Micah 5:1-4
Luke 1:39-45
The Gospel reading today repeats the reading from two days ago, December 21, the encounter of Mary and Elizabeth known as The Visitation.
Within both Elizabeth and Mary new life takes shape. As the narratives have suggested, God intervened in the lives of both women, making the impossible possible. They now share the same path, but at the same time walk very different paths.
The womb is a rich Advent symbol worth pondering, as it suggests gestation, waiting, preparation, and more. Birth takes time and only happens in the fullness of time.
Within the womb of each of us -- yes, female and male! -- God's life grows, taking shape over a long period of time, slowly forming apart from our machinations.
I do not see the shape of this new life within me, nor can I know exactly what it will be. I can only imagine and hope, and even then the final reality of new life will surprise me at birth . . . how different it is from my expectations and imaginings!
But as the new life grows within me, I want to be with others who can help nurture the life growing in me . . . who will help me be faithful to God, self, and others . . . who will support me and challenge me and provide the setting in which this life within me can grow to fullness.
In the middle of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem, "I am too alone in the world," some beautiful lines caught my attention 15 years ago as I was going through a significant passageway, when things I thought I could depend on were crumbling in my hands. I found these words in his poem and they became a lifeline for me.
. . . and in those quiet, sometimes hardly moving times,
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
[Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, trans. by Macy and Burrows]
This is Mary going to Elizabeth, wanting to be with someone else who knows secret things, wanting the company of someone familiar with the mystery of Divine movements. It is any surprise that Mary's greeting upon entering the house causes Elizabeth's womb to awaken and stir with recognition? This is what happens among those who know secret things together.
Steve Garnaas-Holmes posted this poem a couple of days ago about this meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, and about our own wombing of new life into the world. (Find Steve at www.unfoldinglight.net)
When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
the child leaped in her womb.
—Luke 1.41
Two expecting mothers share a bond,
the recognition of the altered balance,
the spherical spirit, the parallel gaze,
companionship on a hard, bright path,
the magnificent power of giving life
that others can only surmise.
And yet that gaze, that bond, that power,
is yours.
We have too many religions of gods in clouds.
God does not enter the world from the stratosphere.
God enters from within, in each of us,
not might or magic, but in love.
Mary's genius was her insight
that the divine, the world-changing Holy,
emerges from us like a newborn child.
I bear it. You bear it. It's who we are.
The Beloved begs us to feel for the leap in us,
the divine child in us that knows
its sibling in another, that knows
we are connected in our power to give life.
Behold that in yourself, feel for the leap,
and know the bond that makes of all humanity,
all living creatures, one blessed womb.
Blessed are you among women,
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
[Steve Garnaas-Holmes, www.unfoldinglight.net)
For Reflection:
Reflect on the part of this story that draws you into itself . . . or spend time with the lines from Rilke . . . or pray with the poem by Steve Garnaas-Holmes. There are many ways you may go today. The birth of Christ approaches. Spend time with whatever draws you today.
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