Displaced

I’ve got just about everything I need while on retreat this weekend. Except shampoo. And my hairbrush. And an extension cord to power my CPAP breathing machine.

Other than that, I’m good.

Now, I’m not exactly a rookie at packing for these “retreat” weekends, so I have to admit, it’s a little annoying to discover —once here at the retreat center— all the rather useful things I left back home.

Annoying, and perhaps instructive.

Some obvious lessons are to be had, of course: Just how burdensome all the “stuff” in my life can be, for example. How clutter can distract and confound…driving me into the gorse, even when I’ve set out resolutely to keep my eyes fixed on the Lord.

But I notice, too, that this is Advent: the liturgical season that has an inconvenient journey at its heart. And I wonder: what might Joseph and Mary might have forgotten to pack for their trek to Bethlehem, back in the day? What details might have been left undone…as they left home in haste to comply with an unreasonable regulation?

They too lived in a decidedly imperfect world. Scripture tells us this is the very world in which the Holy One chose to become incarnate: a world ruled by Tiberius and Pilate and Herod and Philip and Anas and Caiaphas.

If God could break in then, surely God could do the same thing today. Indeed, God desires to do so. That’s the marvelous mystery we’ve been contemplating all weekend while on retreat: how “The Word Is Still Becoming Flesh.”

And how does one solve this mystery? At least in part, I guess, by gazing in the mirror — no matter how frightful, uncombed and disheveled that image might appear to be on any given day.

God’s limitation — the only thing holding Him back — is my reluctance. Whether I am willing to say “yes” to having Christ born anew in me.

There is no perfect time to begin the journey. We live in a displaced world after all. There is only the perfect attitude: imitating Mary’s dispossessed “yes”.

Like Mary, we are called to say “Let it be.” And then, perhaps, just grip tight…and hang on for the ride.

O Wisdom 
Lord and Ruler 
Root of Jesse 
Key of David 
Rising Sun 
King of the Nations 
Emmanuel 
Come, Lord Jesus

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS