The desert southwest used to feel so familiar to me. Now, I feel mostly like a stranger. This place has a beauty that is hard to explain, but those who live here know it. The way we describe it often includes food. Our celebrating centers around New Mexican dishes: tamales, posole, Chimayo corn pudding, and guacamole. All of these must include green chilies, however it is acceptable to include some red as well if one is trying to be kind and include those who like red chilies.
If I cannot be in New Mexico for Christmas, I still try to prepare some New Mexican cuisine. The green chilies in the can are not bad, but they are not the same either. We have made posole in Kentucky and it is just fine. We have made tamales with students and labored to bring the taste of home to those who share our love for such flavors.
The miracle that we remember and celebrate during this time of year is that the One through whom all things came into being traveled the distance between earth and heaven...between human and divine....welcoming the strangeness of not just coming into flesh, but also the strangeness of giving up infinity for our limitations. The Gospel according to John elaborates this mystery and miracle.
"He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it...He was in the world, and the world did not know him. He came to what was his won, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth...From his fullness we have received, grace upon grace...No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known" (John 1:2-5; 10-14; 16-18).
The incarnation, what C.S. Lewis rightly calls the greatest miracle of Christianity, is that the Father's heart is now incredibly accessible to us. We accept this as reality because we know a grace and truth that is radically different than any other. If we are open to this mystery of God being made known to us in the manger, as an infant, we can surely see the power available to us in the every day challenges of life.
This is a glorious mystery. To say it is a mystery does not mean, however, that we cannot know it. We can now know the Father's heart. We can read, listen with our hearts, and rehearse the reality of Christ-Jesus-"a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).
We rehearse it when we enter places, spaces, and circumstances that are difficult or strange. We can accept and know Him in, beyond, and through strangers - even if the strangest among us are family and should be those who are most familiar. For me, it seems I hear an invitation to reimagine how my interactions with those who are both stranger and family can be filled with grace and truth. If this glorious mystery of God-with-us is real and true, then how is being made real and true in me and in my words and actions during these days?
The mystery remains: Is the miracle and mystery of Christmas - God come to us in flesh and blood - to show us that we too can share in this, a living reality for us? Is the strange and wondrous bridge between the human and divine welcomed and accepted in your traveling, celebrating, stretching, and gathering this season?
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