A few weeks ago I was traveling in the ‘land of sorry’. The English have a way of saying “sorry” for any manner of things. There is sorry for perhaps bumping into another person. And sorry for passing you by on the sidewalk. There is sorry for coming into a conversation that is already in progress. And there is sorry seemingly as a general greeting. It is a charming thing in some ways and makes for a humble way of moving through a day knowing you are surrounded by so many people who are sorry. We Americans might say ‘excuse me’ in some of these situations but mostly we would just move on without much attention to a simple infraction that caused a sorry out of our neighbors from across the sea. All that hearing of ‘sorry’ began to creep into my own language and after a few days I was offering my ‘sorry’ along with everyone else.

Now that I am back ensconced in my regular life here in ‘the States’ and not given to all the sorry I became accustomed to, I have to say I miss it. And in the missing I have begun to think about the gift of saying sorry, of actually offering another person an apology. I have thought of the times over the last years when we have been subjected in public life to people who don’t know how…or don’t have the capacity to say “I’m sorry.” though it is clearly called for. Recognizing the many ways we as humans fail and trespass on the feelings of others, “I’m sorry.” seems the least we could do. And, of course, that says nothing of the real and harmful tragedies being played out on the world stage for which armies of people would be wise to say ‘sorry’.

Last week in the church I attend we spoke a communal confession of ways in which we had been exclusive, had harmed others in our action and inaction, had hurt the very hearts, the very souls of our fellow humans. It is not something we do often, this confessing. I have to admit that I have often longed for a tradition in which individual confession is an ongoing practice. I wonder how my life would be different if I had the opportunity to walk into a space with someone,seen or unseen, and be able to pour out the many acts for which I am sorry. I wonder. Somehow I think I’d be better for it.

In the meantime, today I am reflecting on the places where such offerings of sorry have happened and how those words, those apologies have become a part of the wood and stone over time. Buildings have the grace to take in the pain and anguish, the sorrow and lamentation just as people do. It is a wonder the walls can still stand. Over the years we humans have had the opportunity to be sorry for so many things big and small. Wars. Abuse. Violence. Bullying. Excluding another. Saying words that hurt. Ignoring those on the margins. Failing to be our true, God-given selves. Too many chances at sorry to name.

In a poem Mary Oliver writes:
…If I were a perfect person, I would be bowing
continuously.
I’m not, though I pause wherever I feel this
holiness, which is why I’m so often late coming
back from wherever I went.
Forgive me.

It is likely I will continue to think about this ‘sorry’ business. Like Mary points out none of us is perfect and the need to ask forgiveness comes in so many forms. Perhaps it might become so present in our every day speaking that the goodness hoped for becomes a reality.

“If you have been in the vicinity of the sacred – ever brushed against the holy – you retain it more in your bones than in your head; and if you haven’t, no description of the experience will ever be satisfactory.” 
~Daniel Taylor, In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands

What makes something sacred? A place, a situation, an experience, a memory? I am just back from an amazing time in which many places were named sacred. Large churches. Tiny chapels. Impressive cathedrals. Ancient stone circles. Deep wells. While certainly not perceived as sacred by everyone, each of the places have, over time, been called sacred.They were certainly places of beauty and often mystery. They were filled with history known and recorded and also myths and tales that have been told and perhaps embellished over time. Each place had the sense of being outside the ordinary. Is that what makes them sacred?

My experiences in England and Wales had me once again reflecting on what we mean when we say sacred. If you look for the definition of sacred there are many to choose from:“Connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration.  Sacred describes something that is set apart for the service or worship of a deity; is considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspires awe or reverence among believers.” And all these are true. And yet they do not capture the fullness of my experience moving through the sunny, English countryside. These definitions somehow leave out the human element, the heart knowing, that makes up the relational nature of this naming…sacred. 

Standing in St. David’s Cathedral in Wales, I felt surrounded by the hundreds of years of worship, prayers, and music that had been shared within the glorious architecture. It was as if the very walls themselves held the stories of the people who had brought their joys and sorrows there. Sacred? Yes. The same could be said for Winchester and Salisbury Cathedrals. The beauty of stone and glass told the story not only of the faith of people, the history of the church but also the toil of what it must have taken to build such places. More than one of my fellow travelers remarked at wondering how many people actually died to build these places.A sobering thought.

