Palms before my feet

The title of this post refers to a poem written by GK Chesterton titled The Donkey. It is a well known poem written by the great thinker from the perspective of the donkey upon which Christ rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. The donkey of the poem finds himself to be "With monstrous head and sickening cry, And ears like errant wings." He describes his birth in previous stanzas as that moment when all the earth must have been in complete disorder."Some moment when the moon was blood, Then surely I was born," he says. Needless to say that he has such a negative view of himself. Poor guy. He is even treated poorly by human beings with such disdain. It's almost as if he understands why though. It's almost warranted even according to him. Yet, even he has an hour. "One far fierce hour and sweet." It is that moment when the maker of Heaven and the Universe chooses him and they enter into Jerusalem together. When there are psalms before his feet.

There are pages and pages written by scholars to unwrap this beautiful poem so I don't claim here to offer any expert analysis. However, I do want to share the thoughts that well my mind and heart. I wonder who this donkey might be and more so what it might take to be him. Allegorically, I think that we are this donkey in one sense. I, and perhaps we all, are this donkey in the sense that we, alone and in and of ourselves, have no value. We are nothing. Dust. Mortal. Helpless. Sinful. Twisted. Creatures. We pass into this world with no choice to do so and leave in the same way. Yet, unlike the donkey we pretend. We pretend that we are special. We pretend that we have value far surpassing what we might. We pretend we are important. We immerse ourselves in our vain fancies; find solace only in pleasures and avoiding all pain and inconvenience.

Yet, Chesterton's donkey finds his value only in Christ. That is his moment. When Christ guides him into the city of Jerusalem. When he bears Christ. In that sense, that is also how we have value. We are valuable only in that we are creatures of the One Creator. We are lovingly fashioned to be in His image. We like the donkey are chosen for task but that task can only be done by bearing Christ. Without him, we risk the vain delusion of our value and distraction from our call. As a woman, I find myself called to the life of wife and mother. When I find myself distracted from this call, I find my tasks burdensome. I find that my time should be spent doing other things rather than those things required of me. We all become this way without Christ; we become spiritual vagabonds. We become like those who welcomed Christ into the city only to leave him at the Cross. 

This aspect of Christ's entry into Jerusalem always astonished me. How can one join in on the praises of Christ as King only to demand his crucifixion less than a week later? When I consider this question  further though, I realize that question can be asked of me. I cling to my God in despair and abandon him when it is hard. When my gaze turns upon the world and when I feel the burn of exercising my faith, I let his hand slip out of my own. I reap the joy of Easter but did I suffer the whip of the agony? 

Our Advent Gifts for Christ Child Activity

So, since Ian has turned 3 years old, I have been trying to slowly encourage him to start learning his prayers. In September, we used the first 8 days of the month in anticipation of the Nativity of the Blessed Mother to teach him the Hail Mary. I created a paper birthday cake onto which we placed a candle every day Ian (and Zelie) would recite their prayers. It was a hit! On the 8th, we baked a cake together, frosted it, and sung happy birthday to our Blessed Mother!

Though he has only learned the first half of the prayer, this has made me very ambitious for the Advent Season! Harnessing this energy and enthusiasm, I thought I might teach him the Our Father. It was pretty successful. I am so proud of them. For Advent, we created a list of mainly clothing items that little baby Jesus would need when he is born on Christmas. I adapted this from an a similar activity we would do as children in our home growing up.

This is what it looked like by Christmas (with a few missing stars)

We created the list together, sort of. The attention span of a 3 and 2 year old only allowed them to contribute socks and candy canes but you know, they got the gist.  Next, I wrote the items onto a piece of poster paper and taped it up on our wall. The deal was that during the Advent season, every time they would complete an Our Father, or half of one in the case of Zelie, they would receive a star. To keep their gifts for Jesus distinct, I used different colors to for each of them. Ian was gold and Zelie was pink. (They chose their own colors! Didn't reinforce any gender stereotypes!) Five stars would result in the completion of an item. This was a little hard of Zelie to grasp but Ian got it, I think. He was so excited that even after Christmas, he was wanting to make things of Jesus. Mainly a suit. He seemed to think that it was very important that the newborn Jesus have a suit.

He loved looking at the chart to see all the gifts they had created for Baby Jesus. Of course, they had their "I-refuse" days here and there but overall they had a lot of fun with it.

I got all my supplies from DollarTree. All I needed to create this simple Advent activity was:
Black poster paper
Metallic Markers (to create the chalk writing effect)
Star stickers
Pencil

Let me know what you think and if there are any activities you use to help your little ones learn their prayers!

Mystery of this water and wine

Today, I finally made it to weekday mass. 'Finally' meaning for the first time since we've had our newest little one, Chiara Ann. Due to a number of cultural formalities and physical limitations, I was putting off starting to go. However, now with a nanny that arrives around 6:15, I can go and come back just before the kids begin to wake up! Providence, surely, is on my side here. But I digress.

Maybe because of this hiatus in being able to go to mass by myself, my ears and especially heart were ultra sensitive today, I feel. The words of the celebrant rung more sharply in my mind, over and over, long after he spoke them. Yet, these words rang especially loud and long today:

By the mystery of the water and wine, may we come to share in the 
divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.

