No Pressure

It’s difficult to convey sarcasm in writing without naming it directly, so let me be clear about the title – it’s meant to imply a bit of eye-rolling.  It is what we say when we know we’ve asked the impossible of someone…maybe something like, “you were born to save mankind.  No pressure.”

The choir at Church of the Epiphany is singing, among many other things, a setting of the Wexford Carol on Christmas Eve. It’s an old Irish carol that originated in County Wexford and the final stanza reads:

With thankful heart and joyful mind the shepherds went the babe to find, And as God’s angel had foretold they did our Saviour Christ behold. Within a manger he was laid and by his side the virgin maid attending on the Lord of Life, who came on earth to end all strife.

Who came on earth to end all strife?  No pressure.

I’ve written before about the Dorothy Parker poem A Prayer for a New Mother, which expresses a wish that Mary just enjoy her little baby, without any knowledge of what is to come for her son. Could she just appreciate the simple and wonderful things about him? His gentleness, his smile, his beautiful eyes? Maybe she had her own plans for him, ones that didn’t entail ending all strife.

My own son was born the night the first war in the Persian Gulf began. If you remember the build up through late 1990, it was a very tense time, and our country began a massive air offensive on the night of January 17, 1991 just as I was going into labor.  As it happens, I would be having my baby at a military hospital, so that night when we drove up to the gate and the guard was told why we were there, he exclaimed, “tonight?  you’re having a baby tonight!?”

Apparently it was an inconvenient time. I wonder if Mary felt something similar when she and Joseph trudged into Bethlehem looking for shelter. As I labored, the entire hospital staff was gathered around large television screens watching a war unfold. It clearly was an inconvenient time to have a baby. I know that we’re not supposed to make deals with God, but in those hours of labor bargaining with God seemed like a very good idea indeed. And this was my bargain – make this pain end and let me have a healthy baby, and I promise that he will be a peacemaker.

No pressure, my son.

As with our children, it probably isn’t a good idea to pressure God to be what we want. Make that a terrible idea actually. My father, a Hindu, reminded us regularly that people were happiest when they wanted what they already have. In the same way, we show our love more completely when we love people just as they are. And instead of expecting God to do what we want, we might do well to instead see God in all those things large and small that change the world for the better. Which is the only place we’ll find God anyway.

A peaceful Christmas wish for us all.

Sonya

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This blog represents my attempt to put thoughts together on various things that seem to connect – in my mind anyway. More often than not new ideas first involve reaching back to what was and I can only hope that the prehistoric San cave painting at the top of this page inspires all kinds of connections between old and new.

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