Amy Sander Montanez is a writer, teacher, therapist, retreat leader, and spiritual director who attends Trinity Cathedral, Columbia. She is the winner of the 2007 Polly Bond Award of Excellence for Devotional / Inspirational Writing from Episcopal Communicators.

In the Moment—One Pilgrim's Attempt to Be Present

By Amy Sander Montanez, D. Min.

The Dream Isaiah Saw

Lions and oxen will sleep in the hay,
leopards will join with the lambs as they
      play.
Wolves will be pastured with cows in the
    glade,
blood will not darken the earth that God
    made.

Little Child, whose bed is straw, take new
      lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw: life redeemed
     from fang and claw.

Peace will pervade more than forest and
     field;
God will transfigure the violence concealed,
Deep in the heart and in systems of gain,
ripe for the judgment the Lord will ordain.

Little Child, whose bed is straw, take new
     lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw: justice purifying
      law.

Nature re-ordered to match God’s intent,
Nations obeying the call to repent,
All of creation completely restored,
Filled with the knowledge and love of the
      Lord.

Little Child, whose bed is straw, take new
      lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw: knowledge,
      wisdom, worship, awe.

From Borrowed Light: Hymn Texts, Prayers, and Poems, by Thomas Troeger. ©2002 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Reprinted under OneLicense.net #A-712960.

A friend shared this poem in the form of a song by Glenn L. Rudolph that she had heard, sung in 2006 by the Wittenberg choir in concert in Columbia. She brought me the words, played me the track on the CD, and sat back while I let the music roll over me and through me. The music is amazingly powerful, building in intensity to the final refrain. I was in tears by the end. But one need not hear the music to sense the intensity and poignancy of this poem.

Advent is here, and will soon be coming to its conclusion in the celebration of the birth of Jesus. During this season, we are to be preparing ourselves to meet Jesus, right now, today. But I think, on an even deeper note, we are to be gestating Jesus the Christ in our own bodies. There is a poem by the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart that says, in essence, if Jesus is born of Mary, and not born of us, what good is it? If Mary is full of grace and we are not, what good is it? Mary is not here. We have to do the job. We have to be pregnant with Christ, birth Christ, be Christ, know Christ, worship Christ, and learn from Christ.

Of course, this makes no sense at all. It’s all paradoxical. We are not the Christ and we must be the Christ. We can never know Christ fully, yet we must strive to know Christ fully. We know Christ more fully by knowing ourselves and others more fully. How can this be? How can anything be that is mysterious and mystical?

The words to this poem are idealistic, but they must be real at the same time. Can peace pervade? We must believe so and work toward this goal in whatever ways are possible for us and with whatever gifts God gave us. Can nature be re-ordered and look more like God planned it? We must try to see that this is so, in whatever ways we can. We must be like the prophet Isaiah and dream a huge dream and believe it.

The international movement launched by the UN and endorsed by all the world’s countries and every leading development institution called The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is a structured way for us to put our idealism into action. There are eight goals, all attainable by the year 2015 if we put our idealism into action. They range from ending world poverty to fighting illnesses to empowering women and children. For a more detailed look at the MDGs, go to the links on our very own Web site, www.edusc.org, by clicking on Millennium Development Goals on the right hand side of the home page.

Sometimes the problems seem so large that we aren’t sure we can make a difference. The next time you feel this way, look at the eight goals and pick just one and work toward that. In this way, you can know that you are being Christ’s hands and feet. The next time you act out of a place of love and peace instead of out of prejudice and arrogance, the next time you are even willing to really listen to someone whose views are different from you own, you are allowing Christ to “take new lodgings” in your heart.

This Christmas season may Christ be birthed in the world, through you and me.

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