Hiding & Finding

a poem for those of us limping into this last week of Advent

Welcome to the Back of the Flock,

where we are slowed down by jamming tiny, limp hands into mittens, keeping the baby from taking all the ornaments off the tree, and wrapping gifts before the older kids find them hiding in the closet (again).

Here we are in the last week of Advent, less than a week out from Christmas. Laura Kelly Fanucci recently posted that “the last week before Christmas is like the last week before birth,” and boy, did that ring true. The past few months have been a season of heightened anxiety and stress for me, and I feel like I’m limping toward the finish line of this year.

So I’m offering you this poem today, if joy and peace and merriment feel hard to come by this year. I wrote it for an Advent party I attend each year, at which attendees present art - visual, sung, and spoken - around a theme. This year’s was Hiding & Finding, and what I kept returning to as I constructed this poem was Psalm 139:7 — “Where can I go from your spirit?”

This familiar Psalm details all the highs and lows of the universe, underscoring that wherever we go, or wherever we try to hide, God is already there, in the dawn and on the far side of the sea, in the dark and the light. These are descriptors of distance, great breadth - but it is often within my own mind, my own nervous system, that I feel most hidden, trapped away from God’s presence.

I tend to peddle in anxiety; my amygdala, the part of my brain responsible for detecting threats, is constantly vigilant. I find myself awake in the middle of the night, trying to solve the world’s problems when I can’t even get my own heart to stop racing. In these moments, I feel unseen at worst, seen and judged at best. But I recently read this quote in the book Nervous Systems by Sara Billups : “We don’t know how to live according to how God sees us” – calling us to remember the kind eyes God has for us.

So this is a poem about anxiety and the ways that it has hidden us away from the beginning…but it is also a poem about Hagar’s El Roi – The God Who Sees - and the ways we are searched for and found, incarnationally seen for who we really are, and deeply known and loved.

“Where Can I Go From Your Spirit?”

We come from a long line of
warriors in winepresses
and anointed kings in desert caves,
even our first messiah was pulled
from a reed basket,
out of hiding,
from a mother’s perfect fear
that had cast her love into the Nile,
our DNA passed down from disciples in locked rooms,
so we carry our handful of fruits of the spirit on our backs,
refugees chasing joy and peace all the way back to Egypt,
where we hide out from oppressive empires,
outside and in,
trapped in nervous systems gone sour,
within the cramped confines
of a mind shrouded with shoulds and what ifs,
there in the dark, alone,
we wrestle with God ‘til daybreak,
when a star,
shining from the east,
finally curls through the bedroom curtains,
flaming the dungeon with the Light Of This World,
who burst forth from the dark of his mother’s womb,
unfurling into the searing spaciousness of air,
to sweep the cobwebbed corners of creation
for lost coins and lost lambs,
and pushed aside brambles and branches
to find us,
hidden behind our fig leaves and delusions
in our desperate search for desert springs,
The God Who Sees,
This God Who Sprints
down the driveway
as we at last limp towards home –
how sweet the sound
when we are called by name
to come forth
from the dark, cramped confines of our tombs.
Behold!
the people hiding in darkness have seen a great light.

May you feel truly seen by the God Who Sees in this season. May you feel known by the God who came to earth to put on flesh. May you feel loved by the God who sprints toward you in the dark, calling your name.

Photo by Barbora Vaštíková on Unsplash