December 7: Humanity Reclaimed
♫ Music:
Day 10 - Tuesday, December 7
Title: HUMANITY RECLAIMED
Scripture: Luke 1:48; Psalm 113
“For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.”
Praise, O servants of the Lord, Praise the name of the Lord! Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forevermore! From the rising of the sun to its going down the Lord’s name is to be praised. The Lord is high above all nations, His glory above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, who dwells on high, who humbles Himself to behold the things that are in the heavens and in the earth? He raises the poor out of the dust, and lifts the needy out of the ash heap, that He may seat him with princes—with the princes of His people. He grants the barren woman a home, like a joyful mother of children. Praise the Lord!
Poetry:
A List of Praises
by Anne Porter
Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront
churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with
the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope
rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of
children.
Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far
away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet
whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in
the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.
Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.
Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets,
katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near
water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like
cries
We know that the winter is over.
Give praise with mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.
Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.
Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities,
Far even from the towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.
Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and thunder
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar
That fills the seaside villages,
And the clear brooks that travel down the
mountains
And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country.
HUMANITY RECLAIMED
So what is the common thread within the jumble of our media meditations for this tenth day of Advent? (I’ll give you a minute here to contemplate your answer.)
Today I think we are invited to focus on the condescension of God, who inhabited a young woman and thereby elevated all of us-humans, and on the importance of Mary, the young mother of Jesus. As Psalm 113 puts it: “Who is like the Lord our God, who dwells on high, who humbles himself…He raises the poor out of the dust…” When God became man in order to rescue us, He put aside the glory of deity. He joined His gritty, dirty creations and became a powerless fetus within a teenage woman’s uterus, dependent upon her breath and blood and placenta for His sustenance and growth. How shocking! How wonderful!
God became abased. Humanity became exalted.
We all are elevated and blessed through Mary. God’s history with humans is a history of temple-making; we are the residence of our very Maker. Mary matters because she was His flesh-and-blood receptacle. What she did with her body mattered.
The Virgin Mary is our example here. Mary, who knew she was lowly dust, was an adolescent woman of Jewish faith, waiting for the Messiah. Because Mary was a woman of faith, she believed the good news of the angel Gabriel and responded willingly. Mary’s obedience was necessary. She “invited Jesus into her heart” and into her body. Jesus the Messiah, God Himself, was formed by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and He became man. No longer only lowly, Mary became pregnant with Jesus, the second member of the Trinity, pregnant with God! It blows my mind to consider this. Our boot-slappin’, line-dancin’ Christmas song for today has it right: “Handful of dust, sums up the richest and poorest of us. True love makes priceless the worthless, whenever it’s added to a handful of dust.” In this action of true love by God, all of the ashes of humanity were lifted up from the ash heap, and Mary herself became most blessed. And we, the Church, all these generations later, call her blessed.
Mary was a true believer, and obedient woman of faith. She believed that what God said would happen, she treasured the words she heard and pondered them in her heart, she allowed the Christ to be formed in her and she carried Him with her. When people saw her, they saw evidence of Jesus and they responded to Him in her. Mary nurtured Jesus. And once Jesus was born and began His public ministry, she became a disciple, she followed Him and listened to Him, she was a witness to His death and resurrection. Mary is an exemplar of the Church.
Yet Mary was dust and a sinner. She too needed the salvation that Jesus brought. She didn’t always understand what Jesus was doing (Luke 2:41ff; Mark 3:21, 31ff), but she prompted His first public miracle (John 2) and she followed Him to the very end (John 19). And so we honor Mary and we aspire to be like her.
This Advent season then, be like Mary, the mother of Jesus who carried the Lord: have Him formed within you by the power of the Holy Spirit, and ponder, pray, and follow Jesus. Live from the fullness of His life in you, which is what holiness is: living from the energy and character of the Trinity within. In other words, be the Church! And have a Mary Christmas this year!
Prayer:
God our Father, we present our bodies to you today, praying that Christ will be formed in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. When others see us, may it be You they notice.
Amen.
Devotion Author:
Dr. Betsy Barber
Associate Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
Virgin of Guadalupe from the The Road to Tepeyac Series
Alinka Echeverría
2010
Archival pigment print
80 × 62 cm
Conceptualized as an immersive photographic installation, The Road to Tepeyac series consists of 125 images of devout Mexican pilgrims carrying their personal image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the anniversary of her apparition in 1531. The series provides a kaleidoscopic experience of multiple representations of the sacred image and deconstructs the historical, political, philosophical, psychological, and anthropological relationship between an invisible presence and its materialized expression.
