Some places are storied, and others are not. Some people are storied, and others are not. And some families are storied, and others are not. You can tell the difference by how loud the conversations are, how people fight to get their story in. Today, here, now, in Advent Four, we are thick with stories. There is a full menorah on the table and half a dozen half-populated crèches, each with the figures that have survived a lot of packing, repacking, and breakage. The table is crowded with stories. There are even three baby Jesuses in the manger, the manger made with some profundity by our own children four weeks ago in the Advent workshop. They knew that there are very few barns in New York City, so they put the baby in a plastic bag (some wanted a cut-out cardboard box like the homeless sleep in) and added straw. The table is a beautiful mess, crowded with stories and survivors of stories.
The difference between a storied and an unstoried world is the difference between heaven and hell. We can have jingle hell without stories and jingle heaven with stories. Stories are the way survivors make sense of what happened so they can face what is going to happen. The story of Jesus' birth is a wing dinger of a story. Heaven comes to earth, God comes to humanity, eternity comes to time, spirit comes to flesh, word leaves the rarified world of spirit and becomes flesh and dwells among us. Camels, sheep, virgins, stars, angels, cattle, and innkeepers stand by. A baby is born. A baby is a ridiculous incarnation for a God, but there it is. Humanity is tempted to think that what we do and who we are can actually be something good, even holy. Again, ridiculous on its face, but so are most of the stories we end up telling about ourselves.
For example, I started reading my friends' Christmas cards yesterday. I used to think it was their children who were insufferable; now I see it is their grandchildren who are insufferable. One friend writes of Other People's Perfect Christmas Cards (henceforth to be known as OPPCC) and goes on to write a perfect Christmas card. It has everything, including two paragraphs about her grandchild. "One of light and beauty. Reconnecting her to goodness and wonder. She has fallen in love again. " She admits, 'Chances are that many of you think quite highly of your own offspring or grand-offspring, and not that I want to throw a soggy diaper on your holiday cheer, but the truth is that (Leda) has been declared to be indisputably the most beautiful and intelligent infant on the planet. Among her many accomplishments…" OK, I'll stop.
People write these Christmas cards as though someone was actually interested in their lives. That is part of the absurdity of Christmas and the twist we make from jingling hell to jingling heaven. Someone, even God, actually is interested in our life. Crazy, but true. Our lives are not meaningless events but meaning-laden events, as delicious as gravy poured over mashed potatoes or hot chocolate sauce on ice cream. The world is flavored with the story of God. God makes the world dense and layered, thick and interesting. There is silly and small and there is sacred and sanctified. The incarnation of Christmas is the gravy and the sauce on otherwise silly little lives. It is a story we can tell about dogs and grandchildren and diapers, as though these things actually mattered. Which they do.
Robert Frost used to supplement his income with an annual Christmas greeting. Fancy paper, superb printing, and a verse or two turned the cards into collector's items. Then, they were - like so many parts of the Christmas story - just a way to boost the economy. In 1933, he advised, "The City had withdrawn into itself/ And left at last the country to the country." I can even get a parking space outside my house, so I don't know if that is totally true. But that parking space matters to me.
Christmas puts the metaphysicists all in a tizzy. Is the ordinary the holy? Or the extraordinary the divine? At Christmas, God mixes it up. That's why partial, broken crèches are a good metaphoric bet and why we should be very careful of OPPCC's and, frankly, anything perfect at Christmas.
Frost understood. In a 1935 card, he spoke of those who "cannot look out far./ They cannot look in deep./ But when was that ever a bar/ To any watch they keep?" In other words, even if our Christmas is unstoried or hellish, we can still look around at the ancient story. We can fit ourselves in, the way the children declared themselves a shepherd or a sheep or Mary or Joseph. They took about two minutes to pick up a figure, the way some kids ride around in pushed strollers with dinosaurs in their hands. They just wrote themselves into the manger story.
