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The Journey of Advent: Delivering Love Embodied with Katy Stafford and Tracy Johnson
83 Plays1 month ago
It's Christmas Eve and our time of advent is drawing to a close as we turn our hearts and minds to the arrival of Jesus and celebrate light breaking forth in the darkness. This week, Tracy and Katy reflect on God as love, pondering how the Christmas Season invites us to remember that Love is With US and to risk extending love.
For this is the story of Christmas: that God chose to embody love, with all of its suffering, because he longed to come alongside us. He knew the cross lay at the end of the road, and he risked love anyway. Join us as we dar to hope this Christmas that we may we be brave enough to do the same.
For journaling prompts that coincide with this episode and walk you through each day of advent, sign up at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction & Purpose
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Katie Stafford, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. Each week, we share stories with the hope of seeing one another a little better and affirming each other across different seasons and perspectives. We're excited for you to join us.
Mindfulness & Recent Themes
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome to our table.
00:00:29
Speaker
Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas Eve. ah What a season it's been. Has been. Yeah. what do you mean What are you mindful of from the last three weeks of conversation, conception, caring, and labor? That's a great question. so as i As I talk about what I'm mindful of, I'm going to light my camp.
00:00:55
Speaker
I have mine lit here. I'm going to try and light it. if i I have really I have really loved for you and I, you know, the the process and the and like connection, like doing this the way that we've done it um has kept ah has kept the things that we've been talking about really in the forefront of my mind. um I have have found this is often true for me that if whatever I'm reading or studying or learning about, the opportunities for it to feel valuable will show up.
00:01:32
Speaker
you know, kind of all over. So I think what I i would say, I think i'm I'm feeling kind of the fullness of where we've been and what it means for sort of where we find ourselves today.
Emotional Reflection & Weekly Themes
00:01:46
Speaker
I'm feeling really aware that, you know, that our last in the series is being released on Christmas Eve.
00:01:54
Speaker
So I probably find myself wondering, you know where where will women be finding us today? you know Is it in the early morning hours? Is there making cinnamon rolls? Or maybe in their ears, is there wrapping packages or driving to an airport? Or or perhaps it'll be in retrospect. you know And they'll be listening to us on the 26th, 27th, 28th. But for those that are with us today. Yeah.
00:02:21
Speaker
ah
00:02:24
Speaker
I've loved these themes. I feel like the reflection has been really beautiful. The journey's been really beautiful. And the um the emotional, I'm gonna say the emotional stakes of each week have built, right? Where it's like, i maybe it's just in sitting in the themes. And so like each week i I sink down a little deeper. I sink down a little deeper. I sink down a little deeper. But starting with that like sort of tentative, tender hope,
00:02:54
Speaker
And then thinking a little bit more about like, how do I want to be about peace in the world? Like, what does it mean to bring that forth? And then last week, where joy and grief and fear and like so much pain and suffering go into laboring and that we need to do that together. And like, just, I felt like we've walked to like a very tender, vulnerable, wholly strong kind of space. approve And now we're like on the precipice of it as we're thinking about like, delivering unto what?
Spiritual Insights & Community Experiences
00:03:30
Speaker
Like what, what are we about? And the verse from last week that has been recurring in my mind is that Isaiah verse where God as midwife is saying like, I will not bring you to the edge of birth.
00:03:48
Speaker
without delivery, right? Like that kind of promise from God. And like, how do we attach to that? Like, how do we hold on to that? And what are we delivering? Like, what for? Yeah, I am. I think that the the concepts of where we've been have been, I have loved those i even more. I have found myself carrying the stories of the women that we've been talking about.
00:04:13
Speaker
um with me. And I think one of the things that I've been noticing is is that I i feel i phil a little more ah integrated and and and grounded in something deeper.
00:04:29
Speaker
um as we're coming into to today and the time actually that it's taken and as you and I have been sitting sitting with these things and as I've been you know continuing week by week by week to be pondering and um and and answering you know the questions that we've been asking but the our listeners to um to consider is that I I feel less distracted um by by external noise and and more more aware of kind of even where we're going to go today as we talk about like, but what is it what is it that's being born? What is it that's being burst? Certainly Jesus. But what does that mean?
00:05:26
Speaker
What does that mean? What does that mean for us? um For me, typically, obviously, when we talk about the birth story, we land in Luke or we land in Matthew because it's like those are the only gospels that give a historical account of the birth of Jesus.
00:05:46
Speaker
But as we thought about this week, and I was spending time, we picked a verse from Matthew, which is actually a quote from Isaiah, hold on, I'll read it in Matthew one, announcing Jesus as Emmanuel. And it's actually, it's spoken according to Matthew's telling. It is kind of spoken as the conclusion of a dream for Joseph. Joseph has heard that Mary is with child.
