Dear Friends,
I am thinking of you always and was reminded this week of each of our humble but spectacular beginnings. I was admitted to the hospital overnight after more signs of imminent labor (luckily again the contractions have subsided). While at the hospital on the ante and post-partem floor I was awakened by the most joyous sound. Babies crying at the top of their lungs! Yes, never before had this sound been so full of music, a cry of hope sent out into the world. It reminded me of the prayer we pray over our baptized children—that they will find their voice and that the world will never silence it. (Crying during my walk-about in the aisles, some of our children proved this wouldn’t be a problem as long as we were there to witness it!).
The newborns’ cries reminded me of the message of this season and one of the prophecies of this week that I will use as I light the 4th candle for Peace. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6-7). As I heard those cries, I understood the peace that God creates in and through us. Christ embodied and lived out peace from the moment he took his first breath (and wail) to the moment he took his last. This peace is not an absence of chaos, it is not a mastering of our needs, it is not a protection from our pain, but it is a stillness and faith inside all of these things. It is a sense that our being is eternal, even as our reality is fragile. This is the blessing I heard in the cries of those babies who were somehow both newly born and already eternal. It is also the blessing I received from Rev. Nancy Talbot’s description of the prayers and vigil she and his family had planned for the passing of our brother, faithful member and father, Marvin Deloatch, after a long battle with throat cancer. As hospital staff took Marvin off the ventilator, his niece laid white lilies over his legs and torso and those present gave over their prayers and goodbyes, leaving Marvin, Nancy, and his niece, Zosara to wait together in his final breathing hours.
Back in bed with a calm body, I have returned to a peaceful state, but the Peace offered to me through the Christ born this season, through the child fighting inside me, and through the crying newborns reminds me of the great power each life holds inside it. The power to bring a true and enduring peace even in the midst of struggle is present in all of us. Never before have the words of the season, “For unto us a child is born,” been so potent and multivalent for me, for I am reminded that in every life and in every moment, no matter the circumstances, the potential for this peace is born.
I share with you a prayer from Ted Loder, Methodist minister and activist, that someone sent to me to help me find peace and to calm my labor pains. I wonder if there are not things you labor over or pains that plague your peace for which this prayer can calm.
“Gentle me, Holy One, into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of
heavy expectancies, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties; that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light and opened to the mystery, I may be found by wholeness, upheld by the unfathomable, entranced by the simple, and filled by the joy that is.”
Just as I prayed that those new mothers would recognize those high-pitched cries as the voice of peace! I pray that the peace and joy of this season is born in you, if even for a moment, a breath, and a letting go. Love, Beth
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