I find myself for the most part flabbergasted by Christmas. I keep saying to myself that God must be loony to choose humanity as a vehicle for divine purpose and intentions. Talk about outsourcing.
Let me tell you what I know about humanity. The story has to do with Thanksgiving and a turkey. I was at my desk in Frost's precious little Amherst, nearly 20 years ago now, finishing up one of those truly corny days in parish ministry when people give turkeys to the homeless all day long. Most homeless people don't have a stove, but that rarely bothers the donors who find that some long reach of patterning requires them to give turkeys to the have-nots at Christmas. I was clearing off my desk about six and planning on going home when a local doctor arrived, inebriated. He threw a warm turkey, blood oozing from bag and all, on my desk, and told me "I wanttooooohellllppptheeeeppoooor." I said, thanks, go away, we are closed. He insisted. (Plus the blood was all over my rolodex. Remember rolodex?) I got rid of him and realized I was stuck with the bird. The phone rang. It was a woman from one of the hill towns north of Amherst, where the poor were usually remaindered and mangered. She said, "I have no turkey." Ah. It was snowing outside and I had no intention of driving that bird anywhere. But there was one taxicab in town at that time and I called it, and soon enough it arrived. I took the bird out into Robert Frost's front yard, across from Emily Dickinson's house, had a moment of great sentimentality, put the bird on the back seat of the cab, gave the driver the money and the address and told him to go away. He laughed. I laughed. It was the kind of moment that begged for the corny painter, but he is from Williamstown. Anyway, I get home and sure enough the phone rings again. It is my friend from Chester: "Where are the mashed potatoes and the fixings?"
That is what I know about humanity. Greedy. Selfish. Obnoxious and grabby. Given a fully created, decorated world with water and stars, land and love, we act like we need more. God is either dumb or drunk with hope. Why would God return to earth, after creation, with Jesus, and trust us with the Holy? Flabbergasted, that's what we are. Jingle Hell or Jingle Heaven: both are ours. It depends upon which role we take in the ongoing story laid out on the table. On top of everything else, the story isn't over. It has only just begun. God opens history as well as hearts.
I know that my flabbergast may be your preposterous. I know. Mystery may be sitting next to us on the bus, but that doesn't mean we can see him or her. Once, on a train heading to Vancouver from San Francisco, I had dinner with a blind man and his partner who had only one hand. They, though limited and amputated, were the happiest couple on the train. As we passed through gorgeous glades into higher mountains, the blind man, from memory, told me just how beautiful things would be around the next corner. This dinner told me all I have needed to know. You can live when some of your parts are gone. Also, trains cross bridges when they come to them, not before. A lot depends upon what stories we choose to remember, what suffering we choose to forget. A lot depends on what we see around the corner - and what we see around the corner is about what stories we decide to tell.
In Florida, I got to know Lisa Rodriguez, mother of seven, very well. All of her children were making straight A's when the state decided they couldn't go to summer school because they were doing too well in school.
You got it. Doing too well so they couldn't go to summer school, so Lisa lost her job and her husband's salary could no longer support them. Lisa refused to split her family up in shelters. Why? "Because the department of children and family services isn't going to lose one of my kids. I prefer to sleep in the van" - which she did and also home schooled, I mean van schooled, the kids.
Stories turn jingle hell into jingle heaven. The manger story reminds us who God is. Our stories remind us who we are. They all show us how charged the earth is with what Hopkins calls "the grandeur of God." He goes on to say, "It will flame out, like shining from shook foil." The shining is what is true; the rest is the niggling, wiggling of the "where are the fixin's" dark side. My idea is heaven comes to earth and we write ourselves into God's story. Hopkins idea is more electric: Shake, rattle, and roll. Be happy with the parts that are left us and tell each other of the beautiful views around the corner, the heroism and the greed of the poor, the way the mangers are left over stages on which we tell our stories. Flame out, like shining from the shook foil.
