by KPB Stevens

We four climbed the mountain, and He was changed,
changed like the flaws made by freeze
and thaw as it cracks the walls of a church,
since change breaks all that we struggle to contain.
Change is raw, it weeps and seeps and breaks
the load-bearing law, and brings us, the remaining three,
to creep on painful knees. It is a riot, and the sorrow after,
flowers sprung from blood and cadaver,
and the innocent hung on crosses as the world comes undone.
The earth spins around the sun, gates and graves
open again, seasons change and stay the same.
I see it now, down on my knees – God will always
remain one, standing still, ever-flowing, never done,
and we will change from this moment, this revelation,
constant, and spinning, and gone again.

Illumination

On Saturday, we discovered that the ice had cracked the mosaic above the door of the church and sent the tesserae falling down. On Monday, I went to a rally, clergy gathering to defend the immigrants from Haiti who had been invited to a small Ohio town to help revive the economy and now might be told to leave again. We were asked to reflect on the change we’d like to see, and I found myself resisting the question. As my colleagues got up to answer, I stayed seated, not knowing if I could say what I really wanted to say. Which is that true change cannot be predicted. And that focusing on the future and trying to force it into our visions of what it might be is not an exercise in embracing change.

God refuses to be contained, even by our visions of the future. When Peter, James, and John went up on the mountain with Jesus, they were bewildered by change and desired to build a structure for it. But change sets itself against our structures. Laws, constitutions, contracts, agreements – these are all mechanisms for trying to evade change or, if it comes, manage it. Perhaps they’re necessary for human life. But as I sat among the clergy, I was of two minds. I wanted to embrace the efficacy of the law, the long, slow lope of managed change, and I wanted to see it overcome entirely. That is, after all, the story of our faith. Peter, James, and John will live through crucifixion and resurrection, and those two events will establish a great pattern of change that will repeat, like the seasons, throughout the centuries. And yet, even that pattern will be managed by the church that these three apostles help to establish. Christians will be told that the cycles of death and rebirth can be contained in creeds and rituals, and we will lose our sense of shock, our distress, our agonized need to find meaning in the incoherence of crucifixion and the ineffable nature of resurrection. So we will come to this moment, where we cannot imagine the chaos of real change, and when we speak of it, we will only be able to evoke the patterns of the past.

As a priest, I love ritual and I can tolerate creed. But these things only point to the transfigured moment, when divinity reveals itself as constant and at the heart of things. My faith must move beyond its sheltered crouch at the heart of the spinning, that place at the core where the dizziness can be managed. Somehow I must bring myself to venture out to the edge of the vortex, where ideas collide and the potential for pain and hurt is ever-present. I can stay cowering in my church. But the cold of winter is breaking the walls. As if it wants to tell me that I must embrace my fear and go outside and seek the danger of the cross. Which is the danger of covenant. Of forever wanting to embrace God’s changeless love and forever wanting to face, bravely, the collapse of this current world.

The fish is in the sea  
and the sea is in the fish,  
so that every muscle,  
every organ, floats in brine.

I breathe in the chill,   
right air of the morning  
and oxygen binds into molecules,  
unites my body to the world.

Beloved, by what element  
does my soul gather in the divine?  
What part of my past, what hope,  
is made whole by mysteries

that expand everywhere   
and lay curled within me,   
beyond me,  
both of and not of the world?

Illumination

I was taught, as a priest, to value the intellect’s way of knowing. But there are other ways of knowing. The body knows in its own way. The emotions know — they laugh their knowing, they weep their knowing. If theology is the thoughts we think about God, we need other theos. Theophysicality. Theoemotionality.

I wrote this poem within a moment of bodily amazement. The atmosphere we move through is also within us, and our physical selves are merely membranes that air enters and pushes out from again. More than that, our matter binds itself to the air, so that we dissipate in our environment, just as our environment permeates to the deepest level of our being.

