful thing for me. Though I grew up believing very firmly that through a miracle of divine intervention Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb without a man being brought into the picture – after all, if God can create the world out of nothing in six days, how hard can making one human being be! – like most progressive Christians, I am now deeply disinterested in the question of what sex life Mary did or did not have.
This fact that in the United Church of Christ we don’t have to ponder too deeply the sex life of Jesus’ mother in some ways sets us apart from many other Christian communions. Many, such as the Episcopal Church, use the Nicene or Apostle’s Creed as their statement of faith. These statements, and many denominational statements of faith modeled after them, ask church members to confess they believe in a Jesus who was born of a Virgin, Mary.
Even with this freedom, one thing does bother me in our progressive Christian circles: often when we approach Christmas, our focus is upon what we don’t believe. We focus on how difficult it is to hold up the idea of virginal conception in a scientific worldview. We talk about how 
many problems it creates in our view of women to believe in this virgin conception. We will talk about how the Hebrew text of Isaiah from which Matthew and Luke shape their story doesn’t even use the Hebrew word for virgin, but instead young woman. We point out how clearly Isaiah’s words refer in context not to some virgin but to the young bride of a ruler in Isaiah’s day who would conceive in the average way a child whose birth portended hope for the nation.
All good points, I guess. But not really the point.
These all are about what either we don’t believe or we do not think is necessary to believe. The fact is, though, literal or not, Matthew and Luke masterfully wove stories depicting Jesus’ birth in terms of virgin conception. Why?
I want to make a stab at some lessons this story teaches us which remain true and life-giving even if, as many progressive Christians do, we do not believe it matters whether or not Mary had an active sex life or not. In fact, these lessons remain true even if we believe she did conceive Jesus through an active sex life and would also be just as true if she was literally a virgin.
First, this story shows us the path that trumps empire. Empire is a term used for the systems of oppression by which we use force, control, to lift up a small group of people while pushing down many others. In Jesus’ day this was literally done by an emperor with an empire, the Roman Caesar. His wealth and power came through crushing under the militaristic boot average people throughout the world. One quote about the Roman empire said that they lay waste to a place, creating a desolation, and call it peace.
In our day and age, we have our own systems we create which prop up a small group of people in ways that crush under the heel of the system those who do not fit that mold. Structures of white supremacy that have lingered largely unchanged in our society push down and marginalize people of color. Patriarchy has a deep hold on our society, disempowering women and also in important ways damaging children and even men. The commercialism of our capitalist society again also benefits only a small portion of our population, leaving others in a rat race to just keep up.
To me this way of empire is depicted well by the folk song “the Crow on the Cradle”:
“The sheep’s in the meadow
The cow’s in the corn
Now is the time for a child to be born
He’ll laugh at the moon
And cry for the sun
And if it’s a boy he’ll carry a gun
Sang the crow on the cradle
And if it should be that this baby’s a girl
Never you mind if her hair doesn’t curl
With rings on her fingers
And bells on her toes
And a bomber above her wherever she goes
Sang the crow on the cradle
The crow on the cradle
The black and the white
Somebody’s baby is born for a fight
The crow on the cradle
The white and the black
Somebody’s baby is not coming back
Sang the crow on the cradle
Your mother and father will sweat and they’ll save
To build you a coffin and dig you a grave
Hush-a-bye little one, never you weep
For we’ve got a toy that can put you to sleep
Sang the crow on the cradle
Bring me my gun, and I’ll shoot that bird dead
That’s what your mother and father once said
The crow on the cradle, what can we do
Ah, this is a thing that I’ll leave up to you
Sang the crow on the cradle
Sang the crow on the cradle”
Jesus’ teachings and example model a different way than both systems. He teaches us to lay aside violence and vengefulness, embracing a radical commitment to building bridges across the divide. He encourages us to live simply, giving generously to those around us. He encourages a path not of acquisition but servanthood. He models radical welcome and inclusion in his table fellowship.
In the ancient world, stories of virgin births were not rare. In Buddhist circles, there are multiple accounts of Siddhartha Gautama’s birth in which he is born to a virgin as a sign he will become the Buddha. In the Roman Empire, various emperors are said to be born of a virgin and one of the Roman gods. In almost all of the various virgin birth stories this is a coded way of using story to proclaim the way of life and pronouncements of the figure born miraculously are authoritative. They are the ones who show the way to the blessed future for which we are made.
