We Are God Bearers

Christmas exclaims that Time
is an ever-expanding universe of arrival.

Christ has come,
Christ is coming,
Christ will come again.

Above and among,
Beyond and beside,
God stuns with sacred presence.
Abstract and adnate,
Boundless and bodied,
God surprises with sudden reverence.

In this universe of Christmas,
Time accelerates with increasing, expansive speed, and
Time slows with easing, pensive stillness.
Advent jumbles all eras of time together,
Collapsing them into one another —
colliding galaxies,
continually merging.

Sacred past and sacred future converge,
revealing a sacred present,
A Holy, Sacred Now
for

The One
Who Was,
Who Is,
and
Who Is to Come.

Mary was a universe of possibilities,
God’s Mother, a cosmos of potentiality,
“For in this rose contained was
heaven and earth in little space,
Res miranda. . .” [3]
Res miranda! — A Wondrous Occurrence. . .

The Holy Spirit appears
to reveal the sacred prospect,
And Mary adds her YES,
ushering in Emmanuel,
God With Us.

Mary,
Theotokos,
bears God into the world.
Res Miranda.

Mary,
Theotokos,
bears God’s child,
Res Miranda!
a galaxy of unending grace.

[4]

And. . . if Christmas is a swirling collision of Holy Time,
making all things present,
making all things new. . .
Perhaps the Holy, Sacred Now
is upon us,
Perhaps the Holy Spirit
is appearing among us,
Right now,
Right here,
This very hour,
summoning us to add our YES,
so that we too
might bear God into the world.

[5]

–Renee Roederer

References:

[1] This is an image of Spiral Galaxy ESO-137-001 as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

[2] This image was created by Deborah Koff Chapin and is part of her Soul Cards collection.

[3] This text is a portion of “There Is No Rose of Such Virtue,” a 15th century English Carol. Feel free to listen to the version that the King’s Singers perform:

[4] This is a NASA image of colliding galaxies.

[5] This image comes from wallpaper created by Fanpop.com. You can access the image here.