https://bartgazzola.com/reviews/the-road-to-tepeyac-nuestra-senora-de-guadalupe/
About the Artist:
Alinka Echeverría (b. 1981) is a Mexican artist working across multiple disciplines, including film and photography. Her background in anthropology and extensive field experience in Africa plays a central role in her contemporary, critical approach to visual representation. Echeverría holds an M.A. in social anthropology and development from the University of Edinburgh (2004). She spent several years working in HIV-prevention projects in East Africa as an educator and project leader for NGOs that utilized media and theatre, before pursuing a postgraduate degree in photography from the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York (2008). Her acclaimed and widely exhibited photography and sound projects include The Road to Tepeyac (2010); Deep Blindness (2013–present), combining an audio work in Nahuatl, the dying language of the Aztec civilization, with flattened Braille panels that are denied their function; and Nicephora (2015–present) from which the exhibition Alinka Echeverría: Fieldnotes is drawn. Echeverría was awarded the HSBC Prize for Photography (2011), named Photographer of the Year by the Lucie Awards (2012), awarded BMW’s Art & Culture Residency at the Nicéphore Niépce Museum (2015), and has been recognized by many of Europe’s leading photography awards and residencies. Her work has been widely exhibited at international venues.
https://www.icp.org/events/reimagining-the-image-alinka-echeverria
About the Music:
“A Handful of Dust” from the album When Fallen Angels Fly
Lyrics:
Break us down by our elements
And you might think He failed
We're not copper for one penny or
Even iron for one nail
And a dollar would be plenty to buy twenty of us
Until true love is added to these handfuls of dust
Handful of dust, handful of dust
Sums up the richest and poorest of us
True love makes priceless the worthless
Whenever it's added to a handful of dust
However small though our worth may be
When shared between two hearts
Is even more than it would ever be
Measured on it's own, apart
And our half what it could be is now twice what it
was
When true love is added to these handfuls of dust
Handful of dust, handful of dust
Sums up the richest and poorest of us
True love makes priceless the worthless
Whenever it's added to a handful of dust (x2)
About the Performer:
Patricia Lee Ramey (b. 1957), known professionally as Patty Loveless, is an American country music singer. Since emerging on the country music scene in 1986 with her first album, Loveless has been one of the most popular female singers of neo-traditional country. She also recorded albums in both the country pop and bluegrass genres. She rose to stardom thanks to her blend of honky tonk and country-rock and a plaintive, emotional ballad style. Loveless has sold 15 million albums worldwide and has charted more than forty songs on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including five number ones. One of her crowning achievements was the album When Fallen Angels Fly, which won the Country Music Association's Album of the Year award and gave her four Top Ten singles.
http://pattyloveless.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Loveless
About the Composer/Lyricist:
Anthony Michael Arata (b. 1957) is an American singer-songwriter. His best-known song is "The Dance,” a number-one US country hit for singer Garth Brooks in 1990, which was nominated at the Thirty-Third Grammy Awards for Best Country Song. He also wrote the 1994 number-one US country hit "Dreaming with My Eyes Open," recorded by Clay Walker. Other artists who have recorded his songs include Suzy Bogguss, Lee Roy Parnell, Patty Loveless, Trisha Yearwood, and Emmylou Harris. Arata was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2012.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Arata
https://www.tonyarata.com/
About the Poet:
Anne Porter (1911–2011) was an American poet who was educated at Bryn Mawr College and Radcliffe College. Married to the American realist painter Fairfield Porter, she raised five children in a busy, artistic household, frequently forced to pursue writing on the side. When her husband died in 1975, she began to write poetry more seriously. Her first collection, An Altogether Different Language (1994), published when she was eight-three, was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Her other volume of poetry is Living Things: Collected Poems (2006). Her work has been anthologized in the Oxford Book of American Poetry (2006), and featured on Garrison Keillor's radio program, The Writer's Almanac. Living Things contains all the poems in Porter’s National Book Award Finalist collection, An Altogether Different Language, plus forty-four new works. David Shapiro writes in his foreword, “Anne Porter’s diction is as modest as that of William Carlos Williams or of a poet she nurtured as a houseguest for many years, James Schuyler. . . . She has the quality of paying attention to the ultimate reality that Fairfield Porter, who painted her so often alone and with their five children, told me should be the conclusion of every sermon. . . . She is an American religious poet of stature who reminds us that the idea of the holy is still possible for us.” Living Things is a book for any lover of fine poetry, but will be particularly inspiring and meaningful to Christians whose faith is strong, and would make a beautiful gift. Of her own late arrival on the poetry scene, Porter noted, “People don't use their creativity as they get older. They think this is supposed to be the end of this and the end of that. But you can't always be so sure that it is the end.”
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Things-Collected-Anne-Porter/dp/1581952163
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/anne-porter
About the Devotion Author:
Dr. Betsy Barber
Associate Director of the Institute for Spiritual Formation
Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation and Psychology
Talbot School of Theology
Biola University
Betsy Barber has a clinical practice with specialization in the soul care and mental health of Christian workers. She teaches courses in spiritual formation, soul care, missions, maturity, and marital relationships. She has particular interest in spiritual formation and supervision of students in spiritual direction and mentoring. She has worked with her husband as a missionary in Bible translation and counseling ministries for twenty-four years. In addition to being a licensed clinical psychologist, she has background and training in spiritual direction.