Thrive!

Debbie Blue, creative theologian, cofounder of House of Mercy and author of Birds of the Bible writes, “Tertullian insists on maintaining the belief that God became fully human in Jesus, though he is clearly disgusted by some of the implications. ‘Start with the birth itself,’ he says, ‘an aversion, the filth within the womb of the bodily fluid and blood, the loathsome curdled lump of flesh which has to be fed for nine months of this same muck.’

“The womb. Somehow I get the feeling that the Spirit (like a dove) hovering over the deep, hovering over Mary’s womb, didn’t feel quite the same way about “the muck.’”

“The Spirit called the muck into being, so the story goes—God shaped it with God’s hands. God reveals Godself most fully, the Christian church professes, not as a rational system or a set of ethics or an unchanging principle, not as some magisterial deity or a pure white light, but as a living, breathing, bodily being. This is admittedly weird, but continually beautiful.”

I like this! This fits my experience. We’re in the muck these days, coronavirus, economic mess, social isolation. And we each have our own internal muck, anxiety, pain, uncertainty, identity confusion. It is good for us to resonate with the idea that God is willing to enter our mess, our muck, and be with us in it.

We want hide the filth of life. We may want to hide from our muck. We may think it keeps us from God. Not so. Not from God. In the beginning God created the muck. In the middle he entered it. In the end he redeems it.

We can help. We can be honest about our weaknesses. We can stop shaming ourselves for our muck. We can see God close to it, in it, with us, loving, understanding, caring.

He is!