Ultimately, just as the book of Revelation is a book which in a coded way pokes at the way of the warmongering Roman empire, suggesting instead the path to a lasting future is through the example of the peace-making Jesus, so the virgin birth story is a profound political statement. It suggests the way ahead for us is not through the empire’s crushing of the enemy, the outcast, or the forgotten but instead through living out the example and teachings of Jesus which embody peacemaking, simplicity, love of neighbor, love of enemy, forgiveness, radical servanthood. These choices are the pathway to healing and true life, not just for us but for the community as a whole.
To me this alternate path of Jesus, when lived out in community, is beautifully pictured by the folk song “Sing John Ball”:
“Who’ll be the lady, who will be the lord
When we are ruled by the love of one another
Who’ll be the lady, who will be the lord
In the life that is coming in the morning
Chorus
Sing, John Ball and tell it to them all
Long live the day that is dawning
And I’ll crow like a cock, I’ll carol like a lark
For the life that is coming in the morning
Eve is the lady, Adam is the lord
When we are ruled by the love of one another
Eve is the lady, Adam is the lord
In the life that is coming in the morning
Chorus…
All shall be ruled by fellowship I say
All shall be ruled by the love of one another
All shall be ruled by fellowship I say
In the life that is coming in the morning
Chorus…
Labour and spin for fellowship I say
Labour and spin for the love of one another
Labour and spin for fellowship I say
And the life that is coming in the morning
Chorus…2x “
A second meaning of the virgin birth story is the blessing of our bodies. God is pictured coming to earth in a body like ours, through a woman’s body. Flesh and bones and blood. This suggests that no longer ought we to look for God as far off, distant, high up in the sky. Instead in the stuff of life itself – our own bodies, the bodies of those around us, our every day life – God is present. Our eating, drinking, sleeping, ironically sex and love, are holy. Friendship, family, romance, is sacred. Work and sleep, recreation and service to others, neighborliness, and our own neighborhood are holy places.
Peter Mayer pictures this so well in his song “Holy Now”:
“When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle
Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done
This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now “
A final meaning of the Virgin birth story is a call to recognize and care for women and children. While studying up on Matthew’s retelling of the coming of the Magi for an Advent Bible study I was helping leading at the church I attend in Chapel Hill, I came on this powerful quote:
“Frankincense and myrrh have been used for medicinal purposes for over 5,000 years in places like India and Saudi Arabia. I do not pretend to know anything about their effectiveness. There are several websites that you can find with articles extolling the virtues of these ancient oils and resins. What you and I think about their effectiveness in healing though, is inconsequential. What seems clear is that men from the East might have understood these two gifts to have medicinal value.
“Mary gave birth to a son. Though we often sing “Silent Night,” anyone that has been anywhere near the birth of a child knows that there is nothing silent about the experience. Giving birth is a messy and dangerous. Today a mother dies in childbirth once every two minutes. In many parts of the world, it is the most dangerous thing a woman can do. According to the Lukan account, Mary gave birth in a stable, surrounded by animals, with no midwife. She gave birth in what we would be considered, even then, deplorable conditions. I’ve written before that the unnamed miracle of Christmas is that Mary survived.
What I have not noticed before this year, is that the reason she survived might have come in the gifts presented to Jesus by the magi.
“To a modern reader, the gifts of the Magi seem strange and impractical. To explain these peculiar gifts, many have placed dubious symbolic meanings on them. Instead, I feel it much more likely that these gifts were extremely practical. Notice that Matthew says that the magi “Saw the child with Mary his mother, and then knelt down…”. These gifts might have saved Mary, and indirectly Jesus himself.
“We would be good to take note that Mary’s “Baby Shower” was an act of valuing the life of a woman. Though Mary gets the short end of the stick through much of the book of Matthew, this act of gift-giving is a reminder of how important a mother is to a child.
“Like the Magi so long ago, we may pay homage to the newborn King by making sure his mother survives.”
