What follows is a Christmas reflection by Ely Martinez, a beloved member of our community and a leader on our LocalGlobal team.
I have a hard time grounding myself to the present moment. Warmth. Rain. Cricket-chirp —that is what the world hears and feels. When you catch yourself at a park observing the people around, they almost seem oblivious to the fireball in the sky or the gravity that keeps them tethered to the earth. I mean, why should they? The conversations that they’re having are captivating enough to distract them from the natural laws that bind their reality together. The gossip being chattered about is enthralling enough to draw listeners in and away from the universe around. Children play in this park. Infant romances are born in this park. Picnics are shared in this park.
But I cannot focus.
My mind swarms with the aesthetic. I do not just observe the change of foliage color in the fall, I need to capture the feeling of the forced changes of seasons. I enjoy sitting in a wooden pew in an ancient cathedral, but I do not care much for the artistry and architecture —I yearn to know the divine mystery giving the space its sacred nature. I inhabit earth, but I long to understand the heavenly things which coexist with my world. Like a naive adolescent I want to understand and become intimate with knowledge that is forbidden to me. In my mortality, I long to climb Sinai for a glimpse of Eternity.
I once told my wife when we were dating that life is all about the mundane things. That it was the very routines we dread that give life its beauty. As I reflect on that comment, I recognize that even that sentence is birthed not from gifted wisdom but from a romantic envy. After the excitement of college graduation, a time lived abroad, an engagement and wedding ceremony, and a new home and job, I find that the mundanity I so youthfully romanticized has sunk its teeth into my skin. There are endless dishes to wash. There are infinite cycles of laundry to fold. There are bottomless reports to write. Our bathroom is almost never fully cleaned. Flat tires to fix. Disconnected Wi-Fi. Air filters we often forget to change. All this and we do not even have kids yet.
I struggled to find any of the so-called “beauty” in this mundanity. Where was the dreaming? Where was the transcendence? Where was the energetic drive to create something that would be noteworthy? It seemed as if my God was calling me into a deeper space that only if I played a note quieter, scribbled a bit faster, or pondered more deeply that I could discover that elusive burning bush.
God did call. But it was not a call that I expected, but rather a cry of a fussy babe.
It is a quiet night. The wind that once cooled cattle on a hot day now chips away at frigid skin. The green fields have been discolored —stripped naked of any royal robes called harvest. The town folk have tired themselves of restless market shopping and sabbath preparing. It is empty in the streets. Shepards herd their cattle to graze on whatever grass remains. All that can be heard is hushed family gossip behind closed doors and laughter behind others. All save one mother, who hears the cry of her naked child. Under the night sky, that beautiful, rich night sky, a mother tucks her babe in a warm quilted blanket. This does just enough to soothe the child to cease his tears and to fall into peaceful, oblivious rest. The mother does not move. She remains fixed to the child, alone in the field, and gazes upon the eyes of her beloved baby.
God calls me not to the mountain of transfiguration or to the Jordan, but to the home of David to behold a mother soothe her naked, cold babe named, “Messiah”. I stand next to Mary with my head down and my heart warmed. I first assume the warmth is because I have been moved by the transcendence of my Lord’s humility, but I slowly am shown that it is the quietness of the moment that draws me deeper into the scene. Nakedness. Helplessness. Tears and blankets. A mother’s gaze. A sleeping child. An oblivious world. All these details humble my heart into conviction —no: into awe of the God of silence.
Lately, it is not the large-scaled films that have swooned me: the Oppenheimer’s or the Barbie’s. Rather it’s small pictures such as Past Lives, The Holdovers, and CODA that have demanded my meditation. What is even better is that these are artistic admirations that I share with my wife. It is the shared human experience captured by these films — the quiet glances, unspoken context, sincere laughs, and the open ears— that have found common ground in our hearts. This is something I love about my wife: she is a master of the small. Her piano is the sincere laugh. Her writer’s pen the unspoken context. Her typewriter the quiet glance. Her paintbrush is an open ear. God, I love it. As aesthetic as Oppenheimer is, there is not a beauty I have found quite as captivating as my wife reading beside me or taking a morning stroll. There is no beauty like the Past Lives beauty of washing dishes so that my wife can rest her feet. There is no catharsis as sincere as a Holdovers catharsis when we finally fold week-old-washed laundry. There is nothing noteworthy of CODA’s cinematography, but the film does not really need spectacle to be pure; life with my wife does not need great cinematography, just sincere purity.
Life, I have found, is better when I let myself get so lost in the conversation that I forget the fireball in the sky. Life is more fruitful when I stay on the call a bit longer to hear the stories of my mother; I become less anxious about forbidden knowledge that way. I love God’s voice, but it’s His silence that has begun to sing to me. Climbing Sinai has become too exhausting for me, and instead I have preferred the hike to Bethlehem of late. The journey is often longer and less eventful, but the gaze upon my quiet Lord is too holy to miss.