Fourth Sunday in Advent-
Immensity in a Mother's Womb
These are words from poet John Donne (1572-1631) based on his poem Annunciation. Ponder the whole, original phrase, spoken to Mary:

Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

Taken word by word they lead us to a depth of pround mystery that we cannot even begin to imagine.

• Immensity
More than immensity, to be true. Here is the Creator, the Word that created, the Light of all Light. That is more than immense. That is the universe captured in a soon to be growing singularity


• cloistered
Secluded from the world in a safe and peaceful sanctuary. A place to get in touch with life itself.


• in thy dear womb.
A womb is a place where something (or someone) is generated. It is the utlimate safe place where the fetal position takes on its never-lost immense security. It is the place where the soon-to-be-born is lulled hour by hour, 24/7 with the heartbeat of life.

Ponder that more deeply and I find myself wordless. My mind cannot wrap around it. I hear and know its truth. I hear and am aware of its depth. But it remains a mystery that no simple human like myself can ever begin to unravel.

Nor should we!

I remember one Christmas season as a teenager listening to my pastor (a strict fundamentalist) spend an entire 20+ minute sermon "proving" the possibility in nature of a "virgin birth." He kept using the word "parthenogenesis" to tell us what it was. Aside from being extremely boring, it seemed to be a useless exercise in futility.

To "prove" that God became a man in a woman's womb by referring to some process that occurs mainly among lower plants and invertebrate animals seemed then - and even more so now - as an insult to the very mystery of the ways of God and to the uniqueness of Jesus. It is beyond explanation, above logic, so far outside the box of what is "normal" that the box and words of description pale.

All I can do in this last week before Christmas is to ponder. That wonderful word that Luke used to describe what Mary did with each new bit of imformation. Careful and thoughtful reflection and meditation on what it is I am again a witness to. Awe-filled wondering at what God has done and can do as I hear the words and watch again at the manger.

For nothing is impossible with God.

Let me end with quoting the first and fourth stanzas of Madeleine L'Engle's wonderful poem, The ordinary so extraordinary:

He came, quietly impossible,
Out of a young girl's womb,
A love as amazingly marvelous
As his bursting from the tomb.

He came, quietly impossible:
Nothing will ever be the same:
Jesus, the Light of every heart-
The God we know by Name.
--Madeleine L'Engle fromMiracle on 10th Street.