Birthing God: Luke 1:26-38

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And, what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I do not also give birth to him in my time and my culture? Then, then, is the fullness of time: When the Son of God is begotten in us. --Meister Eckhart

I think of Advent as pregnant time. It's a cozy time, a preparatory time. As the days shrink towards Solstice I become more of a homebody, hunkering down waiting for the rebirth of the sun, as well as the Son. This year, the fourth Sunday of Advent falls on that darkest, shortest day of the year.

I am studying to be a doula (a specially trained assistant and advocate for women giving birth), and so I spend a lot of time thinking about pregnancy and birth, especially for someone who has no children. I've been interviewing friends who have given birth in the past year. It's amazing to hear how their lives and relationships, their very bodies, have changed and stretched to welcome the unexpected.

On this final Sunday of Advent, we hear Luke's story of the Annunciation. Mary receives the surprising news that she is has found God's favor and is being asked to carry the Incarnation into being. "But how can this be?" she asks, incredulous. The angel answers: the Holy Spirit will be upon you. 

God is calling out to each of us, "Hail, full of grace, I am with you!" God is asking us to carry the Holy Child to everyone we encounter. "How can this be?" we may ask. But as Mary quickly learned, when we let the Spirit in, surprising things happen. Our lives are stretched and rearranged by bearing God. It is often uncomfortable, sometimes awkward, but always magical. And the world is waiting for our "Yes!" in these chilly dark days. God is asking for our permission to create something new with us and through us, to bring love to the unloved, justice to the oppressed, and companionship to the forgotten.

Sometimes I think Mary gets terribly toned down in our remembrance of her. This gospel passage, however, shows us a Mary who talks backs, asks questions, and makes the bold decision to allow her life to be altered to birth God into an aching world. This is the Mary that I aspire to live like.

As Advent draws to a close, how will you let the Spirit in? What does it mean to be the handmaid of the Lord? What does it mean to give birth to God in this time and place?

Johanna Hatch is a feminist activist, writer, and amateur hagiographer living in Wisconsin and working in non-profit administration. She is a graduate of the College of Saint Benedict and the recipient of the Katharine Drexel Scholarship at the Washington Theological Union. She currently resides in Wisconsin with her spouse Evan.

Picture from ClipArt.com

The Grace of Gratitude

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "thank you," that would suffice.
-Meister Eckhart

One of my most treasured memories was of one of the last Thanksgivings before my step mother Claire died. Thanksgiving had always been "her" holiday, a day of cooking and feasting, children and step children and grandchildren. As our motley crew of relations gathered around the table, she asked us to join hands. "Instead of a blessing," she said, "I'd like everyone to say one thing they are thankful for." It was a year with a lot to be thankful for. Her cancer had gone into remission, and she was a vital as ever. We each took our turn, even my normally stoic father, and named the ways we had been blessed in the previous year. I remember feeling like, for the first time in a long time, I was really praying.

During my sophomore year of college, my step mother's cancer returned and spread rapidly. She died before her holiday, when I was planning on returning home. I was devastated, questioning my faith, and feeling very alone in Minnesota while the rest of my family mourned in Massachusetts. Shortly after, my friend Sara bought the book 14000 Things to be Happy About and instituted the practice of daily happiness e-mails. Every morning she dutifully sent an e-mail to a small circle of her friends that simply said, "Today I am thankful for …" followed by a sampling from the book: honey in straws, geese flying south across a high blue sky, the indented space under kitchen counters. Pretty soon, we all wanted to get in on the act. At the e-mail's peak, I was getting upwards of five e-mails a day with thoughts like, "Today I am happy for pancakes at breakfast," "Today I am grateful for Peppermint Trident, my snooze button, and your mom (ha ha)," "Right now I'm happy about Easy Mac and the trails at St. John's." There was a magical, mystical quality to the exercise. I was amazed at how delightful my world was, and how lucky I was to be in it. I felt myself becoming more and more connected to my little gratitude community, and more open to the possibility of a loving God. How could there not be, in a world I had come to be so grateful for?

It's no exaggeration to say that gratitude is my spiritual path, and like any spirituality, I cannot contain it to one day. I try to remember to say "thank you" every chance I get – when I manage to catch my bus, when the first snowfall turns my husband into a kid again, when I look in my refrigerator and know that I won't go hungry. But Thanksgiving, like all our holy days and holidays, serves as a reminder of what can sometimes be lost in the daily shuffle. I hope this Thanksgiving is an opportunity to be reminded of everything you count as a blessing – Easy Mac and snooze buttons included.

