Below zero

The Feast of the Holy Name has always been one my favorite Holy Days.  Having it coincide with New Year's Day is a Happy Happenstance or something that Is as it Should Be.

Last night I had to mime

Below zero

In charades.

I failed dramatically.

Today

I wonder how I would mime

The Name above all Names

He who is named

And yet

Still nameless

For no name can claim

The Entirety

Or even his Infinitesimal

Smallness.

Today I wonder

How I would mime

All of who Jesus is.

Liturgical time

Yesterday a fellow parishioner was sure it was the Feast of the Presentation.  No, I said, that*s not until February 2.  Today is The Feast of the Holy Name.  Then I had to look it up in the front of the Book of Common Prayer, just to make sure.  Liturgical time... it*s wacky.  We get all the events of Jesus* life cataloged but we do pregnancy, birth, baptism, life and death between Advent and Good Friday, a very short span of time.  Then comes the Easter season after He is Risen.  Then a long period, summer and fall, when we remember His life and all He taught us.

Liturgical time is a wacky thing.

Jesus* life expands and contracts.

The Circumcision is right on time:

Eight days later

Than Christmas.

He is not presented in the temple

With turtle doves,

She is not purified

Until next month.

Meanwhile the wise men still walk,

Necks craned to the sky,

They will not arrive until Friday.

The baby lies in straw

Until they can make it

With their gifts and camels,

Several diaper changes later.

Anna and Simeon wait in the temple

They have waited a long time,

A very long time,

To see the Messiah.

Next Sunday he will be baptized,

A man in his early thirties,

Immediately driven into the wilderness

To be tempted by all those things

We are tempted by.

Liturgical time expands and contracts

Everything there is.

We need a bulletin,

A color chart,

A watch with date and month.

We need stars in the sky

To land us in the right place

Every week.

If we blink

We will miss

All those growing up years.

26 letters are enough

I am studying for the CADC exam.  This is yet one more set of professional letters I can add to the list when I am done.  It will signify that I have successfully completed a course of study which will qualify me to be a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor.  I am finding every field has its string of letters, and it would be more than possible to keep adding to the string.  I won*t. I admit... it is tempting... but I won*t.  Today is the Feast of the Holy Name.  Today is the day of the Name Above All Names.  That name is, very simply:  Jesus.

I sit with the letters I have

26

Just like everyone else.

They are enough to name

What wants to be named,

What needs to be named,

What calls to be named,

With letters left over.

I sit with letters I have

Earned,

Or not earned

Merely acquired.

Letters precede my name,

Proceed from my name.

Letters are my name.

They are Alpha-Bits:

They float in the breakfast milk;

Macaroni letters:

They swim in the chicken soup.

They are ancient wooden letter blocks

Left over from my childhood,

Wooden blocks with animals

On another side.

They are magnetic letters:

They taught me how to spell

On the refrigerator.

I sit with the letters I have

26

Just like everyone else.

New ones would not accomplish anything

New.

The Bris

Jeff and I were ushers at church this morning.  I joked about hearing a sermon on Jesus* bris, and the re-naming of this Holy Day to Feast of the Holy Name.  I was pleasantly surprised to hear, in part, a sermon on Jesus* bris (thank you, Victor), circumcision and naming combined, including the statement that this was the first time Jesus* blood was shed for us.  Yes.  I was more than pleasantly surprised.  Stunned is more like it.  Yes.

I joked with the family

About hearing a sermon this morning

On Jesus* bris.

It used to be called, after all,

The Feast of the Circumcision.

Eight days after his birth,

Jesus was circumcised.

Those in the know

Thought it needed a different focus.

It became

The Feast of the Holy Name.

Eight days after his birth,

Jesus was also named:

Savior of the People.

We call him Jesus.

At the Name of Jesus

Every knee shall bow.

So much nicer.

So much more palatable.

We don*t have to think about

The mohel,

The knife,

The bris,

The actual circumcision

Occasion.

We can move right into

The Naming itself.

At the Name of Jesus

Every knee shall bow.

We can skip over

The blood-letting.