FOR ALL OF RECORDED HISTORY there seem to have been people who didn’t quite fit, either because of poverty, or disability, or nationality, or age—those so beaten down by abuse, or struggle, or scorn that they seem paralyzed, without the will to change or be changed. We have come to think of them as outsiders—the hopeless homeless, the alcoholics, the aged, the single mothers, the chronically ill or crippled, whole families dying of famine on parched continents, or decimated by genocide. Have we forgotten that Jesus himself, in his manner of birth, was also a misfit?
Lately I’ve been reading about the Dalits, the “untouchables” of India—deemed by higher-castes to be the lowest of the low—doomed forever by birth to be the dung-gatherers, street-sweepers, scavengers, butchers, often darker in skin color than members of the higher castes, and with darker lives stretching before them.
I’m also remembering that in the economy of ancient Israel, anyone not of their “chosen” race was forbidden to participate in Hebrew religious rituals, and categorized as Gentiles, foreigners. Outsiders to almost everyone.
Everyone, that is, but God. God promised through Isaiah that he would welcome these “foreigners”—those who loved his name and wished to be part of his family—right into “his “holy mountain,” the temple in Jerusalem. Yahweh pledged that he would accept their sacrifices and give them joy as they prayed to him, whereas previously doors had been slammed in their faces. It is in the redeeming nature of God to welcome and reclaim.
Yesterday, I took a ferry to one of the San Juan Islands of Washington. Along the waterfront I noticed groves of one of my favorite trees—the madrona (the arbutus to Canadians). I have always felt a special affection for them, with their large glossy green leaves and their trunks that are cinnamon-colored and silky-smooth as a tanned human arm. I love to photograph their bark, which peels off like sunburned skin or house paint, in thin, curling layers. The patterned textures and tones remind me of a kind of natural abstract art.
They also suggest to me an appealing metaphor for acceptance and embrace. When a madrona branch withers and dies, it is not in the nature of the tree to allow it to rot or drop off. Its mother tree refuses to abandon it. Rather, as the young, healthy wood and bark grow, they creep up around the aged gray appendage like a bandage, a second skin, covering and protecting it, welcoming it back to tree-ness. No wonder, the word “madrona” means mother.
~From Lucy Shaw, “Third Friday in Advent,” in GOD WITH US: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas, edited by Greg Pennoyer & Gregory Wolfe
