Midnight Mass

December 21st 2009

I have a dear friend who quests like I do for the presence of God.  Not at all satisfied with the cultural dogmas and stereotypes, not at all willing to settle for either icons or iconoclasts, we both push through to find out what that presence really is.  Conversations I've had with others going through various dark nights indicate that God is not who we thought he was; so then, Who is He?  What do you call That?  How do you experience the nameless, impartial, creating and destroying generator of all things, all states, all time, all timelessness, all existence, and all potential?  How do you acquit yourself when you realize that the Name you have been invoking, you have been invoking in trivial fashion?  

I have another friend who confirmed that after suffering the emptying exhaustion of great tragedy, all you have left to give is a tender kindness.  In this light I understand the grace of the cross.

 Yet, how do you really understand mystery?

As I travel along the years, and see what people's outcomes are at the end of their walking, how vulnerable we are, how fragile, how little we think of what comes, how unprepared we are for our own mortality and the weaknesses and humiliations that can proceed it, and not knowing at all what my own outcome will be, I become more convinced that kind service is the salvation of community, and friendships are the life boats that bear us away from all sinking Titanics.

I'm spending Christmas Eve with my parents (it's our tradition) and on Christmas Day I'm driving Noel and Marina to the airport.  They are on their way to Russia, to celebrate Old Christmas with her family the way they do in Russia, on 12th night. Maybe I'll make the Midnight Mass at the Episcopal church Christmas Eve.. 

 The last time I went to a midnight mass was long ago, actually, long before I joined the church. I was not prepared for the quality of the light.  I was not prepared for the children carrying lit tapers.   Mystery of deepest nature wafted through the great hall, enveloping us all in the meditation of a presence much much vaster than the telling.  Voices lifted in the singing of carols like incense rising.  The ceremony, the beauty, the dignity and the wonder of it brought me to tears, which I had to bite back with all my strength, to appear "normal."  

I have no such restrictions left.