The Christmas of my childhood befell a world that had not yet been discovered as flawed. Stockings hung by the chimney with care and hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there inevitably gave way to a world where reindeer and sleighs are only imagined. The visions of sugar plums that once danced in my head have surrendered to personal anxieties and a planet still sruggling to understand the Incarnation.

     Christmas 2011 is surrounded by the problems and limitations that beset all of us as we gather once again to celebrate the gift of God’s Son to the world. We come to the stable as people of faith who may find themselves widowed, alone, battling  depression or waging the war against a life threatening disease. We are accompanied to the manger  by the unemployed and by those who are without hope, children who are without food, without joy, and without love.  We arrive with the failures of yet another year, with broken hearts and disappointments, with the sins and shortcomings that are forever a part of our humanity. We kneel before the Christ child with the hope that this Christmas will be followed by fewer petty arguments and grievances, less cynicism and less selfishness. We pray once again for peace on earth and good will toward all, hoping that this familiar adage will be accompanied by the courage and the commitment to work toward these goals in 2012.

     When we gaze upon the baby born in Bethlehem, maybe we will be moved to an understanding of why He came, of why our world needed Him, and why two thousand years later, we still long to be changed by Him.

     The words of a Christmas tale told in my mother’s voice once inspired the magic that was my Christmas, but the power of those words belonged to a simpler time. Today it is the words of the  gospel, the Word made flesh that engenders my Christmas magic. This is a magic that will not grow old and not be given to the despair of an unbelieving world. It’s the magic of divine and human love, a magic that transforms every heart to one that is generous beyond its means and caring in the face of the harsh realities with which we are all too familiar. Yes, Christmas still holds a magic, even for us older children, but I suspect that this magic is capable of transforming our vision, our understanding, and our capacity for gratitude as we receive the gift of God in Jesus and in each other’s love again this year. This is a magic that will endure long after the celebrations have ended and the Christmas lights have dimmed.

     Christmas joy has returned again to remind us that there is something that exists within all of us that is merely waiting to be stirred. God sent His Son to open the mystery to our own humanity, to reveal to us a better way to live and a more compassionate way to love. Let us celebrate His gift to us and to all the world by remaining thankful throughout the New Year for the faith that has brought us to this celebration once again.   

     “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Cartoon mornings would no longer be mine. Barney and Little Bear would have to find somewhere else to play. There would be no more dancing in the den or picnics in the park, no one following me in the supermarket with a little wagon all his own.

 There would be no more building blocks at breakfast, where Winnie the Pooh was a regular guest. The clay creations that stood throughout our house would now have to stand as a reminder of Play-doh days gone by.

No more trips to the abandoned beaches of autumn. The sandcastles built by September shores have been washed away forever. But for a time they were ours, the waterfront property built by imagination. I miss the days when we collected shells and starfish and marveled at God’s creation, when early fall was filled with awe and wonder.

I miss having the kids around. I miss their hour long baths, the splashing and laughing that lightened the mornings, the bubbles and boats that brought hours of pleasure. I miss the bike rides before lunch, the ones that always took us past the playground.

When the kids were home, we baked a lot. Simple things -  bread, brownies, and lots of cookies. I don’t bake much anymore. Now I make simple salads and exercise more, using what was once baking/bonding time to work off the weight put on in those years.  

 I wasn’t eager to get them off to school, to pack lunches and snacks that would last the day.

I liked “doing lunch” with my kids. I liked slow starts and mornings when we meandered at a child’s pace. Those mornings of mirth are with me still, but only in mind and memory.   

 I remember when my son and I approached the line in front of the classroom. Matthew took my hand and squeezed tight. I could tell that he wanted to cry. I wanted to cry, too. We had come to the end of a long chapter in my favorite book, a time that can never be rewritten, only remembered. It was a time when I lived in the “sacrament of the present moment”, when I was surrounded by children of God  who never worried about time or tomorrow and whose divine energy deemed every day an  adventure. We lived in a world of wonder where laughter ran loose and no one knew the difference between lunchtime and eternity. All we ever needed was here and now, and no matter where we were, I knew we stood (and crawled and skipped) on holy ground.

I studied years of theology and loved every minute of it, but truth is, motherhood has taught me more about God than all my professors put together. I learned about the nature of God through the nature of children, whose passion and pleasure overcame pretense and pride, and the worst assault would be assuaged a minute later. Throwing sand in a sibling’s face could  always be forgiven because kids have neither the energy nor inclination to hold onto anger. They are the incarnation of joy and generosity, of rebirth and reconciliation. Their play became my parables, the good news that brought me to paradise time and time again. They carried on a daily dialogue with their Deity in a most natural way. They took custody of God’s creation, conscious of their part in it, but not yet self-conscious. They grasped at God freely and fully. What greater prayer, what greater praise? 

