Mon, Dec 24
... Mary, did you know?
So I sit, wearing the blue costume that every girl longs to wear in the Christmas pagaent--"The Mary Costume." The light blue shapeless tunic, falling to my ankles, cinched at the waist with a darker blue sash of fabric. The blue head covering that matches the waist, wrapped around my head in a way that I mastered years ago, standing in front of a mirror in the church bathroom, getting dressed for an Easter play or Christmas pagaent. The robe is warm, the weight of the headpiece familiar and comforting.
I sit, between my part in the first service, waiting for the second, talking about nothing, about everyday life and silly memories, yet dressed in... this. Something that, even in what I wear, takes me past the everyday and the mundane, back to the magic and mystery of it all. A strange juxtaposition of the ordinary realities of my life, and the sometimes-too-familiar story of how He came. The story that, when I stop to think about it, becomes just as magical and awe-inspiring as it was the first time. As it was that first Christmas.
Kind of an odd combination, but isn't that the way it was planned? The very majesty of heaven, the wonder of it all brought into the ordinary, everyday way of life. Changing diapers, eating, sleeping, working, going to school... the King of Heaven bound by the limitations of this world. The wonder--there to whoever would see it--with the mundane.
How long has it been since I looked away from the day to day grind and saw, as always for the first time, the excitement? How long has it been since I turned away from my nice, neat, ordered world to look at this most irrational of events; since I abandoned everything that I can explain and saw the incomprehensible beauty?
Mary, did you know? I don't think she fully did on that wondrous day, but every time I put that robe on, I wonder again how she felt, what she was thinking, how she looked back on that day. "If I had known then what I know now..." I believe she would have done it all again.
Did you know that your baby boy is Heaven's perfect lamb? The sleeping child you're holding is the great I AM
infinite || abyss
posted at 7:27 p.m.
