Fun fact: the first time a crèche, a nativity scene, was ever used as part of a Christmas Eve service was in 1223. It was a living crèche – with a real donkey, a real ox, a real mother and father, and a real baby – and it happened in a cave just outside the small Italian town of Grecio. The idea for this came to Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, whom we know today as St. Francis of Assisi. Francis wanted people to have a real, visceral experience of the teaching of the incarnation – that the God many thought so distant had not only became one with humanity, but had come into the world as a tiny, vulnerable, helpless baby.
“Incarnate” comes from the Latin roots in and carn, literally “into flesh.” “Embody” is a more recent term (it originated in the mid-16th century), but it means the same thing – “to come into the (a) body.”
This month the theme we’re exploring is embodiment. I think there are really two interrelated questions that we’ll be dancing with:
- What does it mean to embody something?
- What should we be trying to embody?
There are no doubt lots of ways to answer both, but my first shot at the first is that when we embody something we take it beyond something we think, or even something we do. Whatever it is, the thing becomes a part of who we are. Within the Christian scriptures there is a letter – said to be written by the Apostle James, Jesus’s own brother – which says that it’s less than useful to tell somebody what you believe. Instead, he says, “let me look at you and your life, and I’ll be able to tell you what you believe.”
And that points to an answer for the second question – what we should strive to embody is our highest values, our deepest convictions, our most treasured truths. In other words, we should strive to embody our ideals, and not just espouse them.
And that’s hard. At least, it is for me. “Do what I say, don’t do what I do” is a sentiment that’s all too familiar. Maybe it is for you, too. I once heard someone ask, “If being a Unitarian Universalist were a crime, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” Just another way of asking if I, or you, or we have truly embodied our faith.
So … for this month I’m asking myself, and would encourage you to ask yourself:
- Could a non-UU tell me about the seven principles by watching the way I live my life?
- Could someone see what I value in the way I spend my time and energy? (And, for that matter, my money?)
- Have I brought the truths I have found in my searching into the very fabric of my being, and not just into my vocabulary?
- Am I an embodiment of my ideals? Have they become incarnate in me?
There’s a lot here to look at, isn’t there? It’s a good thing that none of us need do it on our own.
Pax tecum,
RevWik