 With school having seized my children, I get in the car alone, no one next to me, no one in a car seat reciting the ABC’s or singing off key.  The time has come when I can only remember the kind of September when life was slow, and oh, so hallowed.

      Wasn’t it Emily Dickinson who said, “There is no frigate like a book to take us lands away.”  What better time than summer to grab the kids, grab some books and sail into stories that will change them, challenge them and keep them entertained?

      While sprawled on the lawn of my childhood home, I spent the summer after sixth grade floating down the Mississippi with Tom Sawyer, inhaling the air of adventure that stirred Mark Twain’s imagination, hoping it would stir mine, too. From there I traveled to Tara where I hung on every word that Scarlett spoke, wanting nothing more than to move to Atlanta where I would meet a man as handsome as Rhett Butler (which, eventually, I did).  I agonized with Annie Sullivan one summer, wondering if Helen Keller would ever speak and I poured through the pages of Anne Frank’s diary, longing to live as passionately as she did. From the day I dove into a book of Yeats poems, I knew I would make my way to Innisfree, where I would hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore. I didn’t build a cabin of clay and wattles, but I did find peace there, as William Butler promised.

      My romance with the written word led me to some extraordinary places; to Joyce’s Dublin and Jane Eyre’s England, to Walden Pond and the Parthenon, where I soaked up sentences, sipping words and swishing them around the way I do a good cognac today. At sixteen my passion for the printed page took me to a town called Nazareth where I was mesmerized by a man who preached mercy and justice, whose life was more memorable than any character in any book I had ever come upon. I fell in love with the gospels, with their truth and their power to transform, and in spite of Oscar Wilde’s comment that St. Paul’s prose was the best argument against Christianity, I poured over the epistles, wanting to live a life worthy of them.

      Truth is, my interest in books wasn’t purely noble. I made a wonderful discovery in my mother’s bureau one day that finally shed some light on the mystery of babies. Turns out, they didn’t come straight from heaven the way Mom and Dad said they did. The book was entitled, The Rhythm Method. It had a lot of big words that didn’t help at all, but the pictures pointed me in the right direction.  In 1963, babies and their beginnings weren’t openly discussed in my house. Thank God for Toni Tamborino and the tales she told me on the playground. I was never sure she was right. The book helped. 

        When I discovered that there was something called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, books forbidden by the Pre Vatican II church, I wanted a copy of every book on the list. I wasn’t sure why, but my mother and Mother Church seemed to share a conspiracy of secrets that piqued my curiosity. I never got my hands on any of those books, but later on in life, I did pick up a copy of St. Augustine’s Confessions and The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day, both of which told tales of sainted souls who walked on the wild side prior to conversion. Their memoirs were an inspiration and I learned that there was hope for everyone – even me.  

      The stories of my younger years sweetened my days and shaped my dreams, but lazy hours of reading pleasure have fallen on hard times. Ipods and the internet crowd the lazy days of summer and video games steal the silence that wrapped itself around my books.  Studies show that the brains of our multitasking teens are actually being changed by the frenetic pace and unfocused activities that define their days.

     Give me a book and the blessing of a few quiet hours. While most kids wearing headphones couldn’t define the word bibliomania today, and would argue that books are boring and burdensome and an outdated pastime of older folks, I contend that there are worse forms of madness in our harried,  hyperactive world  today.

       The depression that depleted their home was paralleled by the depression that depletedAmerica. When my father graduated from St. Peter’s Grammar School he felt fortunate to find a job as a delivery boy. His meager wage put food on the table and his siblings through high school. The last of the brood, his only sister, graduated fromSt. Joseph’s High School with a beautiful corsage and gold watch from her big brother. He attended her graduation, as he had the others, in Packy’s place.

       As Dad got older, he played ball for a neighborhood league and quickly gained the attention of a coach from a local college. He offered Dad a scholarship, the dream of an education. “I never went to high school, Coach. Is that a problem?”   “Just about the only problem I can’t solve. Sorry, son.”

      And so it was that some dreams would not be. I’m sure there was a sadness there, but I rarely saw it. His disappointed hopes were matched by a quick wit and Irish eyes that smiled often. But every now and then, my father could be found just sitting silently by a window, a silence sustained by sadness, I imagine. Once, when I was still small enough to climb onto his lap, I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was listening to the grass grow.

