Love came calling, unexpectedly
No stranger knocking on my door,
This lover’s part of me.
Mercy and forgiveness, hear the angels sing
There’s goodness in everyone
And every living thing.
The chorus to a song I wrote many years ago came back to me this afternoon. It is about one of those miraculous gifts when Grace is delivered on a golden platter in the midst of the ordinary. You know, one of those moments that takes your breath away as you catch a flash of the Divine?
The year before had been tough, with a lot of inner work and reckoning. I had made some progress, but I was still struggling with making peace with myself. Like Zacchaeus, the tax-collector Jesus calls down from the tree because he wants to go to his house for dinner, I sure wasn’t feeling worthy. Love came calling, anyway.
It was the 12th day of Christmas, and I’m sure that had something to do with it. I’ve always been enamored with the part of the Christmas story with the wisemen wandering around in the desert looking for a king—and ending up at some outbuilding with animals and hay and a little baby. It was all so not what they’d envisioned or prepared for when they’d set off on their journey. As our dear Friend Anne Anderson asks in their story, “Afterwards, what became of them?”
As I’d gone about this particular day, I’d felt held in this lovely sense of kindness. The every day was holy and connected to everything else. The neighbor’s blown Christmas tree became urban tumbleweed. The UPS driver who delivered the part I needed to fix my bike looked like a minister. In the late afternoon light, I pedaled past the farms to the salt marshes where I saw the first star in the dusk sky overhead. I was instantly completely awash in the beauty and the sacredness of everything, including—and I think this was the most unexpected—me.
Moments like this are my personal theology of the meaning of Christmas: the Eternal Love, the Seed, the Divine, the Great Beyond, Maya, breaking through, here amongst and in us, connecting us to each other. Nudging us to live hopefully, faithfully, and courageously. Not in a cautious way, in a full-throttle that of God is here kind of way that can transform us and the world around us.
My wish for each of you is that you have moments of unexpected grace that feed your hearts and souls. The Divine is rarely where we think it should be, so it’s best to try and live with our hearts open. Hope really is a verb. Share your stories with each other. And let them carry you forward under the starry sky and into tomorrow.
With love and gratitude for the goodness in you and every living thing,
Gretchen