Simple
Maybe it’s as simple
and as miraculous as this:
everything that makes life Sacred
is already here,
wailing with joy and want,
asking to be cherished, protected, nurtured
in community, queer and determined.
What if the whole earth,
the entire loving cosmos
reaching for life and flourishing,
is just asking us
to stop looking elsewhere for
what has always been within reach.
Asking us to pay attention
to this holy place,
all these sources of hope
woven through,
all this beauty
and gentle wise power
completely at home
in your flesh
and mine
and ours.
– Rev. M Jade Kaiser, enfleshed
God in solidarity
God takes on flesh
and joins life in the struggle –
this is what radical solidarity feels like.
Lives and souls and bodies entangled.
Risks and possibilities shared.
We’re in this together.
The mess, the beauty, the work.
Don’t be afraid to feel hopeful.
God’s promises are kept.
God won’t opt-out or turn away.
God won’t give up when things get tough.
God won’t defend power, or privilege, or institutions, or tradition
at the expense of freedom, or love, or liberation, or your worth.
God’s with-ness is birthed at the margins.
God knows what’s at stake.
Let all who are weary, rejoice!
All of evil’s deceptions will be revealed
and fear of unjust powers will cease.
The Liberating One now dwells among us,
calling upon hearts from all walks of life
to open. to take courage. to soften. to release.
Behold, the Sacred enfleshed reveals the way of Love
God around us…
Look around.
The Sacred has collided with the flesh.
Holiness incarnates.
The Spirit of Christ has come.
Wars still rage. Hunger persists. White supremacy continues.
The joy of Christmas does not shield us from betraying one another,
from building walls, from shunning queer love or normalizing misogyny.
And yet.
And yet.
Here in the midst of it
God is with us.
As close as our own breath,
as deep as our longings,
as intimate as the love we share,
as present as our hunger, our pain, our pleasure, our touch.
In the middle of a world swirling with chaos,
something new is born.
Something that turns us towards each other,
that will keep us dreaming of an economy that doesn’t profit from the poor,
that will make us proud of queering notions of love and relationship,
that will give us the courage to disrupt the lies of white supremacy,
that will help us stay soft even when things are so very hard,
that will remind us how powerful Love can be when it is channeled in the direction of collective liberation.
Today, we are reminded that we don’t have to look very far for the source of our hope.
We just have to pay attention. Close attention.
Listening carefully in the midst of all the noise.
Letting wisdom bubble up from within.
Moving at the pace of God, not of production.
Take courage. Linger in the mystery. Look anew at one another.
Christ has come. All flesh shall be set free.