Читать книгу 95 Prostheses - Frank G. Honeycutt - Страница 6

Between our house on Woodland Way Road and the nearby middle school is a small stream whose name I do not know. It flows under the road through a large culvert and empties into a small pool, rising and falling with the rain. I always stop and look in the pool on daily walks, shielding eyes from the setting sun reflecting off the water.

I’m looking for fish. My wife says I’m crazy. On the way to the store the other day, she slowed down and called to me, a hunched figure on the side of the road squinting into the pool: “There’s no fish in that creek, you lovable nut job!”

Obsessed with fish from a young age, the hatchery was the first place I wanted to go while visiting grandparents in the mountains of North Carolina; we’d hardly unpacked before heading into Pisgah Forest to watch the contained and squirming schools. I had this idea as a child, passing a body of water in the car on vacation trips, that I could toss a baited hook out the back window, and with enough line and a little patience would reel in a whopper upon reaching our destination. I was always out early at the beach as a little boy, wading into the surf with my hand-line and a pocketful of bait shrimp, and once caught a good-sized pompano in the waves, just inches from my kneecap.

Recently, on a warm day after a rain shower, I was peering into the pool on Woodland Way and saw three small fish, each maybe two inches long. My wife says I’m lying. And I do confess to lying to her on occasion just to keep things interesting. Nothing important—small, innocent, sensational fibs that hook her like a bluegill. But that day on Woodland Way they were there, in my pool: three small fish.

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The story (Luke 2:8–20) says they “lived in the fields,” keeping watch. I suspect that was some kind of life—actually living in fields, making your home there with an evening fire taking the place of your basic indoor Kenmore on a much wider range that seemed even bigger at night. They took care of the flock. That was their job, day in and day out. They slept out on a hillside protecting fluffy fur for an absent owner. I doubt it paid a whole lot.

Some Bible scholars say that many shepherds were ex-cons who’d spent time in jail—which is to say they lied professionally (rather than recreationally, like me). They kept watch and developed an eye for odd movements and an ear for strange sounds. Some of the shepherds were probably pretty salty characters (Jeff Bridges as “The Dude” from The Big Lebowski comes to mind), old seasoned men prone to mild fabrication around a roaring fire. They watched over the flock with alert senses honed by suspicion born from experience. They kept watch. It was their whole life, this watching. If the angels had appeared to princes with indoor heat, then maybe Jesus would’ve had better Christmas digs that holy night. But the angels came to watchers. The angels came to guys who watched the stars and listened to the song of crickets. The angels came to folk who lived in fields with their antennae already up.

In a pastoral ministry spanning four decades, I’ve met all kinds of interesting people in a variety of interesting settings—some with lots of faith and others with hardly any at all. It’s not my job to judge others based on the intensity of their faith, although some think it is (or should be). One of my dearest friends is the most committed atheist you’ll ever hope to meet. His forty-year friendship has helped me realize that doubt and skepticism can be allies to faith. It’s sometimes hard to maintain faith in a world such as ours, but I think it’s also hard to maintain unbelief in anything at all. It’s hard to explain away the existence of leopards and coyotes and trout and mitochondria and the color purple as purely accidental and random. Theists have their own set of befuddling challenges, but so do atheists.

They kept watch. Those three words are not a bad summary of the first two seasons of the church year. The words are incredibly important for true believers and others who aren’t so sure. The life of faith is sort of like looking for fish where none are really expected. You won’t always get what you’re looking for. And you won’t always find the answer you’re seeking. But you keep watching, on tiptoe, ready for revelation.

A young scientist named Manu Prakash teaches at Stanford and grew up in India. Prakash is an advocate of what he calls “frugal science,” an attempt to make the wonders of science more accessible to poor people across the world. He invented something called the Foldscope, an actual microscope that can be mailed in a flat nine-by-twelve-inch envelope and costs very little to make. Upon arrival, one uses several simple origami-style folds and voila, a handy microscope emerges that can be used in the field. Manu Prakash has a passion for helping people see the marvels of life all around them; a passion, you might say, for keeping watch.

The angels came to shepherds with their antennae up and senses sharpened. They were outside in a field. And they heard and saw some wonderful news: God’s promises taking on flesh and blood.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). The Greek word for “lived” in this verse literally means “to live in a tent.” Here’s a pretty close paraphrase: “God became human and camped among us.” The word hearkens back to the ancient tabernacle (the portable abode for God) that accompanied the people of Israel wherever they went. Christmas is the celebration of an ongoing camping trip where Jesus chooses to pitch his tent right next to ours. He drives in his stakes, kindles a little fire, strings up a hammock, and lives among us. When we move, he moves—sharing our lot, our flesh, with his unfading glory. The gift of incarnation, from an ecological perspective, is that God’s light fills our world; specific, nameable places. It’s the message Isaiah heard one morning from other angels in the temple at the time of his calling: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa 6:3).

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“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God” (Luke 2:13) and bringing peace. One striking word for me here is “suddenly.” They were keeping watch, like all other nights, and then suddenly.

There is a directional flow in Luke’s version of the Christmas story. There is a “back-and-forth” geographical ranging between heaven and earth. It was true when Jacob used a stone for a pillow, on another night centuries before, in another field; he saw a ladder of angels (Gen 28:10–22) with traffic moving in both directions. And it’s true in the shepherds’ field. The angels were there, and then they were not there, returning to heaven. God’s glory does indeed fill this earth, but keen watchfulness might be the most important spiritual discipline for latter-day shepherds to develop in order to discern the traffic.

A couple of springs ago I was on the Blue Ridge Parkway for several days with a bicycling companion. One morning we broke camp and the fog was so thick, pea soup, that it probably wasn’t a very smart thing to be out in it on a bicycle. My friend, Kent, twenty yards ahead of me, would disappear and reappear, in and out of the cloud. It was a weird feeling—ghostly, almost as if he were passing through a door into another world with other people appearing and receding. I have a photo of another friend standing in the fog on the Appalachian Trail in Georgia, a friend now dead almost two decades. I look at the picture, through the mist, and time vanishes. We’re on the trail together again and I halfway expect him to speak.

*

I’ve not seen those three fish again since I saw them in that culvert pool. But I keep looking and watching every day—not because I know they’re really there, but maybe because Advent watchfulness is even more important than verification in the life of faith. We live in the fields of a wonderful world. God reveals luminous truth and light, back-and-forth, up and down; angelic traffic.

“To you is born this day…”

Any day, really.

1. Portions of this introduction first appeared in Honeycutt, “Keeping Watch.”