Spirit Scholars

Slouching Toward the Light, Until the Police Arrive: A True And Timeless Christmas Tale

AN UPDATE ON THIS ARTICLE, which is one of many Christmas/Nativity articles we published here at Spirit Scholars in late 2006. If you're new to the site -- or just love Christmas reflections -- here are quick links to all of our Christmas coverage this year: First, you've already found THIS article: Our True and Timeless Christmas Tale of Cops and Clarity
Here are others, starting with: Prophetic Cards
Or: Our 1st "Nativity" story
Or: Actress' bittersweet tale
Or: Our Movie Review
Or: Violence & Nativity
Or: Dickens & Diversity 
Or: CNN on "After Jesus"
Or: Maaa in Christmaaas

THEN -- Here's the full text of this popular article ... ...

The call from the police came just after dawn today -- and, as Christmas looms, her Mom and I had not shaken awake from our long winter's nap.

But the words from my wife, as she pressed the phone to her ear, were electrifying: "The police have Megan!"

I sat up now, wide awake -- at least, I thought I was awake.

Then, with the phone still pressed to her ear, my wife said: "People reported her as jumper!"

I shook my head. Was I awake? A jumper? And, I swear that this next part of the story is true: I knew that Megan had just arrived home a few days ago from a half a year studying literature and anthropology in Pune, India. She's half way through her junior year at Albion College and she's brimming with creative energy and plans for the future. I actually thought: Oh, she probably was so energetic that she was jumping up and down as she took one of her long walks -- and someone thought that looked so bizarre that they called the cops.

Then, as a veteran journalist, I thought: No, I know what it is! Since she's been home from India, she has continued the Asian custom of taking long walks and I'll bet she was jumping over someone's fence as she walked through the winding streets of our subdivision. She must have taken a shortcut that someone thought was trespassing.

But, no! As my wife put down the phone, she said, "People phoned the police because they were afraid she was a jumper from the Cherry Hill overpass above I-275!"

There was a moment of horror. Could this be? Had we missed something in all of Megan's wonderful excitement and optimism about the world? Was there a darker side?

Well, yes and no.

First: Megan most definitely is NOT suicidal. So, that's the lighter side of this true tale. Within moments, we were standing in the driveway and a slightly embarrassed young police officer was dropping off Megan,  who was smiling as she got out of the back seat of his cruiser.

Since returning from India, Megan has been taking long walks and, while in India, she gained a deep appreciation for morning meditation coupled with a view of the sunrise. In India, this was easy with all sorts of high elevations to enjoy. In Canton, about the only elevation from which she could enjoy the sunrise was an artificial hill built for the Cherry Hill overpass. And, in fact, she wasn't even on the bridge itself. She was sitting on a wooden post that was part of the protective railings for cars on the edge of the hill.

How ominous was this activity in the midst of our Canton culture? It was pretty threatening, apparently. According to the police officer, Megan actually is a serial offender in these sunrise treks to this unexpected
vantage point. Her presence there had been reported once before, but the cops hadn't arrived in time to nab her.

This morning? FOUR police cars were involved in the apprehension of this young woman in the midst of  morning prayer as she gazed toward the golden ribbons spreading across the horizon.

As we talked in our kitchen, after the officer's departure, Megan's relief was obvious. "You know, when they put you in their cars, you can't open the doors from the inside. It's serious stuff."

And then, as a young writer, she said the next obvious thing: "But what a story to tell about our world! Think about what this says about our world and this -- this suburbia in which we live! There is something fundamentally so wrong about our world, if a solitary person on foot out there seems like a dangerous thing to people around here!"

It is a profound insight, we think, because it's another way to perceive the vast chasm yawning in our world between rich and poor, between powerful and oppressed -- the timeless theme this season in several religious traditions.

This morning's experience threw into stark relief another way to describe this troubling chasm: In our world, there are now Drivers (with all that term implies) -- and People Afoot.

Any of us who have traveled to other continents understand this distinction in an instant. Billions of our sisters and brothers around the world are afoot, because they cannot afford even a motorbike, let alone a car, van or SUV. And, millions are afoot because they are fleeing oppression, poverty and desperately seeking a better life.

In the new "Nativity Story" film, director Catherine Hardwicke makes it clear to viewers that Mary and Joseph, the poor young couple from Nazareth, were able to escape King Herod's lethal intentions mainly because they were poor travelers stumbling along the rocky, hilly roads of the region. They were virtually invisible to Herod and his men.

