'Tis the season ramblings

So, Xmas is around the corner; I don't know about you but I am NOT ready! I still have perfect presents to purchase (like my alliteration?). I am not so much in the usual spirit of Christmas this year - Christmas is different this year. Maybe I am just tired. Really tired. Yesterday, Prez Mouw (Or maybe it was Provosts Lingenfelter?) gave a little speechy thing at the staff Xmas party for Fuller. He mentioned that this year has been a bad year for humanity.
This is true:
Tsunami
Hurricane
Earthquakes
Monsoons
Rosa Parks, Announcer Bill, Myung Jin, Linda's Dad AND son, Richard Pryor, Ben's friend - all passed on
Bombings
War
Anger
All this and more in the last twelve months.

So Christmas is different this year.
This year, I am not thinking about family and friends and joy.
This year, I am looking not at birth - I am looking at myself - very, very pregnant.
This year has been about morning sickness, contractions, breaking water and birthing pains. This year has been about Mary being young and virgin and doubted and scorned and unbelieved and untrusted.
This year has been the icy chill of the night air on fresh baby skin and the stink of manure and animal sweat.

So what do we do? Do we shed toiled tears? I know I do.
I wish I could live in this misery, to hover lustfully in melancholy, but the crying Jesus does not allow me. I desire to be hurt; pissed even, at this God who loves me perfectly because my perfect is not God's perfect. But I cannot. I cannot be damned.

It is through this thorny labor that God is asking me if Christmas was ever meant to be about joy and hope and good for joy and hope and good's sake. It is through the agony of doubled over cramping that Christ is wondering of me where mercy - true, universal, precious mercy - is. Teenage Jesus is playing catch with me, lobbing me baseballs of muse: "Is giving birth worth the pain? Is the life worth the labor?" and I keep missing easy tosses.
I am dropping the ball.
And in his eyes I see the patience of my earthy father when at the schoolyard I could not hit far enough to make brother Ben run.
In his face I see my mother's tear-red cheeks - the disappointment of unconditional love betrayed – unwilling to let go of me.

Uh oh.
New conceptions are afoot –
Could it be that (?!)

Joy isn’t happiness, it is thankfulness so deep that it feels obligatory?
Hope isn’t wishing, it is a soul crying out (demanding maybe?) for the beginning of life outside of womb?
Good isn’t nice, it is just rightness and justice and wholeness brought through the twinge of hard, hard work.

My friends, this year Christmas is very different.
This year Christmas is undeserved and unlovely.
This year Christmas is expensive. It is the reminder of costly, costly grace.