An Invitation of the Incarnation

Live your life, live your life, live your life.

On Sunday afternoon, I packed up a pile of books (and a few other things) and drove 2 hours to a small benedictine monastery and retreat center in Boerne, TX. On the way, I re-listened to a 2011 interview between Terry Gross (NPR host of All Things Considered) and Maurice Sendak (author of Where the Wild Things Are and other children’s books) just months before his death. He was tearful, missing those who had died before him, and expressing his sadness and happiness with each breath. The final words in the interview are Sendak encouraging Gross — “live your life, live your life, live your life.”

I’ve been saying yes more lately. I said yes to riding a horse this summer for the first time. I’ve been saying yes to my daughters’ invitations to cartwheels, yes to jazz night led by a local Rabbi, yes to writing here on substack — yes to spiritual direction with Sister Bernadine. Each time I say yes, I see it as a small risk. I’m opening myself to new adventures and new possibilities. New ways of experiencing life.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my aging grandmother, sitting with her as she ate dinner, and thought of how even that felt risky. As we giggled at her favorite TV show, as she slowly ate her soup and crackers, as she asked how long my hair was and as we held hands, I was taking a risk. To love a dying person — there is risk in this kind of living.

I have been shifting my thinking about risk, fearing that as I enter my next decade, I’ll begin to say no. I imagine myself stuck, tired from all the change in my 30s. I can already see glimpses of this. Glimpses of doing things the same way I always have. I’ve felt myself go into autopilot, like a machine living outside my body. And so, I’m taking little risks now, trying new things. I’m practicing living with open hands, eyes, ears — which is in part how I ended up at a Benedictine Monastery.

As I walked around the monastery that first evening, it felt holy. There was something about knowing that others held the grounds with such reverence that made the whole place feel sacred. I took in the beauty with all my senses — the sunset, the birds chirping, the breeze on my skin and felt God’s presence.

The Gospel of John begins this way: In the beginning, was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and lived among us.

I’m beginning to consider the incarnation an invitation to take these small risks. Incarnation means “to take on flesh.” The incarnation is literally God coming into the world in the form of a person. Flesh and bones. A body. Why would God come to earth in a body, and expect us to live outside of ours?

This is probably the point in the essay where you’d like me to give you a grand theological argument for the incarnation as an invitation to live, some well-thought-out paragraph. But I’m not. More talking about God keeps us from the experience of God.

So, instead, I’ll shrug my shoulders. I’ll say yes to the mystery of the incarnation. Yes, to the absolute total mystery of God with us. Yes to God in my grandmother’s giggle, God in cartwheels, God in the breeze. Yes to the Holy Spirit speaking through Maurice Sendak — live your life, live your life, live your life.