A Way in a Manger

Getting a Christmas tree here, up, and decorated is a bit of a chore. It always sounds romantic and steeped in nostalgia – the little old red truck with the tree tied to the roof, hot chocolate and tinsel – when in actuality it about makes you lose your religion. The first tree I ever had was the one we put up the first Christmas after we were married. We walked uptown, selected our tree from a local fundraising organization, and carried it home to our upstairs apartment. Our tree stand was a sap bucket filled with sand. I went to Brox’s Ole Town Village and bought some ornaments, and a friend gave me some that she had handmade. The years went by, we had children, and the tradition became that the kids and their dad (aka my husband) went to a friend’s tree farm and cut down a tree to bring home. One year, those friends cut and delivered a tree to our door knowing that our schedule was full. Last year, the youngest and her dad (same husband) went to the same tree farm and were home with a tree in about 10 minutes flat. We weren’t quite ready to put it up so left it outside the door where our pup, innocently and in true dog fashion, proceeded to mark his territory. It took a liberal dose of deodorized spray to neutralize the odour of dog pee after we brought the tree inside. 

I never thought I would want an artificial tree, but I recently looked sideways at one with a smidgen of interest. My sister told me that if I get beyond that sideways glance, I’ll be glad I did. And so I did. Henceforth, this year has become the last year with a real tree. It feels like the end of an era. Traditions can be guides, but they need not be authoritarian. Letting go and staying open to new possibilities rather than clinging to “this is the only way it can be done” can be invitational. It can also feel like the lights are being snuffed out and you’re stumbling along in the dark searching for footing. While that process can be disorienting and unsettling, the black of darkness is not inherently negative.

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The gathering darkness of the Advent season is not something to be hurried along to get back to the light. My nocturnal rhythms have me seeing a lot of darkness and there can be something soothing about the inky sable velvet of night. It may be that part of the restfulness is knowing that dawn will soon seep into the black and bring light. But, could it be that darkness in and of itself has something to offer – not only as a framework to showcase the light? Something that we might otherwise miss with the light?

This Advent has me reflecting on the story of this young girl who must have wondered what became of the bright light of her future. Becoming pregnant before she probably had planned to and needing to journey a path that no doubt was fraught with rumour, misunderstanding, and scorn can’t have been easy. That someday her story would be pondered and recognized worldwide was probably nowhere in her mind. There is a wise simplicity, an acceptance of the task at hand, that seems to permeate her and her story. And yet it’s so weird and unlikely. I can’t help but wonder, what if she had said “No” to the request to carry this child? What if her fiancee had abandoned her? Who in their right mind believes their daughter/girlfriend is pregnant but no guy has been part of the equation? A friend gave me a book with reflections on this girl, this mother of Divine, and the picture on the front cover shows a young woman, sturdy and unflinching, holding a baby on her hip. There is a quiet fierceness in her gaze as she protectively holds her little one. Sometimes our creches depict her anemic and languid (and she did just give birth, so she may have been anemic and languid), but those iconic depictions can sometimes sanitize the story into a flat, two-dimensional greeting card. Whether this story is literal or not, there are themes within the it that are raw, invitational, and enticing.

Who is this God that would empty out all power to enter the precariousness of a young girl’s womb? Who would be dependent on the milk of her breast for nourishment? Who is tenderly swaddled and snuggled into a manger, a feeding trough for the ox and ass? A dependent God? A God who chooses a way of downward mobility rather than upward mobility? Counter cultural then, counter cultural now. And if this stuff can be translated into my life now, what does it look like for me to lay down my rights, my power, to stand next to someone who hasn’t been given those rights? Where do I need to be reborn? Am I sloshing back the eggnog when I need to be rooting at the breast, learning again a child-like dependence and wonder? How can I live a downwardly mobile life? And do I even want to know? 

While the cross is meant to be (and is) a symbol of self-sacrifice and selfless love, there is so much violence, gore, and blood attached to it. Maybe we would do well to have little gold or silver mangers dangling from fine chains around our necks or hanging from our car mirrors to remind us of the apophatic nature of this all-powerful god. The manger is so very humble, usually filled with hay and a smattering of grain to feed the critters, and then becomes a cradle for an infant. Nothing, nothing, is too small. No space is outside of sacred.

Maybe there is a way in the manger. A way that is open, a way that holds safe place for the vulnerability of newborn journeys that are fraught with dark, a way that simply offers what is and doesn’t need to be anything other than itself – a feeding trough cradle.