Children of Wonder
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our ancestors.”
just as he promised our ancestors.”
*************
Dear Kate,
The Gospel of Luke begins with two jokes, both kinda sick.
One about an old maid, Elizabeth, married but as if she was not, for she wasn't able to give birth to any child, which at the time would always be her problem before being her husband's, and not of the biological kind but morally speaking. Which is to say maybe she's a whore. Maybe. Very probably, people whispered, not infrequently in front of her and everyone else, without words, the worst kind of shaming, embedded in culture, imbued with unquestionable, unassailable assumptions about a person and how things work, how God acts, how history plays out.
The other joke edges on being a farce, a case of mistaken identity, an unmarried virgin "overshadowed" by "the power of the Most High" and thus conceived. Like science fiction written by Shakespeare, tragic, comic, and you can't tell the magic in the mix. One thing for sure, if Elizabeth was a dead woman long ago for being matrimonially lifeless, Mary was asking to be killed for being so vestally lively before the world qualified her joy with their imperial go-head.
Macabre humor. We can smell blood already. Stories so blatantly subversive to undermine what we know to be true, upheld since time immemorial by the force of tyrants that are our pride, our will to control, our loyalty to fate, that they can only end in violence. The child who wonders must be killed. Things must go back to normal.
I wonder about the wonder child this Christmas.
I wonder how He will be killed yet again for ushering in abnormalities unwanted, unwelcome, unpleasant to those of us who know what human progress is and are mighty pissed by our efforts aborted. Anything that kills our child of labor must be killed. The child we conceived with no help of "the power from the Most High" must survive and thrive at all costs. Let us have our ways and maybe, just maybe, we will let the bastard child stay too, at the periphery of our religiosity, in that dollar-store Nativity scene, behind church walls.
We don't want no sick jokes, no no. We are all straight-faced about making things work for humankind. Vaccine? Now, that works. Money from the government? Yes, please (and about time too). We all need to rise up to the game and buckle up for the wild ride, be kind, be calm, or whatever slogan necessary to stay focused at the light---the light at the end of our tunnel.
What light? What tunnel? It hardly matters our metaphors are all empty, Biblical without the Bible, stolen and exhausted for our purpose. Just as it matters none that 2020 is a joke not half as sick as the two told at the beginning of Luke: I wouldn't want to be shamed for life, even killed, for something I didn't do and can't control, but that is the two ladies' problem, one that I can't relate two thousand years away. Sunday School material, not relevant to our here and now. This is real life, a "pandemic" for heaven's sake, people are dying, we are all lonely and hopeless and hungry and just generally having not a clue which fingernail we should bite off next. We have no time for funny little stories.
I wonder about the wonder child this Christmas.
Yours, Alex
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