Ultimate Mystery

Our Sunday school teacher sent an amazing quotation by Frederick Buechner. So here is one more startling look at the Incarnation.

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it in and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed -- as a matter of cold, hard fact -- all it's cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word become flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not touching. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God ... who for us and for our salvation," as the Nicene Creed puts it, "came down from heaven."

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast. --by Frederick Buechner

My suitcases are packed and I'll leave soon for the airport, bound for Washington DC. I'm excited about these coming days with our daughters, but I hate to leave Chuck home alone. (He's pretty resourceful.)

Our friend with heart bypass surgery is now recovering at home. He's extremely weak, but essentially pain-free.

Postings here might be irregular for the next few days. I'm always so grateful for your prayers and care.

Carol