00:06:15
Speaker
ye does not want to shame her and I think feels hurt and confusion and maybe some fear and is preparing to break their engagement because he's assuming she's been unfaithful to him and Gabriel comes to him in a dream and explains what's going on that you know the Holy Spirit has come upon her and the way that dream concludes is all this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet Look, the virgin shall conceive, embarrass son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. And as I sat with that verse,
00:06:55
Speaker
I actually was thinking of the start of John, John the Gospel and the epistles of John, where John just outright says, God is love. And so kind of as I was writing notes for this week, I started with the idea of love is with us. And so what does that mean? Like Jesus is the embodiment of love.
00:07:22
Speaker
I think so many of the women that listen to us and that find themselves in our community are here because we have made a place where, while we absolutely believe those words that you just said, that God is love and that Jesus is with us, we are also a place that acknowledges it doesn't always feel like.
00:07:47
Speaker
and And I think, Katie, that Christmas becomes such a charged time, emotionally charged time and space. And and it begs the question of why.
Christmas, Love, & Grief
00:08:04
Speaker
What is it about the celebration um of of Emmanuel, of God with us, of Jesus being born, and and and and all that comes with it? Why why is it that it feels so emotionally charged?
00:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, you and I, we've chatted about this a little bit, that like love love has twins, right? So like to know love is to know grief, to know joy is to know grief, to know love is to know loss, to know longing, to know love unfulfilled, love unrequited. like is It is intimacy and beauty and connection, and it's the other side of those things as well. Yeah, to say yes to love is to say yes to suffering. It's inevitable. Yes. is It is part of the package. Yes. if you If you say yes to love, you are also saying yes to suffering. And I think that's some of what gets stirred
00:09:11
Speaker
at the holidays um is wherever we find ourselves in in that in that cycle or or in the mix of those things. whether you know is it a Is this a Christmas that feels magical, where love feels easy and available and abundant? Yes.
00:09:36
Speaker
um or Is this a season where ah where it it feels possible? So maybe it doesn't feel magical, but it feels possible and you're on the precipice of a lot of goodness and it feels hopeful and playful and childlike and there's an awareness of maybe there's something good coming and I'm going to get to open that up. Or is it a season of loss where love feels absent or ruptured?
00:10:08
Speaker
where it feels unrepairable or maybe or maybe it's a season that is a reminder of an unrepairable rupture that you've been carrying for decades in inside of your heart. And and so then all were full of the things make it difficult. Or it's a season of longing where it's like maybe you know love in some spaces but it's it's absent in others and you're wondering like how long and if ever me, and you know all of those where it's like, I have a dream of a Christmas tree full of family around me, and that's not this year again, right? like It's not a loss, it's an unfulfilled, but and you're wondering. right Or it's a mishmash of all of that, and you're just sitting in the ambivalence of the highs and the lows, because you, no level of support. It almost feels like you can't settle. Totally.
00:11:08
Speaker
And all of that gets activated and something happens at the holidays because they're recurring because there's years of them. It's like time compresses down. And so like what's true today is suddenly like living alongside of every, every Christmas before. And so that all just feels a little bit closer, right? It feels closer in the sense and in the songs.
00:11:34
Speaker
and in the things that you break out and put around the house, like that all of that carries memory with it. And so it's this very tender time that provokes and unpacks a lot that you keep inside your body the rest of the year.
Attachment Theory & Spiritual Presence
00:11:51
Speaker
I think that as we talk about God with us, and and we have talked about each week, we we have to some extent engaged, you know, withness is what we have we've been talking about, the witness of God. And I think ultimately, you know, witness is about attachment. It's it's about about our experience of feeling attachment with God. And here's the thing about attachment is that how healthy attachment isn't that I always have you right here with me, right next to me, right? Healthy attachment, what we know is that um when it's present, you know, and you're building it with a child, it is this space where the child begins to learn that they can leave and they can come back and that you will leave, but you will come back. And so it's actually the returning
00:12:49
Speaker
the consistency of the returning and the faithfulness of the return that builds the security in the attachment. i You come at that work from a very grounded pragmat. I know you speak regularly with clients about attachment and like you're looking at it through a therapeutic lens. That was a theme that came up for me Theologically, as I was reading this week, I spent some time with Miroslav Volf, and as he was talking about what withness with God is about, he used the story of Abraham being called by God. And what he noticed was that there were three key things that must be true, to be with, to attach. He talked about presence.
00:13:42
Speaker
He talked about detachment, leaving where you've been, I'm about a new thing. um And he was specifically talking for Abraham about like the culture and the tribe that he was from, what felt comfortable, what felt settled, what felt great.