Johanna Hatch is a feminist activist, writer, and amateur hagiographer living in Wisconsin and working in non-profit administration. She is a graduate of the College of Saint Benedict and the recipient of the Katharine Drexel Scholarship at the Washington Theological Union. She currently resides in Wisconsin with her spouse Evan.

A Civic Sacrament

The highlight of my eighteenth birthday was not buying cigarettes or getting into the clubs – it was my mother driving me to city hall so I could register to vote. No, seriously. It was February, 2001, a good three years from my first presidential election, but I had been waiting for this moment since I first knew what voting was.

The first memory I have of electoral politics was the 1988 presidential election. My mom and I lived with her parents in upstate New York. I remember the Dukakis button on my mom's pink ski coat as clear as yesterday. My Poppy told me that he wasn't just a Democrat, he was a union member, and that meant an awful lot in deciding who to vote for. It was then that I couldn't wait to be part of the excitement of making the big decisions about the future of my country. Since that formative moment, politics has almost been like a religion to me. My childhood idols were, equally, Joan of Arc and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Political identities, like our spiritual identities, are a way of navigating the world in a manner that coincides with our most deeply held values. Leading up to the 2002 election, I wore my green Wellstone button with the same regularity as I wore my miraculous medal. When the electoral process elicits this type of fervor, it can be difficult to remember that people of good conscience can come down on different sides of the same issue. While it may be easy to demonize someone who supports the Iraq war or legalized abortion, it is necessary to approach political discourse with a spirit of charity. No doubt, each of us have reached this time and place with deeply held convictions that we hope reflect God's love, and the best way to spread that love in a world still imperfect.

I've voted for Sheriff in Venango County, caucused for Kucinich in central Minnesota, and am anxious to cast my ballot on Tuesday. In my experience, voting has taken on a sacramental tone. We are, in the voting booth, alone with God and our conscience, not too much unlike confession. Democracy is a blessing and a responsibility. Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more." For those of us so blessed to live in a time and place where we, as women and as citizens, to be able to have a fair and equal say in who will lead our country is nothing to take lightly. I pray that as each of us (in the US, anyway) head to the polls on Tuesday, we will do so in a spirit of hope and love for our neighbors – especially those with whom we disagree.

Johanna Hatch is a feminist activist, writer, and amateur hagiographer living in Wisconsin and working in non-profit administration. Her least favorite thing about autumn in the Midwest is snow before Halloween.

Bearing Fruit: Matthew 21:33-43

This week's gospel reading from Matthew is confusing, as many of Jesus' parables are. Jesus describes the landowner's tenants as murderous and cruel, attempting to steal his son's inheritance by killing him. He warns the people listening that they will lose the kingdom of God and it will be given to those who will produce fruit.

In reflecting on this gospel, I feel that I am being asked to reconsider easy definitions of who is holy and righteous. The verse after the reading cuts off in the lectionary tells us that when the chief priests and Pharisees heard Jesus tell this parable, they knew he was speaking about them. As public leaders of religious life and their communities, those charged with maintaining tradition and law, the priests and Pharisees were unnerved. Jesus was turning the notion of what it meant to be chosen by God on its head. Jesus was asserting that laying claim to the land was not enough: to stay, you must tend it.

This passage, therefore, is a challenge to me. What fruit is my life producing? Going through the motions, following the law to the letter and denying the spirit of love will give me no claim to the kingdom. And those who give Him produce at the proper times may be those I least expect, or those who I am willing to write off. Picture my friend, I'll call her Red, a self-described libertine and hedonist who smokes hand rolled cigarettes and was last in church at my wedding over a year ago. Red and I met the first day of our first year of college, and have been close ever since. Red is the person I call when I am in crisis, has opened her home to me, drove me back and forth from college to home for three years and never once asked for gas money. She loves justice and lives compassionately. She produces the fruit at the proper times.

Traditional notions of piety are no longer enough for me. They can be comforting, but Jesus' call is clear – bear fruit, or lose your inheritance. While this may seem counter to our belief that God's love is a free gift to all, by refusing to bear fruit, we are refusing God's our ability to conduits of grace to those we encounter.

Johanna Hatch is a feminist activist, writer, and theology school dropout living in Wisconsin with her spouse, Evan Creed. Her favorite things about fall in the Midwest are the sound of geese and the smell of leaves.