A little food for thought this Christmas Eve
Merry Christmas
I like to think about Mary and Joseph all those years ago, waking up that first day with their new baby. As they looked at him they will have done what most parents do instinctively. It’s called ‘mirroring and marking,’ and it’s what we all do when we look at new babies.
Mirroring is what happens when you see a respectable adult making weird faces at a baby. It’s the instinctive way you make a sad face as the baby cries, as you feel empathy and pain with them. By entering into the feeling the baby is feeling, and reflecting it back to them, it helps them know they are understood and not alone in the sensation they are experiencing.
Marking is the interruption of their sensation from someone outside of the experience. It’s when a parent speaks soothingly as a child screams. It helps a baby grasp that what they are feeling is not happening to everyone everywhere. Which makes them feel safe. It means there is someone who is not overwhelmed by the same experience who is able to help them manage whatever is going on.
Too many of us reduce God to a ‘marking’ God. A God who speaks calmly into our pain - telling us true things to pull us out of our emotional spirals; who interrupts our emotional experiences with His glorious promises of truth.
But today we celebrate the miracle of Advent: a God who came to enter into this world with us to be with us inside the chaos. Emmanuel: the God who mirrors to us - the God who feels with us. Who lets us know that our emotions and feelings make sense, that they are understood, and we are not alone.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, indeed.