Fire on the Lips

I write to my beloved wherever he may be and whomever.  Is He the mist around the moon?  Is He the bright red cardinal who feeds close to the ground on a dayfull of windy snow?  Is He the reflection of sky on snow—blue with rose patches?  He is faceless, and yet I feel him everywhere.  Isaiah had a vision.  One seraphim cried to another, “Holy,holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole world is full of his glory.”  Woe is me.  How can I feel lonely when He is all around?  As the wind, he kisses my cheek.  As the candle flame, he dances before me.  As the Word, he called me early this morning when I read, “Arise, my beloved, my dove, my beautiful one, and come! 

For see the winter is past,

the rains are over and gone.

The flowers appear on the earth,

the time of pruning the vines has come,

and the song of the dove is heard in our land.

The fig tree puts forth its figs,

and the vines, in bloom, give forth fragrance.

Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one,

and come!

All week my mind has been full of examples of women to whom God appeared.  The mental obsession began on Sunday when our priest, Father Dan, stressed in his sermon the importance of creating a real relationship with God as the only thing that can bring us joy.  To describe this joy for those of us who don’t have much experience with it, he reminded us of the Samaritan woman at the well in the heat of midday.  In scripture, you meet your spouse at the well; and Jesus comes to her there and, in exchange for a cup of water, promises to be her living water.  This woman’s life was a mess.  She was on her fifth husband and was an outcast in the eyes of the townspeople.  But after encountering Jesus, who seemed to know everything about her and still wanted to talk with and take refreshment from her, she ran and told everyone about him:  “could this be the Messiah?”  She knew it was.  She felt loved and, in return, could not withhold her joy.  As we near the end of Advent, we begin to hear the story of God’s coming in the flesh.  Gabriel came to the Virgin Mary, “Hail, full of grace!  The Lord is with you.”  Was Mary as lonely as I am?  I wonder.  Painters often depict her reading, and medieval texts describe her as something of a scholar.  She sits alone with her book … until the angel interrupts her meditation and tells her that she will bear a son and he will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father …”.  Mary is understandably incredulous, “How can this be since I have no relations with a man?”  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you,” she is told, “And the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”  An angel appears, with at least one set of wings, and he speaks of the divine overshadowing the creature.  This scene would have overtones of Jacob’s wrestling with the God (who is often depicted in angelic form), if Mary struggled just a bit, argued just a bit.  But she doesn’t, she simply says “I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”  Perfect humility.  Perfect trust.  Perfect.  No struggle.  That is why Mary has always been way out of reach for me, despite the fact that I am named for the holy family … my two names resting side by side as Mary went along with Joseph to Bethlehem to register for Caesar Augustus’ census, although women were not required register.  She didn’t have to go, but perhaps she wanted to be with Joseph.  And by going, she affected the way God is with us in this world.

Back to Isaiah.  Now Isaiah is someone I can identify with because he struggles.  Taking a break from grading midday, I opened Isaiah’s Book to the sixth chapter.  I silently experienced his vision of the seraphim (with three pairs of wings), and then I began to read aloud.  There was no one in the room but my black cat stretched luxuriously on the green blanketed bed, gazing through the window at birds.  “Woe is me:  for I am undone, because I am a man of polluted lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of polluted lips: for mine eyes have seen the King and Lord of hosts.”  Then, one of the Serarphim, carrying a hot coal from the altar—with tongs!—touches the lips of the prophet Isaiah and tells him that “thine iniquity shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be purged.”  As I read this, I began to cry.  The biblical moment touched my life:  I have always had difficulty speaking.  My diffidence doesn’t come from a lack of passion or a missing motive for eloquence.  Rather, it comes from an age old worry about how my words will be received compounded by guilt that I have so much to say when other people may not.  I grew up whispering words before I would say them, feeling the need to practice.  Too often, I swallowed my own sound before it was out.  When I told a priest this summer that I was afraid to pray because I was such a sinner, he simply said, “that doesn’t come from God.”  Neither do my feelings of inadequacy around speaking.  Language is God's special gift and a big part of our dignity as human beings.  Isaiah calls it "pollution" and I am calling it "human inadequacy"—the sense of being a sinner talking to sinners or an ordinary woman writing to other ordinaries, who could care less.  Whatever we call it, it must be overcome.  When the hot coal touches the prophet’s lips, he is kissed by God who is always in the Hebrew Bible on fire.  It is pure encouragement.  Pass it on.

When I made a connection to this ancient prophet, something softened.  I was less lonely.  My mouth became tender as if it actually had been burned.  My mind drifted to Christmas Eves of long ago … when my father was still alive.  There were a lot of us in a very small house, and everyone was excited.  Mom would feed us quickly after the Christmas Eve Mass.  What did we eat?  Something simple … grilled cheese and tomato soup.  We didn’t need a lot because there would be sweets of all kinds with our friends from the neighborhood after we walked up and down the street, ringing doorbells and singing songs.  We’d sing two carols at every house.  Everyone would disagree about which song would be next.  It was joyful.  Really joyful to stand before smiling faces and sing “We Three Kings,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Away in a Manger.”  Now no one hears these songs anymore except in church or in the muzak piped into Rite Aids beginning after Thanksgiving.  These songs are not shared face to face with neighbors.  And there was my father—one of only a few adults—singing his heart out.  His favorite carol, “The First Noel.”  Whenever I hear it now, I cry.  “The first Noel, the angel did say, was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay.  In fields where they, lay keeping their sheep, on a cold winter’s night that was so deep.”  This night and the two nights left of Advent, including Christmas Eve, are going to be deep.  I plan to wait with the doors of my heart wide open to let the warm love in.  

I went downstairs to get ready to take the dog out.  I sat down to unlace my heavy boots.  Boy, my hands have gotten rough.  Whose hands are these?  I recognized the thumbs as mine--shredded by nervous picking.  But for a split second, I saw my father’s hands—chapped, cracked, rough, picked.  My father’s name was Joseph.  He never missed Christmas Eve caroling.  And his coming with us—always—affected forever the way I experience God with me in the world.

The angel:
I am the angel of reality,
Seen for a moment standing in the door.

I have neither ashen wing nor wear of ore
And live without a tepid aureole,

Or stars that follow me, not to attend,
But, of my being and its knowing, part.

I am one of you and being one of you
Is being and knowing what I am and know.

Yet I am the necessary angel of earth,
Since, in my sight, you see the earth again.