advent 4 - into wonder

readings

And Mary said,

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor
on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely from now on
all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is God's name.
God's mercy is for those who fear God
from generation to generation.

God has shown great strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

God has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and Sara and their descendants forever."

LUKE 2:46-55


Alleluia! light burst from
your untouched womb like
a flower on the
farther side of death.
The world-tree is
blossoming. Two realms
become one.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN, 12th cent.


wonder

I recently listened to a presentation given by John Dear to a gathering at the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, NM.* Dear is a Jesuit priest, a peace activist, and a longtime prophetic witness in our age of perpetual war-creating. In his reflections he was focusing on Mary the mother of Jesus, and more particularly on the stories about Mary that appear near the beginning of Luke's gospel.

In the course of his presentation, Fr. Dear asked a compelling question: "Where did Jesus learn his nonviolence?"

I think the question is compelling in part because in the church we seem to speak of Jesus as if he was, from beginning to end, an all-knowing, all-caring, all-loving, all-peace-filled messiah. He didn't learn this stuff, he was born with it, right?

We treat Jesus a bit like the pill-sized capsules my son brought home one day. He filled the bathroom sink with water and dropped the capsules in. Within a few minutes the outer cover on the capsules dissolved and the tightly compacted spongy thing inside absorbed water and expanded into a large, colorful creature. Voila!

Do we assume that Jesus was something like this sponge creature, that he emerged from the womb with all the knowledge and love and peace of God packed and swaddled into a little package that only required a bit of time and TLC in order to become a full-blown messiah?

This seems kind of silly, really. If Jesus was fully human as we claim him to be, then he, too, needed the learning and nurturing required to become a human being who practices nonviolence rather than violence, and one who acted out of love rather than fear. This seems to me far more miraculous and wonderful!

Dear continued on in his reflections to suggest that it was Mary's openness, her capacity to un-self-consciously receive God, and her willingness to move from fear, to confusion, to trust and to action that helped teach her son a way of loving nonviolence as he grew.

To these I would add that it was Mary's capacity for wonder - to "ponder all these things in her heart" - that helped nurture nonviolence in Jesus.

Wonder is a powerful state of being in human experience, and an integral element in the cultivation of true and lasting peace - peace within and peace among.

When we experience wonder we are drawn beyond ourselves.

Wonder contains an element of disbelief. In our moments of wonder we tend to be freed from our need to answer or explain, our need to analyze or rationalize, or our compulsion to fit a moment or a person into previously assumed categories.

Wonder prevents doubt from deteriorating into cynicism, and keeps faith from disfiguring into fundamentalism. Wonder keeps doors open for the conservative, the centrist, and the liberal alike!

When we are open to wonder we are less likely to react or get defensive.

When we are open to wonder we meet the one whom we might have considered an adversary with an open mind and heart, and we may wind up finding ourselves grateful and inspired by the meeting. With wonder we live into experiences that we may have been dreading or fretting over, and perhaps find them leading us more fully into life and love.

Wonder knows how "the two realms become one."

* Fr. John Dear, "The Nonviolence of Mary"


for reflection and prayer

Wonder often comes unexpectedly; it finds us, sometimes when we least expect it and sometimes when we most need it. But we can also cultivate a sense of wonder in our lives, and help make it a possibility.

One practice that I've found to be consistently "wonderful" is simply looking where small children are looking. If you are around babies or toddlers in the coming days, even if you just cross paths in the grocery store, notice what these little ones are paying attention to. Follow their gaze and pause long enough to take in what they are seeing. What do you see there?

Our souls proclaim with wonder,
the greatness of God.