2024-12-25 A Meditation on Presence

“6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:6-16 ESV)

Presence. The immediate or sudden Presence Christ accomplished one hallowed morn called Christmas, was a presence of luminary dispersion. It froze and mobilized at the same time, freezing our attention as though standing alert at attention, and set into action entire battalions. We were surprised, yet had not the time nor inclination thus to gape, but were Mobilized as in chasing a dream, as in finding our life’s purpose, as in receiving from Beyond gladsome Tidings.

And whether we boast or we demure, the tool called Evangel affects us and brings to effect entire cavalries of Meaning. We mean. We intend. We suppose. Gladsomely reflecting on the Prize Bounty of Something in the Air. We heard and we were no longer inert, but rambunctious and praising in song and measure, in prayer and cadence. A blue or purple or red or white, black or kaleidoscope Presence somehow coexisting, somehow Infiltrating our every stoic or staid friction point: He is Alien and Here! He is our reason for the season. He is our boast, or should we wish to demure, He is our overarching Embrace, to the tired ones, to the meek ones, to the normally frightful but today calm and disposed to do no harm nor injury.

It came upon a midnight clear, that Presence who gesticulated, and gestured, who gladhappily boasted in Us, in His smile and disposition so weak and infantile but Strong. We took up the slack, gladly filling in for whatever Grace was lacking in the service of each other. We got the Message: it was indeed Inspiring and worthy repeating, should we ever come upon such day as words are found for the Occasion. It caused us a bit to reflect, to take a step back and yawn just a bit over all the headache of our daily fixations and jobs. Whilst studying Who and What is before us. Whilst studying Something in the Air, most benign and most divine.

It had the Power to change lives, firmly to Hold the addict or drinker in His mystical clasp. And yet, that is only enough to bring us to the Altar: to change lives, this takes a miracle. He was the lifeline and the glimmer on the horizon, the reminder that life’s big existential questions have answers in Him. And not to be too down pat about it all, His answers by no means preclude Provision, Friendship, Intervention, Presence and Ready Together Awareness. He provides the meat for the hungering, the companion for the solo traveller, the Meaning for the existential worrier and wondering ones.

Therefore to be Peace and Presence also to our newly realized former enemies: all thing have indeed Changed; we have our Presence to remind us, yet it is so hands-off and infiltratingly sublime, that we are adept to welcome and to gesticulate ourselves around the potential for affection abroad. We can affect affection, we can demonstrate dutiful demonstratives, we can know Who and What we ourselves are (in Him, in His shadow), such that we can for once actually neutrally see clearly for once: these too have their Deities and their Sublime Presences. These, too, some are confused beyond rambunctious measure, but some are simply doing the Human and Honest Thing. And in this we celebrate.