And then there was Stonehenge. The mystery and magnificence of these standing stones boggles the mind. To be in the presence of this engineering marvel and, again, try to imagine the hopes that have been brought there, shared there, enacted there, offered there, makes the cold stone come alive with the human energy that has moved in and around them for thousands of years. To think about the fact that stone was carried hundreds of miles without the invention of wheel? Again, sacred.

Of course, these are places we have named as sacred that are big and bold and capture our imagination in countless ways. Jospeh Campbell wrote that “Your sacred place is where you find yourself again and again.” While some people find themselves again in these larger-than-life settings, many others come back to their true self staring at a cardinal on their backyard feeders or walking along the shore of a family lake cabin. Still others look into the eyes of a child or those of an elder and come back to knowing who they are, whose they are. As the quote above by Daniel Taylor says: “If you have been in the vicinity of the sacred – ever brushed against the holy – you retain it more in your bones than in your head; and if you haven’t, no description of the experience will ever be satisfactory.” 

I guess that is my take away, the answer to my question. Sacred is all around us. It is in the seeing that the revelation becomes ‘worthy of spiritual respect and devotion.’ May there be innumerable sacred moments for us all…and may there be a bone-deep knowing that we have, indeed, brushed up against the holy.

Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.

St. Francis of Assisi

There are many things that seem impossible to me. An infant’s eyelashes, for instance. So tiny, so feathery. The way plants emerge from ground that had, just a few weeks earlier, been frozen, seeming to grow right before our eyes. A musical composition that combines sounds that set hearts to melting, eyes to watering. The presence of certain colors…blush pink, rich salmon, spring green. Impossible visual delights.

I have been thinking about impossibility much these days. Last weekend I was in the presence of one of the most stunning pieces of art I have ever seen. Standing before the sculpture titled ‘Veiled Lady’ by Raffaelo Monti at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, all my mind could think was “this seems impossible.” Of course, my mind was also screaming “this is so, so beautiful!” I have seen this sculpture numerous times and every time I say to myself “impossible.” How can we see through stone? Even with the explanation that the artist used tricks of light and polishing parts of the stone more than others creating this illusion, I never cease to stand in awe before it.

There is much in our world that seems impossible right now. How to make sense and peace in so many countries, with so many differing ways of seeing and being by those in power comes to mind. Generally, the pursuit of peace in the world often seems impossible. The fact that so many brothers and sisters live unhoused with little movement made toward finding home. And then there is the plight of our planet, climate change and the many ways and reasons people see this so differently, pushing healing and hope to the margins. It could cause humanity to simply throw our hands in the air and declare it all impossible.

Yet, Raffaelo Monti looked at a block of stone and saw what was necessary to free the lady from the cold, static rock. He then studied how light played on the stone and using tools he knew well he began to polish here…and there…allowing the light to dance in her emerging face. Fashioning a veil of stone he created for her a sense of humility and mystery. Since 1860 people have been witness to the impossibility of her beauty.

Today I am thankful for all those who turn their backs on what may seem impossible. I am thankful for those that turn toward what is necessary, grasping what is possible, all leading to what once seemed impossible. What may seem impossible to me is just being dreamed into being by someone else. It is why we need each other. Raffaelo Monti may have been surrounded by those who thought what he was trying to do was impossible. But he knew. In his creative mind and spirit, he believed he had the power to create beauty that continues to bring awe and astonishment to the world. And he did.

It is a common question asked in a variety of settings. “What is your favorite color?” When asked of young children, I’ve seen purple and pink rise to the top. When asked in an ice breaker, get-to-know you situation, people can often make assumptions about another from their answer. Red? Bold and passionate. Blue? Perhaps introspective and moody. Color is a fascinating thing that makes for great conversation and eye pleasing awe.

Here in my part of the world we perhaps have a greater appreciation, even longing, for color. Spending as much time as we do with white…or white touched by dirty gray as winter holds us in its grip, we are starved for the experience of color. Oh, the cold and wind can get to us but there are always more layers that can be added for warmth. But color…that is a whole other matter.

Green. My favorite color is green. From childhood it has been, is, and will likely always be the color that makes my heart sing. These spring days that have been colder than usual have been a nasty tease with the color green. There were hints of it poking through the ground and then, wham! Snow. White again. The gift of green snatched from us in the blink of a frosty eye.

