The Prayer Blog

There is another chapter—the epilogue to the Mary story. On Christmas Eve I leaned behind the Christmas tree to plug in the lights.  Somehow I caught the pine roping from the mantel and time slowed down. Two of the crèche figures crashed onto the floor. One was a lamb. The other was Mary. She was decapitated. An executioner couldn’t have done a better job. There was virtually no sign of Mary’s head–just a floor full of shattered bone china.

Another friend named Cindy suggested I make some online, downloadable repairs to Mary. The result was amazing. If I wax theological, I can say I’m not surprised. The revived Mary is a metaphor for how God makes all things new in unexpected and wonderful ways.

The Message Bible speaks about a new creation in a fresh way: “Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it!” (2Corinthians 5:17)

My evil twin likes the look of the new Mary so much, she is tempted to drop the other figures on the floor and make similar colorized repairs.

Photo: Sybil MacBeth

Last year, December 21 was a Sunday. It was the fourth Sunday of Advent, one of my favorite Sundays of the year in church. At the 9 o’clock service 75 children presented the Christmas story as a living Advent calendar. At the 11 o’clock service, the choir sang an exquisite service of lessons and carols.

At both services I vacillated between intense joy and overwhelming sorrow. Earlier in the morning one of my best friends, Cindy G., died of ovarian cancer. She had a husband and a 14-year old daughter, my godchild. If Cindy had been well, she would have been in her own church in Washington, DC listening to lessons and carols and relishing the last days of waiting before Christmas.

Now she is no longer waiting. She responded “Yes” to the Advent antiphon “Come, quickly”. And maybe Mary had taken a sabbatical from my mantel to receive with opens arms another daughter of Eve at the kingdom table “where pain and sorrow are no more” and every day is Christmas.

The next night Andy and I ate a spinach and mushroom quiche by candlelight and trimmed the tree. In the very last box of ornaments, I grabbed a hunk of tissue paper and knew. Mary had snuck into the box. I would almost swear that she did not get in there by human hand. The crèche is always kept in a separate box. And although we set up the crèche the previous year, we did not have a tree. The ornament boxes were never opened.

My storified take on the events is that Mary had ushered Cindy into the kingdom and was ready to come back to earthly duties. She looked a little sorrowful and breathless. But it was only December 22 and she still had three days of rest before the birth.