Advent 2024 : 21

 

We experience fear – and, when this is acute or prolonged enough, trauma – both in and through our bodies. And we experience recovery from fear – and healing from trauma – both in and through our bodies. That is to say, it is embodied activity, as opposed to thought alone, that brings us to a place of emotional regulation.

Our birth, even if it is free of complications, is the original crisis, the original traumatic experience. When Mary delivered her firstborn son, she wrapped him in swaddling bands, confined him in strips of cloth against his skin, so that he is contained, so that he feels the pressure on his skin and registers safety.

Those of us who are neurodivergent often regulate our emotions through stimming, through repeated movements or micromovement, jiggling a leg or flapping a hand or rubbing a small object between our fingers. For others, whether neurodivergent or neurotypical, it might be knitting. Some forms of attempting emotional regulation are less healthy than others. In my society, alcohol is perhaps the most common form of self-medication, more a numbing than a regulating of emotion. Others, especially if you are middle aged and middle class, run. And/or do yoga or Pilates or go to the gym. Ironically, these things, too, can become an addiction.

I am a runner, an activity that helps to ground me in my body and resists the dominance of my highly active mind. But the winter months are hard for me, for various reasons, and my running fell off a cliff in mid-October. Having run only twice in November, and not much more this month, I went for a run last night. I attempted another, shorter run, this morning (back-to-back runs on a Friday night, Saturday morning, are not unusual for me) but had to bail almost immediately due to a pain in my knee I could not risk ignoring. Now home, I can feel the support holding my knee. And I have pulled on a jumper, slightly tight and with a fleecy lining. It feels like being held. It feels safe.

 

Advent 2024 : 20

 

‘What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil.’

Ecclesiastes 3.9-13

‘Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,

‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, “See, God, I have come to do your will, O God”
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).’

‘When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sin-offerings’ (these are offered according to the law), then he added, ‘See, I have come to do your will.’ He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’

Hebrews 10.5-10

Your body matters to the God who made it and gave it to you. And it is the will of God that we should experience bodily pleasure, in simple things.

On Tuesday, my son Noah went to the walk-in medical centre. They sent him on to A&E, who eventually told him that he needed to present himself at Day Of Surgery Admissions at 7.30 a.m. the following day, for an operation under general anaesthetic. (He is okay now; this story ends well.)

So on Wednesday I sat with him in Admissions until he was called, but then I had to go back to the church, where a full day of secondary school carol concerts awaited me. And to be honest, my mind was not on the job. I was hyper-alert to events unfolding elsewhere, events I could do nothing about. Keeping an eye on every development. By the time I was finally done with rehearsals, two concerts, and a drinks reception for staff, Noah was safely back home.

By Thursday afternoon, the events of the previous forty-eight hours had caught up with me. My body needed a break from its toil. And Noah’s body needed some gentle movement. He invited me to join him in a walk around our local fishing lakes, and I gladly accepted. Leaving ongoing business behind, we walked, slowly, pausing frequently to watch the swans, the mallards and pintails, the coots and cormorant, a herring gull in its first winter, the moorhens and jackdaws. To feel the cold on our faces.

And it was good.

 

Advent 2024 : 19

 

For five months, Elizabeth keeps her pregnancy secret. This is not confinement – when everybody knows, and social conventions come into play to make room for the expectant mother to prepare and then, for some time after giving birth, bond with her baby. This is concealment – no one can find out, for fear of envy (Mary was not the only woman with fertility issues) or miscarriage. And this meant hiding in plain sight – Elizabeth cannot afford any out of the ordinary action that might betray her condition to her neighbours. She goes about her business, as silent on the matter of her pregnancy as her situationally mute husband.

Five months of carrying a secret, five months of hiding in plain sight (the freeze response to fear) requires a hyper-vigilance that takes its toll on the body. After five months, it is a relief and a release to move, in such a way that your camouflage no longer blends perfectly with the background. To be out in the open, where, in fact, you were all along. Now Mary can come, quickly and purposefully, to her relative. Now Elizabeth can step into a safe space where she can relax. Where she can give to her body the love that it deserves, and her attention fully to the miracle unfolding within.

And what of you? Looking back over the last five months – say to late July 2024 – what secret fear have you carried in your flesh and bones, leaping across synapses and putting muscle fibres under strain? Now may be the time to let go. To pass up on the additional burden of social expectations – of presents to buy and parties to attend and relatives to visit – and to enter into a holy confinement. To return to your own body, as the snow melts into the ground.

To come home.

 

Advent 2024 : 18

 

In the days of Elizabeth, pregnancy and childbirth were conceived as bearing fruit. The fruit of a woman was her children. And Elizabeth is barren. Her life is fruitless. Regardless of the love she shares with Zechariah, regardless of the life they have made together and all the good that has flowed between them and through them to the world around them, she carries within herself the shame of infertility. Shame tells us that we are not worthy of love, not worthy of connection with others. In the dark it grows bigger within us, as does a foetus, ironically. And it keeps our body on edge, alert to the fact that at any moment someone else might discover just how unworthy of love we understand ourselves to be.

When Elizabeth conceives John, she declares that the Lord has taken away the shame she has endured.