“How do you do that?”, I asked. “Just sit quietly”, he said.

And so I sat. I listened then as I did when we went fishing, because he told me if I was very quiet, I could hear the fish talking to one another. I listened still when we walked passed the lake one December day, where he told me he could hear the water freezing.

      I spent scores of silent hours listening for things I never heard. But that was part of the magic around Dad, a magic that mesmerized and held me captive. I suspect now that my magic was his sorrow, a suspended sorrow that sought silence, and in that silence he sought something from the world of which I can only guess.

      Dad was a believer, but seldom did he speak of prayer. Such a display of piety would have embarrassed him. At my mother’s urging, we attended a prayer meeting in the parish one weekend, a long prayer meeting. The pastor asked us to close by telling the group what we were most thankful for. My father said he was thankful the meeting was over. My mother was embarrassed, but I understood.

     What my father lacked in piety, he made up for in practicality. Fund raising was more befitting my father’s friendly fiber, his fraternal faith. When I asked him why he’d rather raise money than raise his voice in prayer, he told me a story. One Thanksgiving, when it was clear that there would be no food on the table, one of the priests gave Dad, then a young altar boy, a turkey and some potatoes to bring home for their celebration. He remained grateful throughout his life for the kindness and generosity of the church. Raising money for the less fortunate was his lifelong prayer of thanksgiving.

       Near the end of his life, as memory failed and speech waned, weakened with age and illness, Dad looked at me with a blank stare and said,  “I forget”. “What do you forget, Dad?”  “My prayers”, he whispered. On that day, I gratefully gave speech to the man who gave me life. God received my father’s prayers through his daughter’s words and a collaborative conversation between heaven and earth took hold. He squeezed my hand and winked when I said, “Amen”.

     Ed McDonough was buried in a navy blue suit with a tie that sported the shamrocks of his ancestry. My mother would have it no other way. My father’s people were Irish. They were people who gathered often for song and story, people who loved to laugh and loved to dream. But most of all, they loved each other. They sacrificed in ways I’m not sure my generation could.

   I grew up in a ten room tudor onLong Island. Unlike my father and his siblings, we never went without. Education was not a dream, but a way of life. My father’s children and grandchildren claimed the scholarships that once eluded him. I knew he felt great satisfaction in that. But I also knew that there were times when he felt he’d missed the mark.

      He need not have felt that way. I know now the limits of life, of what we are given and what we can give. He shared his wit, his warmth, and a worldly wisdom that exceeded his eighth grade education. He taught me how to skate, how to swim, and how to ride a bike. He coached my basketball team the year we took first place and then took us all out for ice cream. He gave me flowers for my graduation, and later that night, taught me how to dance, the way grownups do. He believed, and told me often, that my dreams were there for the taking. He was right. My dreams come true every day.   

      Men may be mortal and temporal, but fathers are eternal. They live forever in our thoughts and dreams, in our choices and in our children. Our lives are half theirs in some ways. Our laughter, our tears, sometimes they belong to the men we called Dad. At other times, it’s our silence that is theirs. In my most quiet moments, I’m hoping still to hear the grass grow.

     My brothers closed my father’s funeral with a traditional Irish blessing. He would have liked that. But my mind moved elsewhere. Meister Eckhart said that the only prayer one ever needs to utter is “thank you”. As they closed his casket on September 6, 1989, I knelt down one last time and whispered, “Thanks, Dad”.

    And then it happened. I watched a little white dot turn pink on a home pregnancy test and I was changed forever. I was different, because now I was home to a new creation, a person still smaller than the little pink dot in my hand. Tucked away deep inside of me, I held the secret of someone still unknown to the world. It was a secret shared only with God, so sacred that is was still unspoken.

    God and I had begun a relationship with someone who would not remember this time as I would. So I kept a journal. I wanted to pass the first memories of motherhood on to my daughter. I wanted my little girl to know that her life began long before I entered the delivery room.  

    I attended a Fourth of July celebration in my second trimester. When a firecracker exploded nearby, my daughter leapt inside of me. The bang had startled her. Yes, she could hear, she could kick and she could sometimes do somersaults. I wrote it all down.

    The perfect pain of labor was followed by a magical moment, a sacramental second when the doctor placed my newborn in my arms. Here was the secret I longed to see, the hint of heaven I longed to hold, God’s gracious gift who changed my life. This was the miracle of motherhood.

