Pilgrimaging Towards Love

Joseph moves
away from seeing the world one way
towards seeing it – the world – and
himself in it – in a different way

Joseph moves
from being a good man to becoming a great one
from being kind to being loving
from being a man of his time to being a man for all time

Joseph moves
from Nazareth to Bethlehem
from Bethlehem to Egypt
and back again to Nazareth

God moves
from heaven to earth
from earth to heaven
from life to death to life again
from old-man wisdom to baby vulnerability
from eternal life to life eternal
from birth to death
from fullness to emptiness
wherein is found fullness

Between the two, there stands a bridge
God’s Holy Spirit comes
not only to Mary, but to
Joseph too – in dreams
and from the mouths of
angels, comes God’s Spirit
into the mind and heart and
feet of Joseph, who will walk
a nation, live as a refugee,
stand-in as a father, bear the
ridicule, work tirelessly, search
with his mother for the boy who
seems lost, who . . . will . . . love

Pilgrimaging towards love
does Joseph enter
into history a man
yet more than a man
a dream of what love
may do when called
forth to show its marks
to a world starving for
a word, an example
an answer to the unasked
question . . . how . . . how
are we to love?  Like a man,
all our Hamlets pursuing
our just vengeance
as evidence of our caring,
our love? . . . or like God
suffering all things, bearing
all things, hoping . . . all things?

Known to our Lord, we will not even know a single
word spoken by this man named ‘God-will-increase’
whose very name moves him to the sidelines that
God may occupy the rightful place of the divine –
at the center stage of . . . everything . . .

Pilgrimaging Joseph . . .
moves out of the way
and in his moving,
makes way for history

This friends, is the face of love,
and it is the movement of
the yield . . . the giving in . . .
the surrender . . . the falling
to the knees posture of one
who loves the God who made
him for such a time as this