Hi, everyone!
Elephants are my favorite animals. I can’t explain exactly why, but there’s something about them that just speaks to me. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to see them in the wild a handful of times and there is something totally magical about them. Like many distinctive animals, I’m amazed at their very existence. How can something this massive not only be alive, but move through the world with such a high level of intelligence and emotionality? How can something with a nose and teeth that long seem so majestic? I find them truly phenomenal.
A few months ago, I got to introduce Mike to the experience of seeing elephants in the wild when we were on our honeymoon in South Africa. Because of the number of them in the game park where we were going, I was quite sure we would find them this time. Indeed, each day that we were in the park, we came upon a number of elephants…
… sometimes quite close by:
They were beautiful.
They were cute.
They were funny.
They were mesmerizing.
I loved every minute of it.
But it was our last morning there that we had an elephant experience unlike any I’d had before. We were driving down the road and we spotted a single bull elephant—one of the largest I’d ever seen—a good distance away.
As he approached, we reasoned that we could just reverse slowly to give him more space. No sooner had we said this, though, than another car pulled up behind us, leaving us stuck. We had no real choice but to sit quietly and hope that this massive creature wouldn’t become upset by our trespassing in his home.
I was in the driver’s seat, which in S. Africa is on the right hand side, and the window was rolled down. By the time I thought to roll it up, I didn’t want to disturb him with any motions or noises, so I just left it. Before I knew it, the bull was right next to us, and as he passed by, I just saw its giant eye watching me, keeping me in check, reminiscent of the t-rex from Jurassic Park.
(I was frozen and couldn’t actually take any photos at this point, so this is from Mike’s perspective.)
The rest of the day, I was surging with adrenaline. Even now, when I remember this moment, I return to this initial response:
I’ve been so fortunate to be able to be in truly breathtaking places in nature and have seen remarkable (and very dangerous) animals in the wild. I don’t know exactly why this was the encounter that did it for me, but I’ve never felt such an overwhelming mix of terror, awe, and relief. Though I probably couldn’t have reached out and touched him (considering most of the time, I can’t even reach the machine to take a ticket at a parking garage), the elephant could easily have reached his trunk into the car. Though we weren’t exactly in danger, we certainly weren’t safe.
Strangely enough, I’ve thought back to this experience a number of times as we’ve approached Advent this year, the time in the liturgical calendar when Christians anticipate Christmas and with it, the entry of God into the world in the person of Jesus. A few years ago, I came across two concepts which Christians believe to be simultaneously true of God: transcendent and immanent. God is transcendent in that God is beyond human understanding, not constrained to the limits of our experience. God is immanent in that God, through nature, through people, and most especially through Jesus, operates within human experience. I find this paradox—that God’s presence both pervades the world and exists beyond it—incredibly beautiful and endlessly compelling.
At Advent in particular, Christians tend to focus on the immanence of God, as we talk about the way that God became a baby born to a poor couple who had no real social or political power. We marvel at the way that the God of the universe comes to us in subtle, humble ways in our own lives, and we consider how God often speaks in small moments, in small places, through small people. I love these ideas. I eat them up. They are my spiritual bread and butter and they sustain me throughout the year in moments of self-doubt, God-doubt, or just general life-y struggle.
But this year, with the footsteps of that elephant still echoing in my memory, I have been challenged to remember the transcendence of God in the Christmas story. Like an elephant marching steadily toward you, the societal celebration of Christmas is impossible to miss, at least in places like the US where Christianity is the dominant religion. As every sale and holiday party and calendar makes clear, Christmas is coming whether we like it or not; we can’t just reverse away from it. But what if I saw God’s entry into the world a bit like this massive bull elephant—not just inevitable but unpredictable? Not just beautiful but risky?
I’m not saying that we should think that the Christmas story is about God entering the world to harm it. It’s very clearly the opposite. But how would my reading of Christmas change if I were to feel the same way about God approaching my life as I did with that elephant approaching our car? What if I was was profoundly aware, at a primal level, of my inability to reach out to God, but also of God’s ability—if God chose—to reach out to me? What if I felt the immensity, the power, the divinity of God’s presence? Would that make the simultaneous immanence of this story all the more powerful? What if I actually believed that as Christmas passes me by, my life could change in some irreversible way?
Christmas is upon us. For those of you who celebrate this time in one way or another, I certainly hope you feel a sense of closeness and comfort. But I also hope you feel some awe, some otherworldliness, some sense of the sacred.
Whatever and whenever you celebrate, I hope that 2019 ends well for you and that your 2020 opens with hope.
Sarah/Mouse
