keep your eyes on the Baby

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom

a light has shone.

You have brought them abundant joy

and great rejoicing,

as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,

as people make merry when dividing spoils.

For the yoke that burdened them,

the pole on their shoulder,

and the rod of their taskmaster

you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.

For every boot that tramped in battle,

every cloak rolled in blood,

will be burned as fuel for flames.

For a child is born to us, a son is given us;

upon his shoulder dominion rests.

They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero,

Father-Forever, Prince of Peace.

His dominion is vast

and forever peaceful,

from David’s throne, and over his kingdom,

which he confirms and sustains

by judgment and justice,

both now and forever.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!

~Isaiah 9:1-6, 

first reading at Christmas Midnight Mass

As Advent 2014 comes to a close, our family will gather to celebrate the birth of the Child -- the Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace!

But this year, we will not do this together. 

Some of our family members are in London, some in Tulsa, some in Oklahoma City. So when my brother and Mami arrive, five of us will gather at our table for a Nochebuena dinner here in Norman.
As Michael pointed out to me today, this will be our smallest Christmas setting in our (almost) 33 years of marriage!

Honestly, I am not complaining. I know just how spoiled I am every time we fill up a pew at church with just our family! And I know and truly believe that everyone is where they should be this Christmas. I feel deeply grateful for the meal we're about to share, the family that will be here at this table, and for the Midnight Mass that will follow.

I am also conscious that change continues to define my "new normal." Shoot. It's my only "normal"!

All I know to do is to go back to the basics, and today that means to go to the manger, keep my eyes on the Baby, sit with the newborn King of Kings. 

May we make our hearts a pesebre, a manger, for the Prince of Peace.

I have three new Nativities this year... and two of them are gifts
 from my generous father in law--this one from Haiti. And the one below,
a hipped Joseph! Isn't he great?

¡feliz Navidad!

my singing Nativity, one of my favorites!

and the singing angels on the piano next to the Holy Family

"Y la Palabra se hizo carne, 

y puso su Morada entre nosotros"

~Gospel of John, Chapter 1

This will be my last post for a while. I already have my holy trinity of grandkids at our house, and that's where my energy will go for now! 

Please hold my oldest daughter in your prayers as she and her husband prepare the "manger" to welcome their first child, due December 30... a Christmas bundle of love. Nothing can be more appropriate.

May your Christmas celebration fill your heart with hope, joy, peace--and renew your sense of wonder! God is here, with us, right where we are--as we are. Let us rejoice and be glad!

Nativity from Chile

Nativity from Ireland

as we prepare: may your soul become a nativity

"As December approached, I sat by the wooden nativity set that clustered under our Christmas tree and thought over the last year of my life, the year of waiting. Are we places of nativity too? I wondered. Once, when I visited a monastery around Christmas, I passed a monk walking outside the church. 

“Merry Christmas,” I said. 

“May Christ be born in you,” he replied.  

I thought that a very peculiar greeting at the time, and I never forgot it. Now, all these years later, sitting beside the Christmas tree, I felt the impact of his words. The moment affirmed to me all over again what the real essence of spiritual transformation is all about: it’s realizing more of our inner Christ-nature; it’s discovering our soul and letting Christ be born from the waiting heart. In the passage of emergence, as the birthing begins, the soul becomes a nativity. 

The whole Bethlehem pageant starts up inside us. An unprecedented new star shines in our darkness—a new illumination and awareness. God sends Wisdom to visit us, bearing gifts. The shepherding qualities inside us are summoned to help tend what’s being born. The angels sing and a whole new music begins to flat in the spheres. Some new living, breathing dimension of the life of Christ emerges with a tiny cry that says, I am. One of the best parts of the whole drama is that it happens in the dung and the straw of our life, just as it happened in the dung and straw of Bethlehem. Birthing Christ is an experience of humility."

~Sue Monk Kidd, “When the Heart Waits: 

Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions”

how my grandfather Alipio prepared for Christmas

[This one is a reprint of a story published a few years ago… and re-published online by Our Sunday Visitor this month. I hope you enjoy it:]

Every year of his adult life until his death at the age of 95, my Cuban grandfather Alipio Páez set up a Nativity scene or nacimiento that could easily compete with the elaborate window displays put on by Macy's.

