The Art of Opening to the Mystery:
"Ponder this….."
Psalm 130: 5-8, Luke 1:26-38, Matthew 1: 18-25
December 10, 2006 Second Sunday of Advent

The art of opening to the mystery
Fancy yourself an artist….for this is surely what each of us is…a life artist. The root meaning of the word "art" comes from "ar" means to join, fit together, to sense and articulate. All we are is about trying to join together the aspects of our lives so they fit…make sense…we seek to make sense of what is and what can be…which gets articulated it in all we do….consciously or not. Life is an art.

Opening to God is a life art. Before you can open, you have to be willing to open…. Be opened, willing to make a space for something new in our lives which often means letting go of something old…something that doesn’t fit…that keeps life from coming together and keeps us from articulating that which we really desire…really can be.

In these next weeks we explore the art, the nuances of being a human being standing in a new light, the light of Christ….and stepping into the mystery of how much God loves us….God loves you! …and what God is up to in each of our lives….your life! Last week the scriptures revealed to us the art of being stumped, how to stay rooted when cut down, cut off…how then new shoots can come from the old stumps of our lives…what seems to be dead in our lives/in us…if…we stay rooted in the deep, in the more.

And in today’s scriptures….
We hear the amazing stories of Mary and Joseph…of their opening to the mystery that is God with us. What did you notice about the art of opening from their stories?

I noticed they stayed rooted…didn’t panic…they engaged what was going on. Mary was perplexed and pondered and conversed with the angel. She asks good questions of the angel trying to make some sense of it all…and ultimately came to a place within where it was no longer about approaching the situation rationally, but about the possibilities of living into the mystery even without knowing where it would take her, yet without going ahead to "worry" about Joseph’s reaction and how it would be. She stays in the moment. Her soul waits.

Joseph considers…weighs the news from Mary…against the backdrop of his love for Mary… doesn’t over react…can you imagine that conversation…Mary to Joseph…and not reacting? Instead, he does his own pondering, staying true to his feelings, putting aside options the culture and even his faith may have allowed…he resolves…to resolve is to break up into separate constituent parts and reach a determination, a solution…a resolution….for Joseph one that honors his love, as best as he sees possible in those moments in which he ponders. And then what does he do? He sleeps on it. Everything looks different in the morning, right? And in this sleep, a dream, an opening, and an angel and an invitation grounded in a story he knew from his faith…guess knowing something of the stories of our faith helps us!

The art of opening: engaging what is, pondering, asking questions, not going ahead of the moment or of God, listening to others and self, weighing options and staying with what is true for you as you do, not reacting but responding…taking your time…letting your soul wait….and using your faith….what it is you say you believe…letting…it help you.

There was nothing easy or glamorous about it.....just precious. It took all Mary’s willingness and it took all Joseph's disciplined, sensitive strength to make it possible for Jesus to be born....and survive! It took courage. Courage is not an absence of fear, but a willingness to keep on in spite of outer terror or the inner, dark night of the soul as hope permeates our being. An art? To be religious/faith-full takes courage...in our unbelief. This is what I've found to be true: Believing is a process…a life-long process….an art of living.

Mary and Joseph ponder, leave rational decision making behind and enter into an enlightened, emotional awareness that doesn’t center on fixing the situation. All the planning, all the understanding in the world, can’t fix what’s wrong with their situation….with yours! Thinking won’t do it for them and neither will blaming or trying to understand or proving or justifying their situation. It doesn’t work for us either!

They have to go somewhere they’ve never been before…maybe you’ve been at this same intersection. The situation requires something very different of both of them. It requires them to blend their thinking with their feelings. It requires them to listen to that still small voice within, to the angel’s voice. And I have to imagine, it required them to listen to each other—thoughts, feelings, fears, beliefs, questions—to have real conversations. How rarely these happen!

To really converse, you have to go quiet and let the other share. To really converse, you have to go quiet and let God’s wisdom speak. You have to slow down…wait. Mary and Joseph not only believe in angels’ words, but in real and special ways, they come to believe in themselves and each other….believe in life…in the "more".

And so what should have been by all standards a disaster of a way to start a new life together, becomes, in an amazing way, the most wondrous gift ever given a man and a woman….not just the gift of Jesus…but the gift of deep love and trust in another…the gift of faith....hope in this day. This gives me hope for my life.…out of the hardest of realities often comes the most treasured reality….if I have faith in God’s present to me...God’s presence with me! There in that quiet that often feels awkward or empty…it is there God waits for me.

For there to be quiet, time to do any thing new in your life, it means you have to stop talking and even stop thinking….turn off the radio, turn down the schedule, turn away from babble. It is not a simple or easy way to go in life. In fact, you have to leave behind the usual plan for the usual day in order to open to a new thing happening.

Like Mary and Joseph, you must start living through what is and not what isn’t…not alone, but with the support of a faith community. They focus their attention on who is to be born and the possibilities that will be revealed to them. They focus on each other and not the situation. We would say…focus on the ministry and not on personalities, focus on what you want of your life and not on obstacles or fears, focus on what works not what doesn’t. Life need not be limited by any thing other than your holy imagination.

Even though for Mary and Joseph the way to new life is hard, full of bumps, no room in the inn even once they arrive…even though the hay was itchy, the animals were looking in on them, they experience peace—within themselves and for each other and through this babe in the manger. They never could have conceived of on their own what was born of them that night and changed the world forever.

We cannot conceive on our own either what will be born within us when we put fixing life and rational problem solving and control of situations aside long enough to open to our feelings and vulnerabilities, even our fears and our faith. We cannot conceive what will be born in us as we let quiet lead us to a beginning belief. God is with you if you will see, open….

The art of opening does require of you a desire to open…to get up off the couch of your life and begin to begin! It requires you to walk the talk….paint a new picture for this day…or sculpt it…dance it…sing it….to open to new possibilities….and angels.

Mary and Joseph….the first persons God approached to give birth to a new reality? Or, just the first who knew the art of opening to the mystery?