     Maternity came with a mindset all its own. I suddenly knew why a career placed a distant second to my daughter’s dimples and why a 3AM feeding beat a 9AM start time any day of the week. I understood why the coos and cries of an infant were so much more engaging than clever conversation by the water cooler. I instinctively understood why Isaiah compared God’s love to a mother’s love. I knew how Mary felt when she wrapped Jesus in swaddling clothes. Did she hear the angels heralding his birth with tidings of great joy? I’m sure I heard the angels singing when my baby was born. Heaven probably proclaims the birth of every baby, but the song sounded sweeter when it was mine.   

    The gospel of Luke tells us that Mary treasured all these things in her heart. I’m sure St. Luke was right, but here’s what he didn’t know. Mary, like most mothers, probably kept other treasures, too.  I’ll bet she kept a lock from her son’s first haircut, his first drawing, and his first pair of sandals. I’m sure she treasured the mustard seeds that Jesus planted in a little cup for her birthday or the first jewelry box that he nailed together in the carpenter’s shop. And then there was those little Hanukah presents that she never could throw away because they were given gladly by her only son. Each gift wrapped in sackcloth became a memory wrapped in fondness, a lingering thought of a little boy bursting with excitement as he handed her his gift. The man who would give his life for the world, gave his first simple gifts to Mom.  

   I’ll bet Mary made a mental note of “firsts” as I did. His first smile, his first tooth, the first word, and perhaps, most memorable, the first time Jesus slept through the night. These are the things that are remembered in a mother’s heart, in a mother’s way, that not even St. Luke could not have known about. 

     I understand scripture and salvation history in ways that I did not before someone called me Mommy. If I were going to write the story of God’s love for the world, I would probably use metaphors of motherhood as Isaiah did. Sure, some of the language has changed. Mary didn’t have a carseat or day care or college fund, but she did have a little boy who called to Mommy in the night and sought the comfort of his mother’s arms when he was hurt, or sick or had a bad day with the boys on the block.

     I’m living in the third millennium with women who have changed the world. Politics, journalism, medicine and law, everything is different. Except motherhood. I felt the pangs of childbirth no differently from Eve. I nursed my babies as Sarah nursed Isaac. I experienced the same primal tugs as the Levite woman who placed  her son, Moses,  in a basket. I felt a baby leap in my womb, just like Elizabeth. Women throughout the ages have not changed motherhood. They’ve been changed by motherhood. And for this, I am so deeply grateful.

        She was 22 when she was busted for prostitution and possession of a controlled substance. She decided to cut a deal with the D.A. in Atlanta. That’s how she ended up with me. She signed on as my informant.

       She was always high. She swallowed barbiturates with cheap bourbon and chased them both with a bottle of beer. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t want to know why, but it wasn’t mine to know. I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell and that seemed to suit us both.

      We worked the streets, a place where dealers and call girls had an understanding. They helped each other make a living, if you can call it that. I never could. I hated to be around it. I did what I had to do and went home. But Bobbie stayed. She turned tricks until another morning met her mauled and battered body. Daylight dragged her home, where she would rest, but not recover. She stayed in bed until night fell, as if she could only find significance in her work; the one night stands, or hour long encounters as the case may be. And yet she was a sweet girl whose sadness stayed just behind her soft smile. If the meek are blessed, then I was keeping company with holiness. I felt that sometimes, but the contradiction confused me.

      One night, when Bobbie wasn’t feeling well, she asked me to take her home. She pointed me toward a honey-colored house with a wrap around porch that sat on the street of a small southern town. I helped her up the stairs and on to the porch. She was fumbling for the keys when the door opened. “Hi, Mama. I missed you.”  A beautiful little girl wrapped herself around Bobbie’s legs.  “I missed you too, darlin’. How ‘bout you take Mama’s things while I fix myself a drink”.  Bobbie stumbled toward the couch. 

