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My mum left this morning after a brief but pleasant visit. We shopped and ate and shopped and watched DVD's and ate and opened presents...and ate. Her plane left this morning and on the way to the airport I was reminded strongly of Lord of the Flies...not by my mother, but by the behaviour of people shoving and elbowing to get onto the bus. Honestly, if we're that rude to one another in order to get a seat on a seven-minute bus ride, what hope does humanity have? I think I've mentioned before that it seems the news recently is universally bad. CNN might as well be replaced, as Ellen Degeneres suggests, with a scrolling banner that reads "Things are getting worse." Maybe I'm just paying more attention lately (bad news has been a perennial complaint since the invention of news) but the level of negativity out there seems to be growing. Is it just me or are we more hostile, more paranoid, more selfish and crude than ever? More than ever we need the peace of the nativity, the introduction into our midst of God's own salvific presence...but would we even notice? Is it possible for us to tear our attention away from the mindless chatter of modernity to see the humble manger? Do we have the patience and humility to seek rest in an infant king, to find victory in a God who triumphs by losing everything? "O come, let us adore him" seems to have become "O come, let us ignore him." We treat one another so badly that it's hard to believe we've been sanctified by God's incarnation. "What? You assumed this form? You became one of us? Why on earth would you want to do that?" But the truth is that humanity is sanctified, brought en masse into right relation with God. The Word became flesh, took on our being, and became Emmanuel - God with us. In that tiny, helpless baby lay the power to ennoble us beyond the cruelty and selfishness that plagues our broken nature. And Emmanuel is still with us, though he rarely makes the evening news. When my mum first arrived for her visit, Amy and I went to meet her at the airport. There I indulged in copying Hugh Grant's character from the ever so slightly cloying Love, Actually. I watched people greet loved ones at the arrival gate. If you find yourself in need of some emotional uplifting, I do recommend arrival gates. Any airport will do, but international arrivals are especially powerful because you can assume that the people arriving have been very far away, indeed. If you don't have an airport handy, try a bus terminal or train station...anywhere that travelers are met by loved ones. Excited children, open arms, kisses and hugs, back slaps and smiles. If you have any empathy at all you'll leave knowing that the world isn't such a bad place. Of course you might like to try the manger, the most significant arrival gate there is. There you can see a reunion that affected all of us, that sent shockwaves of love through the very core of human existence. The tender care of mother toward child, husband and wife, even of strangers toward this new king...that most amazing of arrivals greeted by the human love that is, actually, all around. |
