the soul felt its worth

"Long lay the world / in sin and error pining / 'til he appeared / and the soul felt its worth."

Still my favorite.  I cannot get enough of this song.  I even listen to the Christmas song radio session, suffering through the likes of “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime” in case they play “O Holy Night” next.

“The soul felt its worth”

I’m writing this from 30,000 feet, on my way home for Christmas.  As we took off, I noticed that I was terrified.  That’s typical for me except that last year, I remember feeling that if the plane crashed, I would really be okay with that.  No fear.  Whatever.

“Appeared” and “Felt”

Past tense.  I love that.  Jesus has already appeared, has already helped us to make sense of the worth of our souls.  Reminds me of the Magnificat, Mary’s prayer upon learning of her pregnancy.  She praises a God who has already brought justice to our world – an audacious and almost praise given the continuing injustices in her world and in ours.  Her past tense praise claims an absolute faith in God’s intention to keep God’s promise to us – that we are Good and that God wants to be with us and wants to work with us to bring us in to closer relationship with God.

Mary’s prayer reflects and moves beyond Hannah’s prayer on the occasion of her own conception of Samuel, centuries before Mary lived.  Hannah finishes her own past-tense praise with a reiteration of her faith in God’s promise to the people of Israel; Mary finishes her prayer with the assertion that God’s promise extends to all people.  I went on and on about this here.

And Mary’s and Hannah’s past-tense prayers are reflected in “O Holy Night,” written in 1847.  And Mariah Carey killed it in 1994.  I mean am I right or am I right.

“Long lay the world / in sin and error pining”

Laying versus pining.  One passive, the other more active.  Both demonstrations of hopelessness.

I talked with Theon recently about a sermon on waiting that he was working on.  So difficult, he said, because it doesn’t seem like a time to wait.  I know what he means.  Each time I hear about another atrocity committed against Black folks by the state.  They executed Mario Woods.  He raped thirteen Black women. I want the world to change right now.  I so identify with the compulsion to break some fucking windows.  But the way that change happens is so much more annoyingly slow than that.  And I don’t just mean generation-by-generation.  I mean that right now, organizing a protest means sending out emails ahead of time, making phone calls, strategizing about where and when – all activities that matter to be sure but don’t exactly quench the urge for intense emotional release.  Even attending the protest, shouting and marching.  It matters, but nothing changes in the moment of the marching.  We gotta wait. 

We gotta lay there in our “sin and error.”  Sin is such a blaaaaaghhh word.  Ron always asks us to understand “sin” as“missing the mark,” as inadequately demonstrating the Goodness that God created in us.  So yeah, I sin.  Sometimes intentionally – and sometimes accidentally, in “error.”  We just lay there.  I just go to bed and sleep for hours and hours because I don’t have the energy, physical or mental, to face the world.  The afternoon that I learned of my banishment from the prison, I left work early, went to bed, and didn’t get up until two days later.

But we also pine.  We do organize those protests.  I did meet with the warden and get myself back in.  Waiting is not essentially passive.  We can actively wait.

Theon used Romans’ acknowledgment of our groaning in his sermon.  When we groan, we lay there and we try to pine, but we can’t find the words, the energy, the effective strategies.  We try and yet sometimes all we can manage is to groan, and God hears our groaning.

“O Holy Night.” 

The darkness, it’s still holy.

Donna told me a couple of weeks ago, as I feared aloud that I could feel the lowness setting back in, that it could take over again: Use the hopelessness.  Write about it.  Let it teach you.

At Bible study this week, a year from my first time at Bible study, we read again the story that we read and I wrote about last year.  This year, what struck me was the genocide caused by Jesus’ entry into our world.  He appeared, and the soul felt its worth, and Herod had all of the Jewish baby boys slaughtered, and the mothers weeped.

We got a genocide, and we got a baby.  And we’re supposed to accept that the baby is it.  That’s so hard.  They keep killing Black people.  They keep raping women.  They keep demonizing immigrants.  They keep refusing refugees.  And we get a baby.

Sara from Bible study collected money last week so that we could send baby toys and some cards to women incarcerated in the private prison up the street.  They’re there because they’re either in the last months of their pregnancy or somewhere in the first three months of their babies’ lives.  I can’t imagine.  We get a baby, and we get an incarcerated mother.  I’m not okay with that.

But we gotta wait.  And he’s already appeared.