     “Pat, this is my daughter, Joy. This is my friend, Pat.”   I never thought of us as friends. We knew nothing of each other’s lives.  “Why don’t you come on in and have a piece of pie with us?  Smells like mama’s been bakin’ again.”    Sure enough, a pecan pie sat on the table as if to say, “Why don’t you sit a spell.”  So I did.  The little girl with the easy laugh climbed on my lap as her grandmother cut a piece of pie for me. She topped it with fresh cream and I felt like I was home.  We talked for a little more than an hour.  I heard about the church bazaar and the book club that the pastor’s wife had started. There were kittens born behind the barn that day and Joy lost her first tooth somewhere in a bowl of cereal. Or maybe she swallowed it. She wasn’t sure. We knew only that the night grew old and we all grew tired. I said good-bye and walked out onto the porch with Bobbie. It was long after little girls go to bed and older women welcome sleep that Bobbie began to speak in an unfamiliar tone. She said that her step father had been at her for years, for as long as she could remember.  He was a doctor. He was also the father of her child.  I never knew much more than that, only that when he died, his sins were unforgiven by a girl whose torment was still untamed. Prostitution is a profession kindled in childhood. It’s fueled by the feelings of abandonment that arrive when a little girl’s prayers go unanswered.  Did God not hear her pleas, the appeals of a child still too small to name the piercing pain that came night after night?  She wondered aloud.  I listened in silence, somewhat surprised that she still believed in God.  I wanted to leave, but I realized in that moment I had no where to go but into her sorrow.  I’m there still, sometimes trying to make sense of her shadows. The weight of abuse had accumulated through the years and I guessed that Bobbie’s feral history had forged her affinity to alcohol and drugs. She anesthetized an assault that came between a child and her childhood. One of Bobbie’s colleagues, as she liked to call herself, told me that sex abuse was boot camp for prostitution. The damage done in a baby’s bed could not be undone anymore than the unfulfilled promises of childhood could be reclaimed in adulthood.  Bobbie was without dreams.  Her lovers were unnumbered.  She wasn’t a good mother.  She was a whore.  She was also a sacrament of God’s grace, at least for me. The profanity of her life peeled away a layer of my life and I understood faith for the first time.  Bobbie’s faith brought no consolation. It was not a convenient faith that fell neatly into place every Sunday.  Through Bobbie, I met the faith that stood at Calvary, a confused faith that faced an empty tomb. There were no easy answers.

      It occurred to me that faith never transforms to our demands, but demands that we be transformed to understand life as it is, not as we wish it would be or wanted it to be. God can’t change the past and there are prayers that seem to go unanswered. But perhaps we can find the strength to look back and try to understand that there is nothing so sinful that cannot become a source of strength; there is nothing so secular that cannot become sacred. Perhaps that is the meaning of the Resurrection.

    Victor Frankl was a Jew who probably never read the gospel of John, but nevertheless, shared a similar theology with the evangelist.  Both Frankl’s story of Auschwitz and John’s story of Lazarus make a similar point.  Human beings are limited, but these limitations are often an occasion for us to recognize our capacity for a deeper and more mature faith.  Some of the human limitations that Frankl encountered while imprisoned in Poland are no different from the limitations that Jesus met in Bethany or from the limits that surround our own lives.  

   When Jesus arrives in Bethany, he is faced with an agonizing event.   Lazarus has been defeated by death. His siters,  Mary and Martha,  are grieving. Jesus himself is moved to tears.  We gain a remarkable insight here into a God who cries, who weeps with us because he is so intimately involved with our pain.

    Jesus directed those who surrounded the tomb to “take away the stone”.  He calls Lazarus out and then tells the unbelieving bystanders to “untie him and let him go free”.  Could the manner in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead be significant?  Surely Jesus, who raised a man from the dead,  could have removed the stone or loosened the linen strips that kept Lazarus bound.  But he doesn’t.  He invites others to participate in this life giving event.  He asks the community to help Lazarus conquer the experience of death, to free him of his bonds,  and help him walk away from his tomb.  I suspect that he asks the same of us two thousand years later.  He directs us to call each other out of the darkness of our tombs into the light of resurrection.

    God asks our help in making the experience of resurrection a reality in each other’s lives.  We are the ones who do the work of rolling away stones and loosening ties.  We are the ones who wipe away  tears and speak the words of consolation that bring God’s peace in times of turmoil.  We call each other out of our tombs through experiences of love, intimacy and affirmation.  Ultimately, we point each other toward the discovery of eternal life with God.

   Could the cave that entombed Lazarus be any different from Auschwitz?  The darkness, the coldness, the stench, the despair?  Could it have been any different from our own experiences of a tomb, whether they are brought on by illness, addiction,  loneliness, or depression?  Or perhaps we are entombed by experiences of self-absorption, consumerism, anger, or failure.

    How do we walk away from entombment?  Viktor Frankl concluded that it was through the experiences of love and faith. John’s gospel seems to suggest the same. We have within us the capacity to surpass our limitations and respond to God’s invitation to new life.  All we need do is recognize that we’re never alone, but loved deeply by the Risen Lord, a life-giving love that is nourished and more deeply understood within Christian community.  Perhaps that is the only way that we can ever hope to understand the Resurrection.