And God? If God pervades the atmosphere, is everywhere, than this permeability must be part of our relationship with the divine. How do we experience this? Maybe through memory. Maybe through hope. Those words seem inadequate. Some emotion, some sigh too deep for words, fills us and breathes out into the divine.

I see my reflection in the polished gold of my gift,
like a priest staring down into a chalice.
I shine from the side of the scrolled box,
and looking at myself is like looking at the sky,
at the part of me that lives above,
always close to the goodness of God,
always trying to choose, with me,
good thoughts, good words, good deeds.

I am, like all of us, a reflection,
a small encapsulation of my most full self,
sent here, like all of us, to journey, to love, to delight.
Above, I abide like a steward, keeping my eternal house.
Why bring a gift, why follow a star? What is it that I hope for?
To turn, always, away from hate,
from falsehood, deceit, chaos and decay.
I am not alone. My heavenly self walks through stars,
does what is good, thinks well, speaks a generous word.

We will come together at my death,
myself and my reflection in this gift.
We will be judged together on a bridge.
Let it be wide, and easy to cross.
Let my death be full of song.
I have brought my gift to a holy one.
I kneel with it. The echo of my face is lifted
into his holy mother’s arms.
She knows that I’ve sometimes been complicit
in the world’s harms. Still, like the maiden on the bridge,
she will lead me to the House of Song.

Illumination

It would happen to me every Sunday, if I looked. I would see my face reflected in the chalice as I hover over it, praying and memorializing the Last Supper. Myself, distorted in polished silver.

But would I see my whole self? I’ve been reading about Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Three Magi who follow the star to the manger in Bethlehem. Zoroastrians believe in “vertical dualism.” They believe that the cosmos is divided into two camps. The good camp, full of truth, order, kindness, and decency, is presided over by Ahura Mazda. The evil camp, full of falsehood, chaos, cruelty, and self-service, is presided over by Angra Mainyu. Human beings can choose which camp to belong to, and we do so by our daily actions, following Ahura Mazda by engaging in good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, or following Angra Mainyu by engaging in lies, slander, and cruel and self-serving acts. The great cosmic battle is fought every day through individual choices.

Zoroastrians conceive of the self as two separate but always connected entities, at least during our sojourn through this life. When we are born, we separate into the fravashi and the urvan. The fravashi remains in the heavens, while the urvan is sent into the mortal plane. Doug Metzger writes that this process is “like a space station dispatching a scouting craft to earth, reuniting with that craft some time later, and sharing information about what was discovered down on the planet.” This is not a punishment, or a fall. Creation is good and full of delights. The urvan get to sample these delights, and their sojourn here will be joyful as long as they remain aligned to Ahura Mazda and engage in good thoughts, good words, and good deeds.

The magi follow their star, and as they walk over the hills and through the valleys, as they cross the rivers and mountain ranges, they are engaging in good works. They are not spiritual wanderers looking for something to latch onto. They live and act within their own story world, and their actions reflect their beliefs, not ours. If the star is leading them to the baby Jesus, it is because they can understand his birth from within their own context.

For them, he is a  saoshyant, a divine herald of the day of judgment. Born of virgin mothers, saoshyants appear at different moments of history and stand beside Ahura Mazda in the battle against Angra Mainyu. The great cosmic battle ends when the saoshyant sacrifices a bull, ending the last judgment and ushering in the time of peace and beauty that will follow. For the magi, Jesus ends judgment, ends the strife and terror of our moral struggles. He is one of many saoshyants, but that doesn’t diminish his holiness or make the journey to visit him less important.

I have found much solace in this religious understanding, and it does no harm to my own deep Christian belief. Life can be very hard. St. Paul wrote that when we try to do good, evil lies close at hand. Our good thoughts, good words, and good deeds often go unnoticed or unappreciated. Or they are manipulated, and used for evil ends. Or they seem small and unimportant when the world is writhing in pain. I must be reminded that the smallest act of kindness, the rising of compassion within my mind, even when I’m angry, the saying of a word of comfort at a bleak moment, has cosmic value, is its own small defeat of evil.