The call of the Virgin birth story is a call for us to recognize in every child that is born a sacred worth, for however a child is conceived it comes as a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is a call for us to recognize in every woman a bearer of God, just as Mary bore God to the world, no matter her sex life. And to do this we need to work to build communities in which women’s rights, voices, and health are prized and they are respected. We need to build a world in which every child, at every stage of life – from day one to the time they lay on a hospice service like where I serve as a chaplain in their autumn years – are honored and respected. Recognizing this sacred worth of all persons, especially children and women, is key to the Christmas story.
I would love to hear from you what meaning you derive from the story of the Virgin Birth, whether you take it literally or, as I do, as a deep and abiding symbol.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
Luke 1
26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, 27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”[b]29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”[c] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born[d] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. 36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.
This morning, during my time of meditating while taking my dog Riversong on a hike up the Duke Forest trail, I was drawn to Gabriel’s words to Mary, “Do not be afraid, Mary”.
These words struck me in a poignant way because right now has been a time of facing into fears.
Personally, the last year involved fear in ways that feeling became woven into the fabric of daily life. The autumn before the new year, my wife of twelve years passed. Everything after that felt like a new life – learning to live alone again in my apartment. Learning who I was, on my own, without a partner. Learning to rebuild friendships, since (as I discovered) the sort of friendships you engage in as a single person are so very different than the friends, who are often in couples as well, you make when married or partnered. Then there was entering the world of dating again, in which fears haunted me: of opening up to another, trusting them with my heart and my body, trusting them with my life and its stories, of being rejected or abandoned. I had fears all around me. Recently I moved into a new home, my first home that is just mine since Katharine passed, and following my first relationship since her passing ending in a very painful way, begun to explore dating and romance again. In both experiences, fear was right beside me.
There is also fear in the air in our communities. This past election was about fear – fear of ISIS, fear of immigrants, fear of new ideas. It led to the election of a man whom we all hope will not be the demagogue he has presented himself to be in the election season, but 
so far seems intent on being a president who runs our country on fear of the other. The national and even the state politics here in NC have had fear at the heart of their outcome. My queer friends are afraid of their rights being further infringed on by a state legislature that does not acknowledge their full humanity and a new administration in Washington full of people who deny sexual orientation and gender identity as characteristics worthy of considering in protecting people from discrimination and hate crimes. Friends who are people of color face fears related to the very racist voter suppression laws here in NC, with a legislature unwilling to sit down with leaders of the black community such as Rev. Dr. William Barber of the NAACP to hear their needs. It is no wonder they fear. Here in Durham, walls were graffitied the day after the last election with hate speech directed at people of color, threatening them. I attend a bilingual worship service at the church where I am a member in Chapel Hill and, there, I hear the voices of Latino immigrants every week as our pastor, David Mateo, invites folks to tell their stories as a part of the worship service. In that setting, I hear each Sunday stories about the fears immigrants are facing right now, as language of mass deportations and building walls on our borders paint them, good-hearted hard-working people of faith, as if they are enemies to be feared. And I have good friends who work with the EPA, who are afraid the hiring of anti-science and anti-environmentalist politicians into places of power over the EPA and related departments by the incoming Trump administration will mean both the loss of their job but also irreparable harm to our environment.
Folks, there are real, legitimate reasons to feel fear.
And yet this morning as I meditate I cannot but hear the words of Gabriel to Mary echoing in my heart as I listen to the rustle of leaves in the morning wind and the call of birds – “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God”. Or, as some older translations put it, “Fear not”.
I do not think this means to ignore our legitimate warning bells in our hearts that say “danger”, which tell me to be careful with my heart as I open to others lest I or they get hurt, that tell me to be mindful of the challenges ahead of me in living single again in a new city, or even our feelings of danger in this changing climate in our communities which call us from deep within to be mindful, to be ready, to be aware.
Yet how we handle such feelings is what makes the difference.
Our natural response to fear can be to draw on what the book Wired for Love calls our primitives, emotional-laden ready-made responses tied into what is called our “lizard brain”, the part of our brain wiring we hold in common with animals that act on nearly pure instinct. The response wired into us in that part of who we are is three-fold: to fight, to flee, or to freeze.