Last week I visited my sons in Seattle and we took the ferry out to Bainbridge Island. I never pass up a chance to ride a ferry! On the island we visited Bloedel Reserve, a beautiful setting of walking paths and more green than seems possible. Walking through the tall trees and the fields, I became so aware of the various shades of green that exist. Deep, rich green. Brilliant green we’ve named ‘kelly’. Pale,almost yellow, green which you can glimpse as buds begin to emerge. This sea of green was the intention of founder Prentice Bloedel who created this preserve and was also color blind. The acres are void of many flowering trees with an emphasis on green. Just green. I am not sure how colorblindness works but apparently green was something he was able to discern. And I was thankful for it.

Green is the color that says growth. It signals a hope that stimulates creativity and mirrors for us the possibility of new life. It is the color that surprises our tired, ice weary eyes when the season makes a turn. Wake up! Something wonderful is about to happen! It calls us to a wildness we can forget when our shoulders are pulled up to our ears and we forget to look into the lovely eyes of those we pass on our winter walk. Green can remind us of that child that still lives within us urging us outside to play.

Of course when it comes to the color green, we would expect poet Mary Oliver to weigh in:

Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent way to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me.  Truly.

I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be.  It’s impossible not
to remember wild and not want to go back.

So if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.

Every day now, green is calling, inviting us to break out and remember. Wildness. Spring. Color.

I’m so, so ready and I hope you are, too.

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
~Isaac Newton

The sentiment of these words by Newton have been said in a variety of ways over the years. I have read and heard them in so many places and they always bring me up short. Because of their truth. And because so many times I forget or behave as if it were not so. They showed up again in the book, Good Enough, I have been reading during the season of Lent. This time with the citation as to their origin. I have been thinking of them since I read them a few days ago and it has led me to name some of those on whose shoulders I stand. Those who have helped me see further, or more openly, more critically, more inclusively, with a hoped for wisdom.

I had been thinking of these words even before I read them in the book because of an amazing sculpture I saw on a recent trip to New Orleans. In the sculpture garden of the City Park, I came upon this artwork by Do-Ho Suh, a brilliant Korean artist. It is called ‘Karma’. Coming around a bend in the beautiful, green gardens it rose several feet high causing a catch in my breath. Its creation seemed nearly impossible to me. Its power was deep and I felt awestuck in its presence. The weight of each person standing on the shoulders of the next and the next and the way the bodies bent in that weight seemed so exact. I thought of the people who have perhaps bent under the weight of those who stood, even metaphorically, on their shoulders. Parents. Grandparents. Teachers. Care-givers. Neighbors. Leaders. Spiritual guides. Friends. So many people, so many shoulders, so many lives.

If the sculpture weren’t enough to send this message swirling in my mind, further in the chapter in which the Newton quote was written author Kate Bowler writes: “It’s hard to remember a deeper, comforting truth: we are built on a foundation not our own. We were born because two other people created a combination of biological matter. We went to schools where dozens and dozens of people crafted ideas and activities to construct categories in our minds. We learn skills honed by generations of craftspeople. We pray and worship with spiritual ideas refined by centuries of tradition. Almost nothing about us is original. Thank God.”

We are built on a foundation not our own. In this world that tries to imprint a message that we are all self-made, this is a wake up call. In our culture that emphasizes individuality as a highest value, it is so difficult to remember all the people who shaped and sacrificed and nurtured and even prayed over our unfolding. Though many may no longer be with us it is still, I believe, important to remember them, to even say their names aloud and to breathe our gratitude. For the strength of their shoulders and the weight of their bending. 

I do not have the gift of creating such a powerful sculpture. But I do have the gift of remembering. In this unfolding season of spring when growth will be visible in countless ways, I will give thanks for those on whose shoulders I have stood, those who have bent with the weight of urging my growth. Those who have helped me see further. And further. And further.