It gives me solace to think of the self as multiple and good. For awhile now I’ve followed Walter Brueggeman in thinking of the self as a covenant of many personas. We all have playful selves, wounded selves, competitive selves, creative selves, hopeful selves, lamenting selves. We are multifaceted. A covenanted self, to borrow Brueggeman’s phrase, is a balancing act between these many facets. We act differently in different situations. We allow different selves to lead in different contexts. I have a sexual self and a church self, a counseling self and partying self. I live by a covenant in which the sexual self does not show up at church, the partying self does not show up when I’m at a death bed. Every facet of my personality needs an outlet, needs a moment to be in charge. I tend to my soul by going to a party or being intimate with my spouse, and by praying and celebrating at the altar, walking hospital hallways and giving last rites. All of it matters. There is no essential self or “authentic” self. There is only covenant.

Yet there is also, often, a feeling of homesickness. As if there are facets of who I am that simply are not present in this world. The Zoroastrian categories of fravashi and urvan help me to make sense of that homesickness. My heart is restless until I rest in God. There is great solace in allowing the thought that part of me already is at rest within the presence of the divine.

At the end of life, Zoroastrians believe that the fravashi and the urvan are reunited at the foot of the Chinvat Bridge, the bridge that leads into the afterlife. They begin to cross the bridge. If they have cultivated good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, the bridge will be wide and they will be met by a beautiful maiden who will lead them into the House of Song, where divinity waits to embrace them. My poem ends with Mary taking the role of the maiden. The magi who narrates my poem knows that he has, sometimes, failed, despite his best efforts. Yet as his gift is lifted into Mary’s arms, he finds his reassurance. He sees his face reflected in the gold of his gift. His fravashi and urvan anticipate their reunion. Such solace is worthy of any voyage, no matter how arduous.

Now this world’s mind
finds the strangeness of angels
and the snow, trampled in the streets,
relearns the clarity of the sky.
Stars flame in plates of food,
and the claims of bodies,
abused by years of walking,
scarred from work, are made good.
The whole town is angel-dressed,
and all the people are astounded.
Each neighbor wears a different face,
each is arrayed in startling clothes.
Choirs sing from a cow’s dull chewing,
an ox stamps the ground
with a rhythm that only God knows.
We are matter, living selves, really here.
Yet the infant in the manger
brings the angels near.
They are stranger than we hoped,
they stare with many eyes
and roiling galaxies drape their mouths.
The universe astounds with its complexities.
Language abandons all words of praise.
Fall on your knees!
A star explodes where the baby lays,
a Word is summoned through his sleeping form.
The world will never be the same.
We learn to cry like angels.
We learn a new silence.
We adore.

Illumination

John’s Gospel speaks of the incarnation without ever mentioning the manger, the baby in swaddling clothes, the cows and donkeys, the shepherds, the adoring mother and father. God comes into the world as a Word, and although John speaks of flesh, he offers no specificity, as if flesh and language are both equally abstract. No nativity scene can capture his conceptualizations. If we were to follow John’s descriptions and try to put something in the bed of straw in a carefully carved creche, we would quickly realize the limits of our imagination. What small wooden carving or porcelain figurine could represent a word, a light, fleshiness in its pure and unsullied form?
John is referencing the first creation story in Genesis. Again and again, God uses words to create order out of chaos. John would like Jesus to be that chaos denying utterance. Jesus might be a riverbank that holds in the flood waters, a house that remains standing after an earthquake. He might be a ritual, or a harvest season, or a covenant. His flesh comes to represent whatever might help to keep the terrors at bay, whatever gives us a sense of rest and peace. The manger becomes the world, its comforts extended into any setting.
Yet it’s never domesticated comfort. Strangeness is always part of the sense of order. The angels, the seraphim and the cherubim, are composite creatures. Their six wings, their incandescence, their many faces, their wheeling eyes, all contain features from a multitude of beings. If the Word is austere in its abstraction, the angels are lush with description. Both angelic multiplicity and a simplicity that is near to emptiness are used to describe the divine incursion into creation.
A true manger scene might require that we allow the weird into our understanding of the incarnation. Even words will fail eventually. There is something ineffable in the experiences of the people and animals that gathered in the stable. How often we forget their astonishment. How often we forget that they lose themselves in wonder, that they enter states of ecstasy.