In the animal world, you see these responses in the animal that, when cornered, will attack before you can attack them back. That is fight in action. You can see flight any time you come upon deer hiking in the woods. At the tiniest sound, their ears perk up and, like the wind, they run with all swiftness as far away as possible. And freeze is what we called “playing possum” growing up: to lay still, quiet, as if dead so as not to be seen. These three responses are wired into our brains and, depending on a mix of brain wiring and experiences with crises over the years, we prefer one to the other.
In the book Buddha’s Brain, Rick Hanson suggests that a part of the purpose of spiritual practice is to help us learn how to retrain our brain, to embrace responses beyond these pure primitives. Other parts of who we are, based on more evolved response systems in our brain, can help us tap into what Wired for Love calls our ambassadors, tendencies which are wired into us as instincts at caring for others, building community, nurturing, resolving differences. These tendencies are what allow us to have the instinct to care for and nurture a baby, help someone recover when sick, seek peace rather than argument. These responses are a part of one response to fear which counselors have begun to discuss not grounded in the lizard brain of instinctive knee-jerk reaction called “tend and befriend”.
Such responses pay attention to our feelings of fear, of danger, but choose to embrace those feelings as ways to pay more attention to caring for ourselves and caring for others. To choose to lean into the pain and danger as another opportunity to open up to others, to life itself.
For me, this is the heart of the call “Do not be afraid, for you have found favor with God”. Each of us have upon us the Holy Spirit too, just as Mary. Each of us have the potential for something life-giving, holy, and healing to be birthed in us and also through us to others and this world.
When that happens, we live out the story of Advent and Christmas, becoming vessels for God, becoming instruments of God’s mending presence in the world.
So I am challenged this morning, after my hike, to face into and feel the fear all around me, but not let it consume me. Rather, as the Dalai Lama said that in his meditations he takes the pain of himself, of his Tibetan people who were persecuted by China, and of the Chinese people and transforms it to compassion to all three, so we can take our feelings of fear and transform them into a deep openness to life and others, which bears in mind our and other’s danger as a cause for reaching out, for standing in each other’s corners, for being friend and advocate.
As I think about this call deep in my soul, I cannot but think of two songs, which I share in passing. May they invite you to embrace this call of Advent.
Your progressive redneck preacher,
Micah
All my life
Been running from a pain in me
A feeling I don’t understand
Holding me down
So rain on me
Underwater
All I am, getting harder
A heavy weight
I carry around
Today
I don’t have to fall apart
I don’t have to be afraid
I don’t have to let the damage
Consume me,
My shadow see through me
‘Cause fear in itself
Will reel you in and spit you out
Over and over again
Believe in yourself
And you will walk
Now, fear in itself
Will use you up and break you down
Like you were never enough
Yeah, I used to fall, now I get back up.
I’m up here
I’m looking at the way down there
I’m staring through the I don’t care
It’s staring back at me
The beauty is
I’m learning how to face my beast
Starting now to find some peace
Set myself free, yeah
Today
I don’t have to fall apart
I don’t have to be afraid
I don’t have to let the damage consume me
My shadow see through me
‘Cause fear in itself
Will reel you in and spit you out
Over and over again
Believe in yourself
And you will walk
And now, fear in itself
Will use you up and break you down
Like you were never enough
I used to fall but now I get back up
I’m moving on
Oh God just move on
Today
I don’t have to fall apart
I don’t have to be afraid
Get back up
Get up
Feel it, fear, wow
And now fear, fear in itself can use you up
And then breaks you down
You’re never enough
And I used to fall
Breathe
Ask for more
If you’re bitter still
Ask him to help you carry on
the Universe, she’s wounded
she’s got bruises on her feet
I sat down like I always did,
and tried to calm her down
I sent her my warmth and my silence
and all she sends me back is rain . . . rain
the Universe, she’s wounded
but she’s still got infinity ahead of her
she’s still got you and me
and everybody says that she’s beautiful
the Universe, she’s dancing now
they got her lit up, lit up on the moon
they got stars doing cartwheels, all the nebulas on the tune
and the Universe, she’s whispering so softly I can hear all
the croaking insects, all the taxicabs, all the bum’s spent change
all the boys playing ball in the alleyways
they’re just folds in her dress
the Universe, she’s wounded
but she’s still got infinity ahead of her
she’s still got you and me
and everybody says that she’s beautiful
and everybody says . . .
(ron scott)
progressiveredneckpreacher 