Circles of light & Sydney, too

When the wise men saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:1o-11)

I can’t let Mary go. Christmas has passed. The ornaments are stored in their boxes, but Mary remains. Her silent radiance still shimmers from the tapestry on the family room wall. Rapt in love, Mary’s eyes caress the infant Jesus, lying in the straw of a manger, while a shepherd leans on his staff to peer over her shoulder at the child.

One of the Magi kneels in adoration at the creche and offers his gift. Two others, gifts in hand, stand in reverence until it is their turn to kneel in the warm light around Mary and her child.

The shepherd, the magi … and me, all of us drawn to this circle of light that love might heal and restore our humanity.

Mary and this child, who is Love’s blessed face, is an icon, a holy image on which we gaze to be made human again. Drawn into this circle of light, we see and feel what God is doing in us and in everything. The Holy One is drawing us home into circles of love and light, circles of care and healing, where our vulnerabilities encounter Love’s great grace alive in human hearts and hands.

We are not and never were intended to be alone. Home is the circle of light that appears in every circle of care and belonging where love lives.

I see this sometimes when I watch the news and witness how human hearts gather around the needs of those who fall, who struggle or suffer outrageous fates, like a football player in the prime of life who collapses in cardiac arrest in front of a stadium full of people and millions of television viewers. Grown men kneel, cry and pray; paramedics rush to work their wonders, and watchers stand vigil at emergency room doors.

But I’m even more impressed by my young friend, Sydney, and the circle of light around her. It’s not just the little smile that crosses her lips as she works her phone and laptop from a hospital bed, but everything and everyone around her.

Eight days ago, she had a heart transplant, a harrowing experience for anyone, especially so if you are only 14. She is doing well and has every hope of being able to do things and live in ways that have not been possible for her.

It’s possible because of a host of people that daily surround her in this circle of light.

Nurses, doctors, therapists and specialist of many kinds: OT, PT respiratory, art therapy, psychological services: I neither know nor can name them all. But they’re all there, present in that circle with Sydney’s fantastic parents and twin brother, grandparents and family near and far; friends at work and school; members of her congregation and hundreds of others who have and continue to pray for her. And, most poignantly, there is a donor and family who gave an incalculable gift so that Sydney might live abundantly.

Quite some circle, all of it—all of them—aglow with light and life, love and hope, tears and joy, more beautiful than I have words to say, alight with the love that streams through the darkness of the centuries to this time, this place, this girl.

The warm circle of light around Mary and Jesus—and Sydney, too— reveals what our loving God has had in mind for us all along. And every time we find ourselves in such a circle, we are home, truly home … in the Light whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.

 David L. Miller