It has happened every morning for perhaps the last two weeks. At around 6:20 a.m. as I drink my morning coffee and write a few thoughts that have come to me in the middle of some form of sleep, I hear it. The song of a cardinal someplace nearby. Singing. Giving voice to one of the few bird songs I can identify. The first morning it happened I was jolted out of the early morning fog that is winter by its pure sound. When it began to happen every morning and at the same time I was filled with wonder. What is happening for this scarlet beauty at just this particular time of every morning? Do birds have some internal alarm that says the day is new and on its way? Now I wait for it and would be not a little distraught if I didn’t hear it.

The other thought that came to mind was whether or not the cardinal has any sense at all as to the hope its song sings into the world for this particular human. Tired of snow. Depressed by gray. Weary of having so many layers of clothing to carry around on my bones. Did this small act of Creation have any idea the joy its melodious voice brings to the world? My sense it is simply doing what it does and there is a reason unknown to me for the time, the tune. I pray there is some joy in its body as it sings out in the still frigid hours of the morning.

I was reminded of the poem by one who seems to be able to know the birds in ways I cannot. Mary Oliver in her poem Red Bird writes:

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows, 
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens –
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

It is true we do see the cardinal all winter in these places I call home. But the song is not always present. Perhaps this winged one is also sensing spring and is urging its arrival with the beauty of its music. I am full of hope for that as well.

These days find some of my closest friends and I holding a sacred space for one of our dear ones whose life was driven by the love of those who could take wing. He is walking his last days on land and is slowly inching toward taking wing. He has lived a life ‘bold in spirit’ and has taught so many of us a love for those whose flight is beautiful and seemingly impossible to the gravity held ones. As we walk this path with him, we are trying with all our might to cause our too often narrow hearts to open with gratitude. For him. For the birds he loves.For this life we all are privileged to live.

Over the next mornings I will listen for the cardinal’s song and I will allow my heart to open and be filled. With grace. With gratitude. With love. With hope. Knowing that the red bird is ‘firing up the landscape as nothing else could.’ It is as it has always been and will be.

Nature teaches nothing is lost.
It’s transmuted.

Spread between rows of beans,
last year’s rusty leaves tamp down weeds.
Coffee grounds and banana peels
foster rose blooms. Bread crumbs
scattered for birds become song.
Leftovers offered to chickens come back
as eggs, yolks sunrise orange.
Broccoli stems and bruised apples
fed to cows return as milk steaming in the pail,
as patties steaming in the pasture.

Surely our shame and sorrow
also return,
composted by years
into something generative as wisdom.

It is not a usual title for a poem…Compost Happens. I came across this little bit of poetry by Laura Grace Weldon while searching for something for a friend. Reading and then rereading it helped me name what seems to me to be happening outside my window. As the snow melts away and the Earth begins to move in ways that are not always lovely but are full of promise the ground is reminding us that ‘nature teaches nothing is lost.’. These are the days in my part of the world that float between sun and melting and freezing and re-icing. Dangerous walking. Yet if a person is careful and observant they can be present to much ‘transmutation.’ Also, not a word used every day. The very ground around us is shape-shifting, changing form and we are wise to pay attention.

I often think of this time of year as the ‘not yet’ time of year. Oh, we can sense what lies beneath those crusty, grimy mounds of snow. Some of it is not pretty especially if your paths are also frequented by the four legged that live in the neighborhood. But other glimpses provide the opening act of what is yet to appear in this drama of life we are privileged to be human actors in. It is the time when I am reminded that we are the ones with the ability to notice, reflect, and make meaning. It is a huge responsibility. As the ones with words we are cast as the storytellers and it is an awesome role to play. 

This morning as I walked out to begin my day outside the four walls that house me, I looked down to see that the snow that had been several feet deep had receded and the soil that had been revealed had a gift to offer. With the early morning sun splashing the ground there appeared…tiny blades of green grass waving their new life my way. Though surrounded still by not only hard-packed snow but large hunks of ice that had fallen only a few days from my roof, these little bits of green shouted into the world: “See me! Look at me! I bring you good news!” The Earth is changing form…transmuting…all around us. The sight brought a spring to my penguin shuffled step. 

