Thrive!

I can tell it’s the Christmas season — Starbucks is using their red cups. That’s okay, but there is something needy in me that wants more than holiday cups this year.

I long for something new, something surprising, unexpected, deeply satisfying, hopeful, mysterious.

Christmas has that in it, I know it does, but what I want to know is how to find my way to the thrilling edge of that.

Redwoods come to mind. A small seed becomes a 379 foot tree! And I also think of babies. My friend Tony called; his wife”s water just broke. How exciting. A new life — coming tonight!

Christmas conjures just this mystery — what is large became small! God became a baby! So he could relate to us! How odd, how unlikely for anyone to make up, how weird, how amazing, how good. How hopeful for those of us like me who relentlessly ply the beaten-down paths of petty grievances, minuscule anxieties, micro-egotisms and minor regrets.

The largest thing, God, a cosmic Redwood, becoming the smallest thing, a baby in a mother, so that we might through him become larger. I want that! I want the largest-small-thing, God, to make me larger. I want out of my smallish ways, my micro-pettiness, my microscopic loves, my seed-sized hopes, my baby faith. I want Christmas to go off in me.

I can only think of one thing to do.

Ask, for something new to come to me tonight. Ask for the mystery to come in me.

And so, I do.

“God, great and small at the same time, even tonight come near to me, move inside me, enlarge in me and expand me beyond myself. Great God of power and love, see my small, cracked, raised cup and fill it up with the mystery of you.”