In Canton, what Megan is doing in the wake of her half a year in India is crossing a great cultural divide. She is now regularly a person afoot.

The timeless spiritual wisdom here echoes throughout the world's scriptures -- and it's right there in the Nativity story in a largely ignored part of the biblical record. It's a portion of scripture that several of speakers pointed toward at the marvelous, two-hour-long "Conversation on Mary" on Tuesday night at the Ecumenical  Theological Seminary in Detroit: No one seems to preach much about "the second half of Mary's Magnificat."

In light of Megan's experience -- and this important  insight about the shape of our wounded world -- we think there's more to this problem than just clergy who choose to focus on "other" highlights of the Christmas story and simply run out of time to  mention this passage. No, we suspect the second half of Mary's Magnificat is so deeply troubling that its implications are tough to preach, especially to suburban congregations.

Here are the verses that we think would likely cause some serious discomfort among the SUV-owning classes. And, if  you haven't seen Hardwicke's film yet -- catch it before Christmas -- because she uses these verses as the thundrous climax of her movie:

Mary sings of God's "strong arm" and her assurance that "He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants for ever."

And here's the most terrifying line in the entire song, we think. If so much is happening in God's compassionate plan to help the world's most needy, then why aren't the rich even aware of it?

The answer in the Magnificat is this: God's compassionate power is largely invisible to the wealthy, because they are spiritually blind, Mary says. Or, in the King James Version of the text, Mary puts it this way: God "hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts."

That's why a solitary young woman, afoot in a community of drivers, even if she is only pausing for morning meditation on one of the few hillsides where she can glimpse the dawn, can seem like a threat.

Shall we let our own prayerful meditations explore these ideas today? Think about all the people afoot in our world, all the travelers, the poor, the refugees, the immigrants? What do they look like to us -- if we're even able to glimpse them? And, where is God's eye and heart?

And, lest we close out this tale thinking that it's merely a nice little Christmas tale, we need to be honest with ourselves that the deeper issue here is far more troubling. This chasm -- and spiritual blindness -- fuels the lethal disconnections in our world.

That's a timeless spiritual truth, too. To capture it far more eloquently in this holiday season, we'll close with W.B. Yeats' expression of the troubling truth, penned 86 years ago as he watched the explosive dawn of the 20th Century unfold and pondered its implications from his Irish hillside.

The poem is "The Second Coming" and it goes like this:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!  Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

But, tell us what you think. Add a Comment below -- or drop us an Email with your own holiday thoughts.

What Time Is It in India?

The signs are everywhere that America’s attention is drifting eastward—far eastward, in fact. Just look at the cover of the current National Geographic magazine on developments in China or the host of prominent magazine stories about India. It’s inevitable as Asia rises economically to claim more of the world’s resources.

Today’s New York Times front page features a huge color photo of women enjoying rich sweets in an Indian bakery. The headlines in the Times are: “Modern Ways Open India’s Doors to Diabetes” and “The Price of Affluence” and “Disease of Development.” This certainly is a reminder that there’s good, bad and ugly in our swirling stew of global culture.

But, since we’re interested here in the spiritual side of human experience, I’m more intrigued by letters that my daughter Megan keeps sending home from India.

            She’s there for six months studying literature, sociology and anthropology as part of her junior year at Albion College. Click on the “Read More” link at the left of this Blog to read “Our Spirit Psalm 90,” a recent Free Press column about another exchange of letters with Megan.

            Yesterday, though, a new letter arrived and it contains more spiritual insights. Like any observant writer, Megan looks for details in daily life that the rest of us might ignore.

In her latest letter she speculates about the cultural feel of time itself. She begins by saying that life in India, at least as a student, feels much slower than back in the U.S. Adapting closely to Indian life with her host family in Pune, India, Megan’s day now includes—by her choice—time to help with cooking, time for walks, time for reading, time for university classes, time for yoga-style stretching.

She wrote, “One of our readings in our classes here said that Western culture exploits people’s time by adding unnecessary urgency to many things and occupying their hours with things that do not mean much. In many ways, I find myself agreeing with that.”

Here in the states, our family lives in a Detroit suburb that’s now popular with Indian-American immigrants and, each evening at dusk, Indian families enjoy strolling along the sidewalks. Every time I see them, I’m reminded that most American families don’t pace their days that way.

As we move toward a more tightly connected world, it's wise to remember that even basic spiritual issues like the meaning of time may very well operate differently in the planet's many cultural zones.

Posted by David Crumm