A Reprint
When our first parents fell, they fell, in a cosmic sense, off the earth, away from the centre, pulling creation with them, the bloody weight spiraling down, down and around until they found themselves monarchs of the Upside Down Kingdom.
Their heads were down, reason and will existing now under the emotions, under the passions, a body inverted; and their children made civilization upon civilization upon civilization: these grew like an upside down tower, a Tower of Babel reaching across eons of time; entrenched, a foundation of sin.
Dante captures this topsy-turvy nature of rebellion very well in his depiction of the Devil: a grotesque animalistic creature with three heads, his body towering through the centre of hell like a perverted axis: but his head is, of course, at the lowest level of hell, at the bottom.
Photo: Bethlehem:The Door of Humility, leading to the Altar of the Nativity
The only way back, God-given, is to reach not above the head, in this Upside Down Kingdom of Sin, but rather to reach for the ground: to go to the ground is to actually go up: up in the real sense, in the sense of the Right-side Up Kingdom, the Real Kingdom. To reach for the feet, for the ground, to lower one'’s head to the dust of the earth, and to look there for up. God gives us this grace: to desire the humus, the dirt from which we came, to place that dirt on our heads in repentance: to look for salvation among the lowly and despised of the earth.
So we come, by God'’s grace, to a small cave at the edge of town, away from the clinking of coins and the open mouths of laughter by the fires, to the animal-warmth of the primitive stable where the shepherds, wiry like juniper branches, lean on their crooks, faces inscrutable in the shadows. We come to the new Eve and to the Foster-Father, and to the Way, to the Doorway, the Word made flesh; to that Holy Couple covered in the humus of the road and in the humility that comes from keeping close to the humus in the Upside Down Kingdom. And we come to worship the Child Who is the only Flesh entirely of the Real Kingdom:Who is the Real Kingdom.
The Child'’s appearance is a scandal to the Upside Down Kingdom, for He is a living picture of the Right-side Up Kingdom, and shows the other for what it is, by His very existence. Only those who are looking to the ground, looking in humility or in desperation, will see Him in hope. The rest will only see Him as a stumbling stone.
May I meet Him at the Crib, may I see you there, too. I kneel, looking into a tiny Face of loveliness, mirroring the Mother'’s in the flesh: and something else there, too, of the Father, that I cannot grasp; I feel the pain of my soul'’s smallness, its limits, as I look at His face. I look away in shame, and I see the glow of Him reflected on your face. In common shame, we somehow smile and by unspoken agreement, look again into the face of God: in hope.
Photo: Bethlehem, "Kissing the Star" : The Birthplace of Our Lord Hope of this Holy Doorway, into a Kingdom of Charity and Light, and Him. So, it is thus for these two thousand years since His coming in the flesh. And we, part of His Church, we are meant to carry the Child, the King of the Right-side Up Kingdom, across the terrain of the world, to transform it, to turn it Right-side Up: for all things will be made new, in Christ. And we carry Him, and follow Him: for the good suffer for the evil: this mysterious economy of love and suffering is the turning to the Right-side Up. He is our only hope, the Child, He is our salvation, for of ourselves, we are nothing.
May I meet you by that Crib this Christmas.