How especially beautiful these words are during this time of year. For some of us, we dragged through these last couple weeks of the year and for others the spirit of the season carried us over the expected hump of the year end only to have a delayed release come January. In the wisdom of our faith, these words can serve us in a special way whichever season we find ourselves in, both figurative and literal.

Their scriptural foundation in both the New and Old Testament, brings to life their true brilliance and the wisdom that inspired its inclusion into the liturgy.

By the mystery of this water and wine           2 Macc. 15:39; John 19:34

may we come to share in the divinity of Christ          Rom. 5:2; 2 Pet. 1:4
who humbled himself to share in our humanity.                       Phil. 2:8

Spoken during the preparation of the gifts, they are swollen with anticipation and fulfillment.They teach us to remember the mystery of the Incarnation, Christ becoming man, the original Christmas miracle (ha-ha) alongside the suffering that awaits this newborn child.

The divine world meets the human world. Water and wine serve to provide such incredible depth and color (almost literally) to these words. Water, pure and holy, not made by man but provided for him from the earth through creation itself, meets wine, the product of man's sweat and toil, is the blood of our humanity. Though mingled not confused. Christ is this mystery.

 It is in the mystery of the body- the human body- of Christ that we touch the divine world, the divine power we cannot touch any other way. We touch the divine only because he has shared in our humanity. The Eucharist therefore, brings us to Heaven and allows us to share in the same mystery that IS Christ.

What does this mean then? Well, other than the awesomeness that we are now a part of in our rebirth through baptism and participation in Eucharist....well...it means a lot more!

It means that our bodies (and minds) are thus elevated. My body means more because of Christ than it would have ever without him. (Not to say that it didn't matter before or outside of Christ because of course as made by God it means a great deal.) As a temple of the Spirit, it is as was Christ's body, a point from which we can/should to draw others to God. 

Celebrating the Birth of the Poor

Rather than fade into the distinct and loud ringing Christmas carols (fa la la la la...), I find myself pondering, still wondering; the Nativity has intensified becoming more tangible to my senses. I smell the hay in the manger and feel the dampness of the stable air: the birthplace of the Lord of Heaven, the Universe and the Word that created all things. My mind hugs the barn houses and stables.

It really wasn't a pleasant place. It really really wasn't. But, somehow, God found it perfect for the beginning of the story that would change the course of history both of time and salvation. It is here, in this dark, cold, damp and harsh place that a small helpless child born to reign all Good things is born.

My heart has pondered the words which I believe belong to Pope Francis in the first couple weeks of this last year. I am paraphrasing here since I have searched high and low for this quote and could not find it.

"The mystery of Christmas is wrapped up in this: 

that we should celebrate the birth of the poor." 

What a strange thing for our Pope Frankie to say. I mean, poverty is a problem. It is a problem that so many individuals, scientists, humanitarians, social justice workers try to eradicate. It is a "fate" and circumstance that most of us try to avoid like the plague. In fact, our society is so obsessed with financial stability that we put off many of life's milestones to avoid "being poor" like buying a home or having a child. Celebrating such a state seems to imply a sense of desire for it.

What the bizzaro is this man (holy man) talking about? Is it merely a statement suggesting compassion for those less fortunate than ourselves? Is he just encouraging our engagement in the corporal works of mercy that any "good" catholic should be? Yes, as you guessed by the sizable amount of writing left in this post that I think there is much more to this statement.

The poverty seen in the manger scene is certainly a poverty of material lacking, yes. But it extends far beyond that: it is a poverty of many sorts. It is the poverty of being unrecognized, of not knowing, of not understanding. It is a celebration of surrender. It is a celebration of the poor and what they offer us.

My mind immediately moves to Christ's parents Mary and Joseph. In Scripture, we read that "she wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them." (Luke 2:7) I am drawn to the humility and fixed Godliness that they must have embraced in order to believe that it was okay for this special person growing in the womb of our Blessed Mother to be born in this place. I think of the gratitude with which they seemed to receive this stable: the total surrender that what they had to give and could receive in those moments were perfect and whole and enough.

As a man, Joseph had to trust that what he was able to do and accomplish by his own hand and power were of no real avail. He had to accept that what he could do was simply enough. This, I know is no small task for a man to admit to much less submit to. As a woman, and now mother, Mary had to say that God had given everything to her. She, who carried the universe in her womb did not fall into proud conceit but fell to depths of humility instead- accepting God's hand in all things.

Thus, the lack felt in poverty makes room in us. Instead of being filled we are made empty. Yet, this emptiness allows us to holistically see the world around us but especially the ways in which we are incomplete causing us to gaze upon the only wholly good and perfect thing in the universe. You guessed it: God.

Poverty offers us a gift. In the pleasantly unpleasant stable into which Christ was born, we can see the perfect humility of God and the perfect love He displays to us through that humility. From his birth he highlights only one thing: the mission he has left to fulfill on earth and the motive by which this mission will be accomplished. Love.