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Reflection:

Incarnation is the pathway from our head to our heart.

I remember when my daughter Elsa came out of her mama. I was standing next to my mama wife when it happened. She pushed her out, and then we looked at each other, and instantly burst into tears. I remember the action being involuntary… as if I had witnessed something that could only be expressed in the breaking of my socially conformed demeanor. It was one of the most wonderful experiences I've had in my life.

To finally see what you have hoped for so long is a breaking experience.

It's a healing breaking. Like cracking your back. Or like hearing a song lyric that makes us tear up. Or we witness a sappy commercial that somehow tickles our heart. We get emotional because we are witnessing something TRUE. 

Not TRUE as an ideological list that we used to draw lines and make teams. But something TRUE that unites us. A moment of solidarity. A connective happening that awakens us to see that we are not alone. Like when a group of strangers watches the sunset together. Or somebody shares a tasty dish with someone else and says "you must try this! It's so good!" Or when a newborn baby enters the room and everybody turns and looks because they know they are witnessing that split second magic when the Unknown incarnated into the Known.

I wonder if what broke in the room with Mary and Joseph was the wall between ideology and incarnation? That the idea of God with Us moved just from a belief into a very actual little breathing human that spoke more Truth than any sacred text could.

Isn’t that what we’re hoping for this Advent? The breaking of the wall between ideology and incarnation? From words to real? 

Maybe it’s our presence that needs to be broken open this Advent.

Instead of adding more of our words to the centuries of expectations of what this is all supposed to do and be, maybe we need to reach out and hold what needs to be restored in our hands? Like people, or broken hearts, or systems, or perspectives, or beliefs, or policies, or our dashed hopes for a brighter tomorrow…

This is the move from words to presence that awakens us to Gods presence that’s already here.

…

* this meditation is an excerpt from the book Honest Advent.