I have been thinking a great deal about how it is we are emerging not only from the winter but also from these years when the pandemic has been our unwelcome dance partner. Each week I spend time with second graders who are crawling their way back from the losses of school and learning. At the beginning of the year their struggles with reading had me thinking and worrying about how our children could rebound from what had been sidelined in their lives. Teachers, parents, volunteers and administrators have been spreading every bit of helpful compost to these young ones’ learning, making plans, trying this and that and all out of a great love and belief that each one is capable and unique. This past week it was as if all that turning of soil, watering, sunshine and intellectual nutrients generated what was needed. My joy was overflowing as words were sounded out, stories read, letters written and faces lit up with the knowledge that they were reading. I whooped and high-fived and made quite a scene as their faces flushed with pride and recognition.

‘Nature teaches nothing is lost.’ writes the poet. This is true for the Earth returning from its frozen state as we move toward the season of Spring and the greening of the landscape around us. And it is true for the children who are walking with more and more confidence every day toward a future they are dreaming with renewed abilities as the world of reading opens its doors wider and wider.

It is enough to bring not only a spring to the step…but an outright skip! 

January is nearly over…the beginning days of another year. The marking of a new year comes with a certain promise that people embrace in a variety of ways. Resolutions come to mind. Those promises we make to ourselves to do things differently…try something new…change…let go…take on…forgive…reshape…re-create. It is difficult to allow the flipping over of the calendar to a new year without making a silent or verbal assent to make this year better than the last. Perhaps it is ingrained in us to do this. Certainly our culture encourages this behavior. The messages and signs are all around us and it becomes big business as the ball is dropped and the minutes flow from one year to the next.

It really is about marking beginnings, isn’t it? And yet we need not wait for the year to move from one to the next to embrace the power of what it means to begin. I was reminded of a small book I have had for a long time simply entitled Always We Begin Again. It is an updated primer in the way of Saint Benedict by John McQuiston II. For some reason as I felt this January slip away into the shortest month of February, the title of this book came to my mind. In pulling it off my shelf I read these words:

At the beginning of each day, 
after we open our eyes
to receive the light
of that day,

As we listen to the voices
and sounds 
that surround us,

We must resolve to treat each hour 
as the rarest of gifts,
and be grateful
for the consciousness
that allows us to experience it,
recalling in thanks
that our awareness is a present
from we know not where,
or how, or why.

This bent toward marking our beginnings is available to us at the beginning of every day, perhaps even at the beginning of every breath.We need not wait for the turning of the year. Each day represents a beginning that has never been before. The gratitude of consciousness in recognizing the power of it is nothing to be squandered. And yet I know I do. I have a sense I am not alone in this. Opening our eyes to receive the light…the precious light…of a new day is a gift to be savored and celebrated. And yet I forget. My hand reaches for the coffee and my mind begins to immediately make the lists of things I must do, should do. I rarely take the time to savor the beauty and the mystery of it.

For a few years during the first days of a new year I have created a practice of placing paper white bulbs in water and placing them near a window on my kitchen table. I watch them in their beginning as the days of the new year emerge. Slowly their roots reach down into the water as their bodies reach toward the light. It is a visual reminder of how beginnings work. Always…always…some bulbs grow quickly while others stay in their round, brown form holding onto their inner greenness as long as they can. Eventually all will blossom into tiny, fragile, fragrant flowers, a testament to a spring life that is doing its own waiting before it is time to begin. I do not understand why there is such a variation in their emerging. Someone wiser than I may have the answer to this question but I simply believe that some things simply take more time to root, grow and blossom. It is perhaps as true for the two legged as it is for plants and other growing things.

The light that graces our days is beginning to grow and the darkness is retreating. In just a few weeks we will see the snow begin to melt and the ice become a memory. It will signal an ending to winter and the emergence of warmth that seems now but a dream. In both the endings and the beginnings we are invited to ‘treat the hour as the rarest of gifts’ and to allow gratitude to bubble up like a refreshing…unfrozen…spring. Always we begin again.

My mother used to tell the story of a child who cried so hard when the family was going to take down their Christmas tree that the parents relented and left it up till spring. (This child was not me!) It seems to me each time we passed their house she told that story. I am sure that is not the case but it is how I remember it. I have thought of that child, that house, several times over the last week. Though I have not been reduced to tears at the prospect of taking down my tree, I have chosen to let it stand and turn the lights on every morning when I get up. It is still dark outside so it brings that little thrill of light that happened the first time the lights lit up the limbs of this sweet evergreen that has accompanied my family through the holidays. Morning and night the lights are burning.The lights bring such warmth and joy in the midst of the frigid cold and the gray days. Why rush getting rid of that brilliant sight?