00:13:59
Speaker
God was inviting him into this new liminal unknown wandering space and then their reception or returning like welcoming others into this new way of being.
00:14:17
Speaker
I've been thinking about those words. I've been thinking about what is it to be present to God? What is it to detach from what feels so fixed and comfortable in my world so that I can attune?
00:14:29
Speaker
what that is about. And what is it to keep my heart open to receive both God and others in new ways in this sort of wandering wilderness land that can feel precarious and almost like you want to clamp down and, you know, just survive it. Hmm. Like what what if the wilderness is like for all intons and purposes for Abraham, he got a promise later on, but the wilderness was kind of it for him. Like,
00:14:57
Speaker
He didn't get the great nation promised land story. He just got the hope of it. And it was mostly about walking with God in the wilderness. Well, and that's not just you. Yeah.
00:15:08
Speaker
I mean, there the the wilderness is inevitable. When we're unwilling um to suffer, when we're unwilling to be in the wilderness, it's it's like a refusal of reality. If I have an insistence that I'm i i'm i am good, i'm still I'm in the city gates, I belong. I follow the city rules. I follow the rules. I follow the norms. I do the right things.
00:15:38
Speaker
My children are respectable in the right ways, and they herald me from the streets. It's a very appropriate place. Law and order happens in the city. And Jesus went to the wilderness, and John was the voice crying in the wilderness, and and the Hebrews were in the wilderness, and Abraham went to the wilderness, and Hagar went to the wilderness. The wilderness... That's where you meet God. That's where you meet God. God god is in the wilderness spaces.
00:16:07
Speaker
I wonder, you know, I'm thinking about Jesus. I wonder if we meet God in the wilderness and we bring God back to the city. I think so. Right. I wonder it because I think there's more than the wilderness, too, because if you just if all you if you go to the wilderness and declare like this is this is it for me, you you know, you become an aesthetic. Mm hmm. And and that's not really about witness either.
00:16:37
Speaker
That's about isolation. It's about isolation. so yes i mean i think and And so this like the leaving and the returning and whatever this the cycle of that the cycle of that is is for people. I'll go back to what I was saying. that you know, the security is built in the repeating of the of the pattern of of being able to leave, you know, and having been left, but then having the return happen. That's how security is built. and And anytime there's leaving, there's risk. I mean, I think about that. I think as um as a
00:17:22
Speaker
as a mother and as a wife, I mean, and as a friend, but over time, the awareness I've had of the risk anytime there's leaving. You know, whether I'm leaving or whether one of you is leaving. Despite how secure things have been, there is always the risk. And the precarity of not necessarily an intention to return, but will you return? What what if something happens? Because it could. It could. I think that's a lot of what we all feel at Christmas.
Birth of Jesus & Love's Risks
00:18:00
Speaker
too like Christmas is this inherent returning. We come back to this season. We come back to believing we're going to meet God.
00:18:11
Speaker
and As the years tick by, sometimes we have a growing fear or a growing awareness that like people don't always return. And this makes me think about where we were last week as we were talking about midwifing and labor and that what what happens when we are afraid. What gets signaled inside of us, our response is to tighten down. We we tighten up.
00:18:38
Speaker
whether it's whether emotionally that we're we're afraid of something you know in the in the emotional realm or the spiritual realm, or it's physical, and it's the pain we tighten up. And as soon as we tighten up, nothing gets born from tightness. Or it becomes incredibly painful. but just Well, it just called out makes the process worse, right? It stalls the process, and and you're no longer you're no longer working with you're working against. And it's interesting when we think about like what was being born. What are we talking about? you know Yes, the birth of Jesus. And what what does that mean? If the birth of Jesus is the ultimate expression of of God with us, God is love and love is with us.
00:19:32
Speaker
then how am I meant, how are you and I and the women and the men that that we know listen? How are we meant to participate in Christmas and and and in in all that comes after? So I think it's really the questions like, what is your role with love? Who are you to be in relationship to love? We talked about, there is a quote from um Meister Eckhart, who's a 13th century theologian. We are all meant to be mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born. just that's like That's the heart of it, is it's like love, witness, presence, reception,
00:20:22
Speaker
It needs to be extended throughout the world. There are constantly people needing to experience love. And the invitation is to be with God, to be about what God was about, to bring that into the world. And so then the question is like, well will I birth love?
00:20:42
Speaker
Will I, if love is always needing to be born because God is always needing to be born or birthed, will I take the risk? Will I say yes to the inevitable suffering, whatever that's going to look like, because there will be suffering and And and will i will I participate in the bringing and birthing of love? I want to read something that Richard Breuer says as he's sort of assessing who Jesus is and what it is to follow him. So he he's talking about Christianity broadly. I don't think you have to put that label on it. But when you look at Jesus, you see that Christianity is a religion of attachment.
