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"To Be Embodied light" by Melissa Tidwell
In her poem, Mary Oliver writes about incarnation in a way that says as much to me as a stack of volumes on systematic theology. She writes first that "the spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, shoulders, and all the rest." I have read this poem out loud many times for anyone who will stand still long enough to listen, and I find I often tap my finger on my chest as I read these lines. Like this, she means, my gesture says. This body is an example of how the spirit likes to be found, out among us, not resting in some exalted temple far off in the stratosphere, guarded by six-winged seraphs—but in this humble temple, prone to head colds and hiccups, finite and temporary. Here.
Most important for the poet is that the spirit resides in temples such as this because it longs "to be more than pure light that burns where no one is." Those few words pack in a lot of meaning, an image of God that is intimate, relational, and purposeful.
What would be the purpose of God's greatness and power if they were always alone and unreachable, shrouded in mist and self-referential? God doesn't need us for completion or company, not in the way we humans need one another. But God wants us, wants connection, communion—of this I am sure. God reaches out, reaches in, shines the brilliance of holiness into our realm of the physical, and becomes embodied light, light that has form and heft, a face, a history, kinfolk and character, and prayers whispered in the dark.
We see God's desire to be more than pure light in creation itself and in the history of how humans have experienced the Divine. . . . You are [that history's] latest chapter. You are carrying on the saga, and your part in it all is to become the form of embodied light you were dreamed to become, made according to the recipe found in another immortal bit of poetry, this one by Langston Hughes:
Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-[dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust
Not for sale.[From Embodied Light: Advent Reflections on the Incarnation by Melissa Tidwell, (Nashville, TN: The Upper Room: 2013), 18-20.]
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Incarnation
December 2015
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