Weekly Reflection--December 23

The world is charged with the grandeur of God./ 
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;/
 It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil/ Crushed.  Why do men then now not reck his rod?/ 
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell:  the soil/
is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;/ 
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;/
And though the last lights off the black West went/ Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward springs--/
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent /
World broods with warm breast and with ah!  bright wings.
-Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hopkins' eloquence continues to surprise.  Nevertheless, it does not immediately come to mind as a Christmas poem. Indeed, the images are rich and fecund and decidedly creation-focused. 

However, as I reflected on the poem, I thought, "Why not?"  Why can't this be a Christmas poem? Is not the creation--and the world being charged with the grandeur of God--at the heart of what transpires in God's incarnational initiative?

For Emmanuel--God with us--to work, there needs to be a move from the spiritual and the esoteric to the earthly, mundane, that which is bleared, smeared with toil and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell.  Ultimately, Emmanuel confronts matters of the flesh.  And matters of the flesh are lived out, no less, in God's creation.

Indeed, the nativity story is creational:  A child is born to us.  Birth.  It is one of the most intimate, vulnerable, delicate, hopeful, and profoundly archetypal experiences.  Humans as co-creators with the Creator.

And the bright wings in this story may not be those of the Holy Ghost brooding with warm breast, but the angels pronouncing God's desire to dwell with us surely illumined the night sky with winged brightness and celestial beauty. 

And with the presence of Emmanuel, we can no longer look at the world as simply a serendipitous  amalgam of air, water, stone, fire, wood, soil, and flesh. 

No. 

The first creation, with the divine imprint permeating the whole wondrous and wacky world, yields to a second creation, and now it is not only the earth that resides in the presence of the Holy walking in its midst, but now time and space are also blessed, hallowed.  And Love has trod, has trod, has trod.

So, we come again to hear the story, to sing the hymns, to wait in the darkness and perceive, however dimly, the light emerging in our midst. 
Coming to us.  Coming for us.  Coming in the flesh.  Coming in the guise of the ordinary, the mundane, the beautiful body that is our selves, and in the finite flesh that ultimately fades and betrays us.

Hence, we know too well the importance of the moment and the beauty of the world which surrounds us, for we see it and know that it slowly slips away.  Which, perhaps, is all the more important that this second creation emerges in our midst.  For the Holy One hid-in-flesh also hides us within himself.  Indeed, our lives are hid with Christ--once for all--in the archetype of that morning at the brown brink eastward springs which is the other part of Emmanuel's story and, thus, our own. 

Confronted with the divine incarnational initiative, what else can we say, but
 The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

Blessings to you and yours on this Feast of the Incarnation,

Mark