Not satisfied with presenting just the figurines of Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and the cast of usual characters, Alipio would turn the living room of his small house into the whole town of Bethlehem.

This was not just the Bethlehem described in the Gospels, but a Caribbean-style Bethlehem — with abundant palm trees, rivers, houses on the hills, tall blooming trees, all set up on papier-mâché mountains painted in shades of green and brown. My meticulous grandfather even had plastic pigs and cows to keep the miniature sheep and their shepherds company.

No matter what new addition he came up with, Alipio's Bethlehem always centered on the glorious crèche, the physical place where the deepest and most complicated elements of Christian theology became flesh.

My earliest Christmas memories all center on that humble stable, where the mystery and wonder of the word "Incarnation" came to life for me. The virgin birth. The Son of God conceived in Mary's womb. A baby in Mary's arms, both true God and true man. Even as a child, I understood the unspoken truth that the colorful Christmas tree was meant to take a back seat to the stunning Bethlehem scene.

By bringing his own world of pigs and palm trees to Bethlehem Alipio was not saying that the biblical details of the Christmas story were unimportant to him. It was entirely the opposite. By bringing to life the surroundings of the story beyond the historical pesebre, the humble crèche, my grandfather emphasized the central truth — the actual point — of the story!

God so loved the world that He came to be one with each of us, right where we are.

Like Alipio's beautiful nacimiento, Christmas traditions for Hispanics are often a gentle incarnation of the sacred within the ordinary. Through traditions that inspire all the senses -- with songs and sights and delicious smells -- Hispanics bring to life and celebrate the familiar birth story of Jesusito, reminding us what's most important about the Christmas season.

[Click here to read the rest of the story, published originally as "Celebrating Christmas with Hispanic Eyes" in The Priest Magazine.]

Advent is almost over… take time to ponder what the Bethlehem event means for you today!

my Michelle, awed by her great-grandfather's "Bethlehem"!

my nativities, No. Tres

souvenir from our 30th anniversary trip to 

Riviera Maya, Mexico

another miniature one, made of clay,

Venezuela

gift from our longtime friend, Sr. Mary K.

made of olive wood from Bethlehem, the Holy Land

All in the family: claiming Jesus as one of our own

“The Christian religion asks us to put our trust not in ideas, and certainly not in ideologies, but in a God Who was vulnerable enough to become human and die, and Who desires to be present to us in our ordinary circumstances.” ~ Kathleen Norris

Our Lady of Africa

Images of the Virgin Mary throughout the world often reflect the physical characteristics of a certain race, ethnicity or culture. Much in the same way, I love the way that nativity sets from various regions or countries take on the physical attributes, clothing, and style of specific groups of people.

By giving the holy family our personal ethnicity, we claim them as one of our own, make them a part of our family. And in a very real way, we bring to life the mystery and wonder of the word ''Incarnation.”

As I wrote in an earlier post, my Cuban grandfather Alipio understood this truth as he built el nacimiento each year with a particular Caribbean flavor!

Our family's first nativity set was a generous gift from Michael's parents for our first Christmas. Not long after, one of our close friends in San Antonio, a Marianist priest who led a yearly archeological study tour to Israel, brought us back an olive wood nativity from Bethlehem. 

Over the past couple of decades, I have enjoyed collecting nativity sets from countries that we’ve traveled to, and thanks to Ten Thousand Villages, a few from countries I may never visit—like Bangladesh and Nepal.

As I set each nativity around our house for Christmas, I am reminded of our small “c” catholic (universal) Catholic faith.  We are, indeed, one in Him—the “infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger,” our Savior, Christ the Lord.

This reality is often difficult to conceive (pardon the pun). In God’s infinite love for each of us, for me, the Creator of life became a seven pound human bqby, one like us, in every way but sin. 

We have much reason to rejoice and celebrate!

Our Lady of China

This will be my final written blog post for 2012. But for the next week, I will post pictures from around our home of some of my favorite nativity sets, including what country they are from.

Thank you for walking “Day by Day” with me! 

May peace reign in your homes this Christmas season, and may Jesus be born again in your heart.