This past week a poem by Jane Kenyon came to me in two different emails. Its title says it all…Taking Down the Tree

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.

It really is about the light and the desire to have more of it. And, I believe, the inner push to keep it up also is about all the memories that hang on its branches. Ornaments that offer up little messages from years and years of gifts received and collecting. They stand as a monument to certain parts of life and the fact that a person thought of someone in our family enough to choose an ornament that would travel through months and years… even if we don’t remember the giver. But that is not really the case. Each year as I lift a fragile creation from its eleven month home in the attic, I recount how each one came to find a few weeks stay on the tree. There is one ornament I cherish, given to me by a five year old girl, who is now an adult, a mother and yet when I pull that ornament out of the box I always send a little photo of it to her reminding her of the sweet child she was. 

Decorating the Christmas tree has many layers of meaning.It carries the traditions that have lived in a house and those that perhaps so longer find room there. Taking it down signals an ending of one year and the beginning of another. And sometimes we are just not ready for the letting go, for the energy needed to begin the newness that is calling. 

Eventually I will take the tree down. I will tuck the ornaments safely back into their little compartments in the red and green plastic box that keeps them safe and ready for next year. But I may just hold onto some of the lights and drape them over the mantel so I can yell out like Hamlet’s uncle: “Give me some light!” It seems a good thing to do until the light outside begins to grow and shed some warmth once again. Seems like a plan to me.

“This is the irrational season when love burns bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.”
~Madeline L’Engle

We are people ruled by seasons. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. These seasons determine what we wear, where we go, how we live, how we play. And then, for those of us who have made a life in faith communities of the Christian sort, there are other seasons, ones that divide the church-going year. We are now two weeks into the season of Advent…those weeks leading up to Christmas when there is talk about waiting and preparation and anticipation. Not quite the words we hear reflected in the commercials and advertisements that are also flooding our eyes and ears from television or radio or social media. 

Advent is my favorite season. I love the need to grapple with the darkness that comes seemingly too soon every day. The songs we often sing are in a minor key and call for brooding and thinking and listening with a soul deep sense. There are candles to be lit and a nudge to simply be, to rest for awhile. No need to rush. It’s okay. Really…it’s Advent.

This year I was struck with the power of the question that comes in the reading from scripture that sets the Christmas story in motion. Mary is visited by an angel who tells her she is going to give birth to a boy child and her response is “How can this be?” Thinking of how many times I have heard this story it seemed strange to me that any part of it could be nagging at me the way it is. But two weeks have passed since I heard it once again and I still keep thinking back on that one question.While over the years I have heard many a sermon on this scripture and the various explanations for Mary’s response, still the words won’t let go. Then I realized why the question is staying with me.

“How can this be?” What has captured my attention with these words is that I have thought of the number of places I can imagine people asking…aloud or silently, inwardly…how can this be? Over the last years there have been many times while watching the news and what has unfolded in our country the thought has come to mind…how can this be? When our whole world shut down and we watched in a state of disbelief and confusion as a virus we had never heard of killed people, divided people, confounded people, didn’t we all mutter…how can this be? Then I think of the people who receive a diagnosis or must watch a child struggle with addiction or anxiety or depression while feeling helpless who whisper…how can this be? Then there are those who lose a loved one in a sudden way or watch someone suffer slowly and the only words that seem to fit the situation are…how can this be?

As a lover of questions, I am not completely surprised that this has been my Advent gift. And of course, one question often leads to another which brought me to another that I have often pondered. As someone who started their life out in the theater, a question that often guides improvisational acting is: “What if?” In any scene, like in any life, there are myriad choices that can be made in our actions and responses. What if I move toward this person…what if I walk away? What if I show anger or what if I offer compassion? What if I make a judgment or what if I listen with an open heart? What if I choose kindness no matter the situation, no matter what? This tiny, two word question holds much power.

Two questions. They somehow seem related to me. And while we don’t actually hear Mary’s ‘what if’, clearly it must have been in her mind.  Her affirmative answer has shaped the story we tell once again after more than 2000 years. Maybe in the waiting and the preparation and the anticipation of Advent both questions that have been my companions will lead me to the gift of Christmas with new eyes. It is worth a hope.