Emmanuel in the Mirror
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Dec 21
- 5 min read
In a season marked by dim light, unfinished grief, and unmet expectations, what does it mean to say that the Sacred is still here? Read on for a meditation on Advent, Presence, and the luminous quality that shines in our seemingly ordinary lives.
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Emmanuel in the Mirror
According to Cynthia Bourgeault, Advent is a season set aside to attune oneself to the Sacred mystery that is being born anew every day. This week, my mom officially entered into her third round of hospice. Without attempting to sound like Rod Serling, it seems to me that she may be attuning herself to a melody that’s playing from beyond the veil that separates heaven and earth. Food seems uninteresting to her. She drinks water sparingly. These are the common signs that someone with dementia is moving toward active dying. In the midst of my convalescence from hip replacement surgery, I had a little time to search the SMC archives for an article that fits this moment. I love the quotes provided by David Brooks and Thomas Merton. I hope this article speaks to you, too. For those celebrating Christmas, Merry Christmas! For my readers of other spiritual traditions, I hope these days are blessed for you, too! – Dr. Tom
This week, a several-day-long piece of April broke off and drifted backwards, landing right here in the Midwest, on the octave before Christmas. We’ve always decorated our house with the old-timey, non-LED Christmas bulbs of my childhood. This week, they’ve cast their nostalgic glow off of sad puddles on my driveway that had once aspired to be snow. It’s not such a big deal as it would have been a few years ago. In this launched-children/pre-grandchildren phase of our lives, we gave our sleds away to families who can still thrill to the hills of winter. Here in our temporary Florida-ish landscape, I picture those sleds stored in Beauty and the Beast’s derelict, enchanted castle singing alongside despondent Lumiere, “Life is full of dreading for a sled that isn’t sledding.”
Seems like nature’s only artifact of the Christmas season this year is the Winter Solstice. This is the time of year when everyone in my counseling profession keeps an eye on their clients’ moods. Diminished light and gray skies have a way of pulling people predisposed to depression or anxiety down a couple of notches. Even those not given to melancholy can find their dauber getting down when they go to work in the dark and come home in the dark.
I count it as a stroke of genius that Christianity located one of its highest celebrations in the middle of the darkest time of the year. There’s nothing more fundamental to the religious imagination than the symbol of light shining in the darkness. When I step back and think about it, another benefit to Christmas during the Winter Solstice has been the positive reframing of snow, ice, and cold as the appropriate trimmings for a cozy celebration. Except that this year, those trimmings have gone missing…again.
This morning, my wife shared that she’s having a hard time “getting into the Christmas Season” this year. I suspect she’s not alone.
Some Christmas Reflections That Did not Take Place on Christmas
David Brooks wrote a piece in the New York Times this week where he sounded more like Thomas Merton than a journalist (The Shock of Faith, Dec 19, 2024). In it, he recounted a bona fide religious experience that transformed his life. He described a moment on the subway when it suddenly occurred to him that each and every one of his fellow riders had a soul. “The souls around me that day seemed not inert, but yearning—some soaring, some suffering or sleeping; some were downtrodden and crying out.” Seeing that “spark of the divine” woke him up to the majesty and ultimate destiny of each person. He described a feeling of awe and happiness like nothing he’d ever felt previously.
I mentioned Merton a minute ago. Here’s how he described a similar transformative experience in his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1965).
"In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God became incarnate… Now I realized what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Just after recounting his story of when a subway car morphed into a moving underground chapel for him, Brooks quoted the poet Christian Wiman, “Religion is not made of [mystical experiences]; religion is the means of making these moments part of your life rather than merely radical intrusions so foreign and perhaps even fearsome that you can’t even acknowledge their existence afterward.” (My Bright Abyss, 2014).
Like Merton and Brooks, my spiritual life was quickened by a blast from the firehose of God’s love. From that top-of-the-mountain experience, when I was seventeen, until now, I’ve sought to make that moment, and other moments like it, the central part of my life. After years of spiritual direction, retreats, workshops, books, seminary, theological reflection, faith communities, and spiritual companioning, I have learned the truth of a fellow wayfarer’s words. “God will protect you from nothing, but will be with you in all things.”
Weather is a fickle thing. Maybe there’ll be snow on Christmas. Maybe there won’t be. Life is not so much fickle as it is full—so full of depth, meaning, beauty, goodness, and love, too—also full of mistakes, disappointments, failures, and tragedies as well. The central insight the mystics offer is that in the booming, banging, buzzing contradictions of life, each of us is “walking around shining like the sun.” Pure light pulses through your veins and flashes out of you, whether you are aware of it or not. In the last analysis, you are Emmanuel.
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
Would you be willing to light a candle in the dark and sit with the amazing insight that you are Emmanuel? For those who are coming at their spirituality from different pathways than the Judeo-Christian approach, see if you can translate this assignment into language that makes it come alive for you.
How has your practice of the Presence of God changed over the years for you?
How do you rest in God, no matter how you are feeling?
Looking back, what are some of the unconscious ways you have rested in God?
What have you found that helps you to accept your life just the way it is?
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
I love the second to the last line of this reflection. I often feel discouraged by my inability to implement change in what I see as a dark time. It’s hard to think of myself as a source of “pulsing light” but it is a consoling thought.
Thank you for this morning’s SMC. I’ve thought of myself in terms of what it means to be a “Christ bearer” (perhaps I’ve always identified more with Mary in the scene, especially during Advent), but I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself using the term “Emmanuel”. Something shifted. Thank you.