Hello, Everyone!
Welcome back to my weekly weblog turned annual Advent reflection! As I mentioned in my last letter (which, incidentally, I posted around this time last year), Advent is the one thing that will cause me to write, no matter how busy or overwhelmed by life I may be. I think it’s partly because this time leading up to Christmas Day is so rich with meaning that each year, I am astounded at a different aspect of the season. This year, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a human.
Frankly, the past twelve months have not been the easiest for me, and there have been multiple moments when I’ve felt inundated by a veritable deluge of responsibilities, personal struggles and life decisions. For much of this year, being a human has felt incredibly difficult. A lot of my creative writing involves animals, and as such, I spend a fair amount of time imagining what it would be like to be an antelope, or a pelican, or a platypus. And to be honest, as I’ve tried to figure out what my life is going to look like in the next few years, the prospect of being an antelope has occasionally sounded pretty good. Antelope just wake up naturally, probably having gotten approximately enough sleep. They eat some grass and maybe go to the water hole. In the afternoon, they may run away from a cheetah or two. They might get eaten by a cheetah. If not, they maybe eat some more grass. It’s a relatively simple existence. Sure, their life expectancy is a little low and basically everyone except the grass wants to eat them, but they don’t have to figure out whether to get a PhD. Or who to spend their lives with. Or what a head gasket does.
And yet, as I’ve wrestled with these issues and others, I’ve tried to make my motto, “the antelope don’t get this.” Certainly, I reasoned, there are good things about being human that antelope and other animals don’t get to experience. To remind myself, I asked some of the kids in my class “What is your favorite thing about being a human?” There were some predictably helpful responses:
“Being a puppy.”
“Hm… pirate.”
“Playing with Santa.”
“When I do this: [demonstration of an intense jumping jack exercise].”
“Having my mom and dad.”
“Eat. Play. Sleep.”
“Holding a baby.”
One of my favorite things about working with people who are still discovering the perks of their humanity is that it reminds me of the joys of mine. But this year, I’ve also been reminded that even the most challenging parts of being a human are gifts of sorts. Even things like struggling to find your own unique purpose in an ever-complicating world, or figuring out how to be friends with someone when one or both of you are going through a big life change, or determining how to live through those moments when it feels like you’re doing more harm than good in the world. Even things like losing someone you love, or gaining someone you need to learn to love.
And I promise, I don’t mean to be glib. Calling a deeply difficult experience a “gift” doesn’t make it any easier. Positive thinking can be helpful, but not if we’re using it to lie to ourselves. And yet, I’ve been learning that the hardest parts of being a person are some of what distinguish us as a species. I firmly believe that there are so many aspects of animal existence that we don’t yet understand, and it could well be that there are more social, emotional and behavioral links between humans and other creatures than we now know of. Even so, it is safe to say that humans get to do and think and say things that the vast majority of the species on our planet never get the chance to do and think and say.
In short, it is a profound honor to be a human.
And that brings me back to Advent, a time spent preparing for and remembering the greatest honor ever paid to people. Because when God decided to enter His creation, becoming not just the Maker, but the Made, he didn’t become an antelope. Or a puppy. He became a human.
We are told in the first chapter of the Gospel of John that the Word of God became human flesh. This is crazy. In other religions, gods make humans. Or they punish and reward them. They sometimes even marry them. But they don’t become them. That’s scandalous and foolish. So why do it? Why would a god with all power and knowledge choose to limit Himself like this?
Richard Rhor talks about what God’s entrance into humanity means for us when he says, “Love in its mature form always creates some level of equality between giver and receiver. That may seem totally impossible with God, but that gap is exactly what is overcome by God being “personal” and is why the Christian notion of God’s great self-emptying (kenosis) in a personal Jesus is such a huge gift to our humanity. Jesus reveals that the give and take of human and divine is utterly possible precisely because he became human and personal.”
God empties Himself into the world He created, specifically into humans. Christmas thus leads to two equally stunning revelations: If God is human, then 1.) God is in me and 2.) God is in others; I have no choice but to recognize Him in other humans.
Recent national and world events have demonstrated that after all these millennia, we are still asking each other what it means to be human. Who can be called human? Who gets to be treated humanely? What Christians believe about God’s radical, scandalous, foolish advent into the world determines the answers to these questions. Christmas demands that we respond with what Rhor calls a mature love, an equal love. My two favorite lines from the Christmas carol “O Holy Night” are “He appeared and the soul felt its worth,” and “Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease.” We can’t consider Christmas seriously without also understanding the intrinsic worth of all people.
I must conclude that my student is right: one of the best parts of being human is holding a baby because it reminds us that God allowed Himself to be held. So as exhilarating as running from cheetahs undoubtedly is, I have to say again, “the antelope don’t get this.”
I’m so grateful I do.
Merry Christmas and Happy Advent to those of you who celebrate this season, and to everyone, have a great year!
Sarah/Mouse
