Jesus was born into our world - a world of brokenness. In today’s gospel we see Joseph struggling with what to do about Mary’s pregnancy. Mary, despite her powerful acceptance of God’s wishes, might also have had misgivings. Certainly she had to endure the looks and whispers as she walked through the town square, as people gossiped and speculated. But Joseph and Mary accepted the unknown, accepted their own doubts and fears and brokenness and followed where they thought God was leading them. What does it mean that our world -- and those of us who inhabit it -- is broken?
This past summer I stayed on a farm for a week. I have spent my life in cities or suburbs and know little of how farms really operate. But much of my life is spent on proving how capable I am in every area I try. My competence and my success far too often define who I am.
On one of my first mornings on the farm, I collected eggs with a wonderful young man named Michael, who happens to be mentally handicapped. I volunteered to help collect eggs because I thought of all the farm chores, it sounded like something easy and something at which I could feel competent. I wasn’t. Instead I slipped on the hen house steps in my unfamiliar rubbers boots, didn’t see some of the eggs in the coops and hesitated to push my hand in under the hens to feel around for eggs. Michael was a very patient teacher and repeated everything for me. The nervous birds surrounded us and pecked at our jeans while I tried to look very, very cool.
When we had filled our buckets with eggs, we walked together up to the workshop where the eggs were cleaned and sorted by size and put into cartons for sale. Several of us lined up to clean the eggs and I, still striving to be competent, wanted to make sure Michael and the others understood that I had learned all they had taught me and was now competent in this area, too. As I washed the first egg, I scrubbed the dirt off harder than the egg could take it and it broke in my hand. I was more gentle with the next one and handed it down the assembly line but a third one slipped and broke. And another…and another. “Don’t worry,” Michael reassured me. “Breaking them is all a part of the job.”
Michael had no idea how much he was really teaching me about my own life. He was so much more comfortable than I was with my incompetence and with the literal brokenness in my life. I was the only defining myself by how much of a success I was at collecting and washing eggs or any of the other farm chores I struggled with that week. He taught me that brokenness is “all a part of the job”
I realized in my time on the farm how much more I could accept myself if I didn’t try to be perfect. When I let go of the concept of being only capable and successful, I was able to accept that being broken is just a part of the life I lead here on this earth. It’s the kind of very human life Jesus was born into - one less perfect and one that asks us to accept ourselves as Jesus does, with all of our dirt, cracks and imperfections.
Maureen McCann Waldron
The most important part of my life is my family – Jim my husband of 47 years and our two children. Our daughter Katy, a banker here in Omaha, and her husband John, have three wonderful children: Charlotte, Daniel and Elizabeth Grace. Our son Jack and his wife, Ellie, have added to our joy with their sons, Peter and Joseph.
I think family life is an incredible way to find God, even in (or maybe I should say, especially in) the most frustrating or mundane moments.
I am a native of the East Coast after graduating in 1971 from Archbishop John Carroll High School in suburban Philadelphia. I graduated from Creighton University in 1975 with a degree in Journalism and spent most of the next 20 years in corporate public relations in Omaha. I returned to Creighton in the 1990s and completed a master’s degree in Christian Spirituality in 1998.
As our children were growing up, my favorite times were always family dinners at home when the four of us would talk about our days. But now that our kids are gone from home, my husband and I have rediscovered how nice it is to have a quiet dinner together. I also have a special place in my heart for family vacations when the kids were little and four of us were away from home together. It’s a joy to be with my growing family.
Writing a Daily Reflection is always a graced moment, because only with God’s help could I ever write one. I know my own life is hectic, disjointed and imperfect and I know most of us have lives like that. I usually write from that point of view and I always seem to find some sentence, some word in the readings that speaks right to me, in all of my imperfection. I hope that whatever I write is in some way supportive of others.
It’s an incredibly humbling experience to hear from someone who was touched by something I wrote. Whether the note is from someone across campus or across the world, it makes me realize how connected we are all in our longing to grow closer to God.
