A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on December 4th, 2007 in Progressive Faith

Today is the Chanukkah.

It’s also the third day of Advent – and the focus is on the creche. “Creche” is an odd word – and according to dictionary.com, it can mean “a public nursery for infants where they are cared for while their mother is at work” or “a hospital for foundlings (infant children of unknown parentage) are taken in and cared for”. Of course, it’s also a representation of the manger scene.

Much has been said about the manger being the birthplace of a king – how it shows the humility with which Jesus approached his station that he was willing to be born in the lowest, filthiest place on earth. I’ve cared for sheep and I’ll go along with that. The lanolin on sheep’s wool carries dust and dirt and whatever they rub against back into their bedding. Plus there is the natural presence of manure, urine, and other animal products. It isn’t the kind of place most women would rush towards to have their baby.

But if it’s all you have…

But on the other hand, this manger – this stall in a filthy barn – is also part of God’s world. It doesn’t take a scenic mountain to make this old world beautiful, it just takes the ability to look at it with wonder. I used to think that cotton fields were beautiful (that’s all I had to look at), and I can still see a harsh beauty in the growing stalks, the pink and white flowers, the fluffy white bolls, and even the dead stems that remain after the stripping. That is life, in all its phases, each one offering a different gift to the world around it.

I have to search, sometimes, to find beauty in this city. But it’s there, if I open my heart. I used to walk home from the PATH station after working second shift and several times saw the Catholic Church on the other side of the park shrouded in snow-filtered lights. On the way out of our front door the other day, I showed my son a woodpecker (he wasn’t impressed). Every time I come home from my sister-in-law’s house I can see the Empire State Building reaching towards the sky. It isn’t the same beauty from my childhood, but it is beauty just the same.

And, of course, even as the people offer opportunity to infuriate and frustrate us, they also offer the opportunity to open our hearts and be beautiful to someone else. I noticed a homeless man sitting on a neighbor’s stairs when I came home from the store last night, and he was still sitting there, shivering in the cold, two hours later when my wife took out the garbage. I took one of my old coats off of the hook on the door and she warmed up some pasta and made a sandwich. She stuck two juice boxes in the pocket and I tucked a twenty into it as well. I don’t know who he was and he never said anything, just waved a hand when I called to him. When I took the rest of the trash out a while later, he was gone. I don’t know if he ate anything we gave him or if he spent the twenty on a cheap bottle.

I don’t kid myself that I made any kind of difference in his life in any long-term sense. But I made a difference last night.

Maybe that’s miraculous enough. After all, it isn’t just children that need the rest of us to help look after them.

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