The antidote to shame is empathetic connection. Mary sets out, is determined to go to Elizabeth in her confinement. The Lord might have taken away her shame, but in the isolation of confinement – intended as a precious gift of space for the expectant mother – shame might easily return. There are times when solitude is essential, life-giving to the driven soul; but for someone in recovery from shame, isolation can be a killer.

When Mary comes to Elizabeth, there is an immediate connection, between them, between the children in their wombs. Even so, Elizabeth can’t quite see herself as worthy: who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?

Mary sings a song of revolution, of a changing of the world. A song of those who are nobody in their own eyes being shown honour by God. A song of such people finding solidarity, finding connection, with others like them. These are the conditions in which the body might be cleansed of its shame. And Mary sings this song over Elizabeth before anyone else gets to hear it. And then she stays with her for three months, just to underline the point.

These days approaching Christmas and into the new year, when many step back from their place of work to spend time with loved ones, can be difficult (not only but not least) for those who carry shame (which is pretty much everybody you will ever meet, by the way). How might we be present to one another, in ways that affirm, ‘You are worthy of love and connection’?

 

Advent 2024 : 17

 

At some point in Elizabeth’s third trimester, her relative Mary, in her own first trimester, comes to stay. She will remain with Elizabeth until around the birth of John, and then return home.

The two women laugh; wonder at the unexpected way their lives have turned out; sing revolutionary songs about the overthrowing of the Roman Empire (which itself had not so long ago overthrown the Roman Republic; which in its time had taken control of the Levant, establishing client rulers in Judea [Judea and Idumea] and the Decapolis [Galilee and Samaria] under Syria under Rome).

They probably also orchestrated practical arrangements within Elizabeth and Zechariah’s home. But they undertook no public facing duties. Someone else would have to fetch water from the well. Someone else would have to say their prayers at the synagogue: they would pray in the temple of the home, and commune with God in the Holy of Holies of their wombs, in which the salvation plan of the sovereign Lord was being fleshed out.

Sometimes what the world needs from you is your unavailability.

This Christmas, how might you be more Mary and Elizabeth?

 

Advent 2024 : 16

 

There is a story in the library we know as the Bible about the prophet Elijah. He has managed to make an enemy of the queen, who has called for his assassination.

In fact, Elijah will evade death, not only death by politically motivated murder but death itself, instead being carried up to heaven in a low-swinging chariot pulled by flying horses. Or at least so the story goes. And in the space he left behind a rumour sprung up that one day he would return. Centuries later, Jesus will call John the Baptizer ‘Elijah, who comes [back]’ and like Elijah, John will make an enemy of a queen and, unlike Elijah, be executed and have his head presented at a banquet on a platter. I don’t know what your Christmas table decorations are like, but you’d have to go a long way to top that.

Anyway, Elijah. Elijah flees into the wilderness, until exhaustion – as when adrenalin spikes and crashes – catches up with him, and he sleeps. But after a while, an angel, a messenger sent by God, wakes him, having prepared him food to eat. Once Elijah has eaten, he is encouraged to sleep once more, and then woken again to eat another meal. For he must continue on his journey into the wilderness, to meet with God, and he will need the gifts of sleep and of food to sustain him.

Chances are high that the government does not have a price on your head. But chances are also high that you may be in danger of losing your head, at least metaphorically, and if not now at some point. And for many, the additional expectations around Christmas – including special, celebratory, meals to plan, prepare, and eat – can prove burdensome. Wearying.

You were not made for this. Food is given to nourish and sustain us, not only within our bodies but in the connections between our bodies, the social space which holds at least some of our memory. And when you can eat in a celebratory fashion, do. Whether that is on the 25 of December, or some random Thursday in July. But when it is too much, be gentle with yourself. Be kind, and gracious, generous, hospitable to the weary guest who is yourself besides yourself with overwhelm. Make room for one another, including, if you can, those who need a little more than beans on toast. Within family dynamics, this can require a lot of give and take. May God give you the grace to give what you can and take what you need.

 

Advent 2024 : 15

 

The Church of England’s theme for Christmas this year is Calm and Bright, words taken from the carol Silent Night. Calmness and brightness are images that belong with the parasympathetic nervous system that is meant to kick in when present danger is past. They are associated with the hormone oxytocin, which plays a part in protecting the new mother’s body from excessive bleeding, in the stimulation of milk production, and in the social bonding of mother and child. And because every person is different, every birth has its own unique experience of oxytocin, of calmness and brightness welling up or somehow being quenched.

But these feelings, that may be experienced by the body, are also experienced by the mind. In the aftermath of childbirth and having been visited by the shepherds with their tales of an angel army proclaiming peace, Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. Whereas the treasure that had been held in her womb had now been brought out for the world to see, Mary builds up a new treasure in the warm darkness of another inner chamber. She will return to them many times over the years to come, and not least in times of external and cold darkness. Fleeing to Alexandria. Standing at the foot of the cross. In times when anxiety rises within her, she will quell the storm. And also, in times of joy. In the family home at Nazareth. At a wedding in Cana.

Calm is a regulation of our emotions, such that we can ride the waves, neither tossed about by crashing breakers nor stuck in a doldrum. And we can adopt practices that grow our ability for calm, as non-anxious people.

This morning, I sat in the darkness with Mary, allowing my eyes to grow accustomed to the light – for there is light, even in darkness – and breathing slowly and deeply. Just for a few short minutes, before moving into my day.

What practices help you to be calm and bright?