If anyone objects to this union
let them know that I will not touch you
until the child is born.
Let no one say that he is mine,
and not the offspring of a vision.
Everyone will look at us strangely.
They will whisper “his new wife
has seduced him with her ecstasies,
he is enticed by mania.”
Even my friends will say
“You are not yourself.
She has changed you.
You are not who you were to me.”
And I will say, “The wind blows where it will.”
I will say, “It’s a different kind of love.”
They won’t believe me.
So I might make recourse to angelic visitations.
I might claim that I received a commanding dream.
But really it was your face when you told me.
The fragile certainty in your gaze.
The way you often look beyond me
to some horizon I cannot see.
The gentle specificity
with which you do everything –
knit a blanket for the cot,
let onions fry in the bottom of the pot.
I am a man who measures twice,
who is careful with a join.
But you are careful beyond all belief,
as if everything is alive, is fragile, as if
the whole world is an infant
pleading for your care.
I am already seeing with your eyes.
Let all others stare.

Illumination

A friend told me about a cathedral in Europe that has a pillar carved with a depiction of the Three Magi arriving at the stable in Bethlehem. They are on one side of the pillar. St. Joseph sits on another side, pouting. A similar image is displayed at the Met Cloisters. Joseph, sitting with his eyes half-closed, resting a cheek on a fist. Is he unhappy? Indifferent? Just sleepy? Two of the magi adore Mary, who sits with a damaged carving of the infant Christ in her lap. Time and, perhaps, vandalism, has removed her nose, making it hard to read her expression. Her eyes, also, are half-closed.
The medieval mind was not the first to relegate Joseph to the sidelines and offer some sly commentary about his place in the story. The Gospels themselves present him as a kind of upright dullard, willing to do the right thing without bothering to have much of an opinion about it. His marriage to Mary is never cast in a romantic light. He’s older than she is. He’s offering his protection, helping her out. It’s easy to imagine that he’s patronizing, that he seeks the economic arrangement of a family without seeking love.
I want to subvert this image. I want Mary to have more impact on his life, to be an active player in the small drama of their marriage. If we imagine him actually falling in love with Mary, then we also must spend time wondering about the qualities in her that drew his affections. I refuse to see her as a kind of puppy in the snow, a waif in need of a savior. I don’t want him to love her in a way that feeds his ego.
My poem is an attempt at reversing our assumptions. What if it is Mary, and not Joseph, who guides and shapes the relationship? The angel appears to her first. It is her great “yes” that leads to the incarnation. That “yes” must have been infectious. It must have given her a deep charisma. If we exalt her, why wouldn’t Joseph exult her as well? Let us imagine that he falls in love with her vision. That he is a disciple to her teachings.
Those teachings might be mostly domestic. She doesn’t get up on a box in the public square and start declaiming. She doesn’t start healing people or casting out demons. She knits. She cooks. She prepares the nursery. She offers these simple acts as forms of healing, of protection. The savior of the world will be safe within the sphere of her labor and influence. She will be a good mother.
And she will teach Joseph to be a good father. He can still be a simple man. He won’t write a book, or sing a majestic song. He won’t petition the king or collect a band of followers who will go with him as he makes his daily rounds. He’ll make good furniture. He’ll be careful and attentive in his relationships. He’ll pay attention to dreams, and learn to see the world as Mary sees it.
It is enough. It is beautiful. It is the kind of marital love that anyone would be happy to have.