The High Made Low

The world is getting darker, and I feel it. And I don’t mean “a political opponent is in power,” or “things are expensive and I am busy and the whole family has been sick for two weeks.” I mean violence is on the rise. Innocents everywhere are suffering more. Marriages – the ones you never thought would falter – are faltering. Best friends are dying. Big, scary things are popping up inside of families – the kind that can rip a family apart. Something like that happened to us this year and I can’t even talk about it. The poor are taking more of the brunt of all of it than ever before. Atrocities are piling up again. There’s a feeling of decay, of dissolution, of confusion and despair, even in the nicest, wealthiest, cleanest cities and neighborhoods. Everyone I know is dealing with some form of depression, addiction, or anxiety. Bad, dark, intrusive thoughts plague me in the wee hours when I can’t get back to sleep – a real feature of this past week. The nights are very long. I feel powerless against the great wave of darkness coming for us. Or is it already here?

Against that backdrop, I struggle to be present with my children. I am often going through the motions, driving kids to sports, and school, sitting in church, but without really doing anything in my mind. In the place in my heart where I need to be examining myself, confessing my sins, and attending to the prayers, there is a great blankness. To agree with a dear friend, I feel dead inside. Is it too much screentime? Too much escapism – the reading of fantasy novels and listening to podcasts? Is it the strain of knowing too much about what’s going on in all corners of the globe without being able to do a goddamn thing to help? Is it the advancement of years and loss of youth and vitality without the attendant wisdom I thought I’d have to show for it? “Really?” I said to a friend today on Marco Polo. “We’re the adults?” Is it that I haven’t gone to confession and I need to? Although one of my constant longings is to sit at the feet of a wise elder priest, one of my greatest fears in consequence is being told that this IS all my problem and that I’m just not trying hard enough. God will throw me a bone when I’ve gone to my room and come out ready to stop being rebellious like a good girl. I’m not fasting enough, praying enough, reading my Bible enough, giving enough alms, repenting deeply enough, or going to enough church. I’m not loving my husband enough and I’m complaining too much to him about what he doesn’t do and not noticing the things he does. Doubtless it’s all true, but if that’s truly the answer, the game is already over. I guess I’m not going to heaven. If I ever do find that elusive wise elder priest, I’ll make sure to make note of what he says. It’s too easy to imagine this is all that’s coming from God without really stopping to notice what’s actually being said.

And so I have something for you about that. It’s not a story – it’s too small a thing for that. It’s a knowing. I was listening to this podcast the other day. To tell the truth, I was taking a break from a wave of true crime that came on the heels of a fantasy series I had just finished re-reading. There’s a lesson in there about needing to be able to be quiet and still and not wanting to, but that’s where I’m at. It’s been a rough week, after a rough season, in a rough year. It’s entitled “The Universal History of Christmas” and it’s two Orthodox Christians (Jonathan Pageau & Richard Rolin) talking about various Christmas traditions and how and when they came to be, and how Christmas is “sticky” even though various Protestant traditions have tried to get rid of Christmas for fear of its pagan connotations. Not only have Christians continued celebrating Christmas, so have pagans! Everyone loves Christmas! And, more than that, all of these ways Christmas is sticky (Santa) are good! They’re joyful. They’re a sign that world still wants what the incarnation has to offer.

I was only expecting it to be amusing and informative. It was! Christmas caroling started out as sort of like a pub crawl complete with dick jokes set to music! Like, that’s what carols were, rather than the hymns we sing now. (If that’s not the kind of caroling I can really get behind, I don’t know what is. I love the thought of Christianity being muscular enough to wrestle any pagan tradition that came before it to the mat. Oh, you have a temple dedicated to sacrificing children here? Boom, it’s a church now. We just claimed it. Oh, you celebrate the Winter solistice with drunken orgies because you’re poor and it’s cold and dark? Well, here’s a God who became a poor baby. Go ahead and get drunk and celebrate it, just hold off on the orgies and wait ’til Christmas Eve. And the idea that this kind of thing shouldn’t be scary or something to worry about is just one thing drawing me ever closer to becoming Orthodox.)

I digress. But really, please listen to this podcast if you want to hear the best thing you’ve heard about Christmas this year.

What got me was when he said “it’s the high made low.” It was all of it, really. You have to hear it in context, and maybe it won’t land for you. But I’ll tell you: I don’t have a better answer than this. I’m convinced there is no better answer than this, and that most of what we are doing is obfuscating it with all the morality plays. Because, let me tell you, I’m good and tired of morality plays. Our priest likes to hammer home during the Advent season that the church traditionally uses the four weeks to dwell on the themes of, get ready: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell. God help you if you put up a Christmas tree before Advent is over because here we are FASTING and we are CONTEMPLATING JUDGEMENT AND HELL. I’m not sure what tradition or time these themes come from. I suspect he means it comes from medieval Catholic England at the time of the English reformation, (from whence comes everything worthy of being called religion), but I don’t know for sure. My kids have taken up a quite combative line about this that would make him proud, pointing out the inconsistencies with the Advent presentation some poor kid did at their school that merely highlighted themes of Joy, Peace and Love or some such nonsense. I presume this wasn’t done to the kids’ face. I should probably find out.

While I do think we have an odd sort of peeking-through-our-fingers relationship with death and the possibility of judgment in this culture, and therefore could probably do with taking these things more seriously, I can’t say they have any special hold on my attention or have made me more holy by hearing about them every year. It all feels like another morality play I’ve sat through my whole life. But it is sometimes refreshing. It’s certainly not the same old thing!

Then there’s the newer one about how the earth is dying and everything is injustice and I shouldn’t even think about complaining over my relative poverty and inflation and lack of access to the insurance-covered health care I want and how impossible it is to live on one income with five kids and how I never get a moment to myself because…privilege.

I’m tired.

And right now there is nothing in heaven or on earth that would have moved me other than this reminder of the high made low. No admonitions to do the right thing and be the right sort of person and do good works and pray more were ever going to touch me. But this pierced me and I found a bottomless well of joy underneath: the highest made himself lowest. Lower than me. Uncontainable power and life contained Himself in a cell in the body of a poor woman and was born the most vulnerable He could be: a poor Jewish baby in the Roman empire. It defies description. The Logos of God – His essence – became flesh and dwelt among us. Utter perfection made himself imperfect, able to be killed. Indeed: Born to die. He came down to be among us. He knew we were crucifying peasants, raping women and children, sacrificing babies to demons, carrying out genocides…and He came to dwell among us. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. He is here. He is with us.

And it’s not that it makes the most sense, although Christianity has an internal logic and a through line from ancient times that is hard to not feel compelled by – especially, for me, as I’ve understood the early church fathers and the Old Testament more and more. See Ancient Faith Media. I get that it’s a claim being made, that I have to have faith in it. I have to stake my life on it being real. But it’s a claim at once so bold and so warming as to be inescapable. You have to deal with it and it’s either true and everything has meaning – the miasma of sadness and despair, while threatening, can never have the last word – or it’s fake and all there is is darkness.

But oh…if it’s true. Jesus Christ, the true light which gives light to everyone, is here with us.