00:21:26
Speaker
Jesus says to love and to pay the price for it. The soul always attaches. It falls in love. When we attach, when we fall in love, we risk pain and we will always suffer for it. The cross is not the price that Jesus had to pay to talk God into loving us. It is simply where love will lead us. Jesus names the agenda. If we love, if we give ourselves to feel the pain of the world, it will crucify us. I think that, like,
00:21:57
Speaker
that encapsulates what Jesus was about being coming, right? And just bear it like, it's gonna suck. Love hurts. It's going to be costly. It's going to be sacrificial. Your heart is going to be shattered. And some might decide that's really not worth the risk. That sounds like too big a price to pay. and The magic of Christmas is that Jesus decided to love anyway. I think for most of us, the
Suffering, Transformation, & Relationships
00:22:32
Speaker
the place that place that transforms us is the place where we have a felt experience of Jesus suffering with us. Like where he is with us in our suffering, in what we have known of suffering.
00:22:54
Speaker
Um, and, and it was a choice he chose to be with. And I think paired with that is it's the withness and the transformation that happens as a result. And that's not always a happy ending. No. Sometimes it is, but it is, it is a remaking that happens. And like, as we are.
00:23:20
Speaker
reborn through that experience as we become who it is we're going to be next or walk alongside another human being that we get to watch them become who they're going to be next. It's a powerful, sacred experience. And and then we stitch together a little closer, right? And it's that fabric, it's that togetherness that I think keeps us all walking forward and does change the world a thread at a time. Yeah. I i think it was two two weeks ago um that we talked about, you referred to the study is that was done at UCLA, that that part of what it surfaced was what women do in response to stress and trauma and that they tend and befriend.
00:24:10
Speaker
and in very simple ways. like They're tending and befriending what what's right around them and what's right in front of them. you know i Today, I'm thinking that that our our world it our world is torn. There is there is no peace.
00:24:34
Speaker
as we look around and and it's easy to want to tighten up or to feel overwhelmed by the by the magnitude of what feels wrong.
00:24:47
Speaker
And so I think the invitation is to, what, what if you don't look out at the magnitude of what is wrong, but you just let it be closer. You just keep your eyes, you know, like when I'm working with somebody who has suffered some kind of crisis or a trauma, you know, a whole lot of what we talk about is like, okay, and so we're just going to do the next right.
00:25:14
Speaker
It's just the the next thing that's in front of you because the way that you live through and recover from is one hour and then a couple of hours and then a day at a time. And you really don't have energy for all of the noise that's out there. There is just the tending to what is closer. And maybe there's some of that that now, maybe now is a time I think it's a time to begin to not not be concerned about your neighbor, but your neighbor is actually the person that lives closer to you.
00:25:54
Speaker
You know, the things you're meant to be tending to, probably for most of us, some of us are called to a global platform of work, but that it's it's closer
Poetry, Love, & Final Reflections
00:26:05
Speaker
in. It makes me think about, I i have been reading Madeline Langel for this Advent season, and she has a poem that I think ties in with what we've been saying. This this is what she says.
00:26:17
Speaker
This is no time for a child to be born when the earth betrayed by war and hate and a comet slashing the sky to warn that time runs out and the sun burns late. That was no time for a child to be born in a land in the crushing grip of Rome. Honor and truth were trampled by scorn. Yet here did the Savior make his home.
00:26:42
Speaker
When is the time for love to be born? The inn is full on planet earth. And by a comet, the sky is torn. Yet love still takes the risk of birth. And I think that, I think that's what our invitation is as we kind of finish our advent season today on Christmas Eve. That the invitation is like, how will you take the risk? Or how will you risk in the ways you feel you can?
00:27:12
Speaker
in participating in birthing love right where you are. Yeah, I think that's the heart of it. I mean, that's where we where we close for tonight and and wake up tomorrow embracing love where and how we can. And I would say, you know,
00:27:33
Speaker
opening our arms when and how we can. maybe Maybe opening our arms for someone who needs to return um and maybe opening our arms in hope of of being able to return. And maybe just stepping away from something that we've been so enmeshed in where it's like, I think I'm going to take one small step outside of that tonight to open my arms to where I think love might be growing in a different direction. Yeah. Really brave thing too. That would be a really brave thing. A really brave thing. Well, it's been fun to fit in it together. It's been good. It's been good. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas.
00:28:21
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by myself, Katie Stafford, and edited by Erin Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson, and all our