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Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly minded,
for with blessing in his hand
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

At his feet the six-winged seraph;
cherubim with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the Presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry,

"Alleluia, alleluia!

Alleluia, Lord Most High!"

Just listened to Christian Forshaw's arrangement of "Let all mortal flesh keep silent", from his CD Sanctuary. Each time I read these words, listen to them sung, and especially the last Sunday in Advent, I'm left with a sense of wonder, awe and a feeling of convictional contentment. The Incarnation rightly understood, and properly expressed in beauty of image and precision of language, is a doctrine profound in its truth of the self-giving Triune God.

Convictional contentment is light years away from convictional certitude, or faith as ideological imperialism, or faith that as the complacency of the dominant has lost its sense of historic humility and rootedness in the nature of the God who comes. By using the phrase I mean an inner sense of fittingness, a way of thinking about God that is inexhaustible in truth and inexpressible in words, and thus yields a profound allegiance of heart to that glory which is full of grace and truth.

Content to live my own life on the conviction that the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us

Content to be a practitioner of reconciliation on the conviction that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself

Content to live in the joy, the peace and the hopefulness that is in Christ, on the conviction that joy, peace and hope are the will of God for the fractured reality that is our world.

Content then to embody the conviction of God incarnate in Jesus, in a life that likewise reaches out in love, resists injustice, models forgiveness, pursues peacemaking, encourages laughter, accompanies the lonely, welcomes the other, receives in grace the service of others, and is open to the will of God in trustful hope.

Content to live the conviction, to follow after Christ by the grace of God and in the power of the Spirit who pours the love of God into human hearts as unreliable as my own, and as unworthy.

The words above are from the Liturgy of St James, and carry within them theological immensity. The image is from the Hubble telescope and give a sense of vastness as beauty. The track from the CD combines organ, human voice and saxophone, three sounds in triune harmony. Coming at the end of the Daily Office of the Northumbrian  Community they leave me with what I have tried to describe, the contentment of faith, rooted in the conviction that the God who comes is the one known in Jesus Christ, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

End of Semester. Marking and grading, composing feedback that builds up rather than tears down.

Meetings. The kind that make you want to live longer with more energy, and the kind that sap the will to live.

To do lists. Unrealistic in length, unhealthy in guilt production, so unlikely to be done.

Too much sitting, talking, desk addiction, computer and mouse attachment like umbilical cord or intravenously administered information.

Need exercise. So last night spent a while on the exercise bike listening to a Christmas CD with some wonderfully therapeutic music. One track in particular, Gesu Bambino, sung by Luciano Pavarotti. Made me slow down.

Which brings me to an odd observation I want to make and then think about. One of the best Christmas presents Sheila and I ever received came two or three years ago. Couretesy of our daughter Aileen. Two tickets for Pavarotti live at the Glasgow Exhibition Centre the following July. I don't mind telling you. The best part of £200 for them, and considerable online activity to get the pick of the best seats. Then we heard Pavarotti was ill with cancer, and soon the concert was cancelled. Later Pavarotti died and our chance was gone. So we never got to use the tickets. And know what? In one very important sense it doesn't matter that we didn't get to hear one of the finest voices in our lifetime. What mattered is that the gift was given, the intention was clear, a once in a lifetime chance and no expense spared. Of course we were disappointed. But these two tickets had already worked their magic; they'd said important things every parent needs and wants to hear.

So. How important is the actual gift, compared to the love and kindness and intent that thought up the idea, and made it happen? Sitting there sweating away on the exercise bike, listening to the voice we nearly heard live, not for the first time I was reminded of the sacrament of generosity, within and beyond our families.

And the quite remarkable and unsettling thought that generous intention and costly expense are themselves the gift – the giver is the gift, and the gift itself merely the evidence of that which represents value of a higher order.

Och Christmas. A lot of sentimental nonsense, just a time for rational calculation to give way to uncalculating extravagance in the good cause of the other person.

In other words, the gift of Christ was never meant to make sense in any way we can get our own heads round. A time for the foolishness of generosity, an opportunity to say things too easily left unsaid, and to do it in ways that lack ambiguity. The generous act is a relational statement – which amongst other things is why when we think of God's coming amongst us in the gift of the Word made flesh, we are confronted with self giving love, making itself real, and known, as gift.

When I look at your heavens,

the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars that you have established;

what are human beings that you are mindful of them,

human children that you care for them?

Psalm 8.3-4.

Psalm 8 is one of my favourite stopping places when I feel small and need to regain a sense of proportion. Incredulity is an important and deeply Christian spiritual attitude, an essential prerequisite for that intellectual humility in which wonder and curiosity flourish. I suppose there is something called an ecology of the spirit, a disposition of the heart, a mind habitually receptive, a way of seeing that is patiently and faithfully interested, and not surprised at being astonished. In fact that might be the phrase I prefer as descriptor for a Christian worldview, one who is unsuprised at being astonished.

Reading the poetry and diary of Rebecca Elson, whose faith commitment was more an intellectual faithfulness to truth than an identifiable religious devotion, I have come to recognise a quality of mind that is deeply congenial to a Christian Advent theology. Those who confess "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, full of grace and truth", make the kind of statement that means that for the rest of their lives they will be unsurprised at being astonished. The amazed stargazer of Psalm 8 makes the same connections between a majestic universe and human fragility. So when I first read this from Elson's diary, it set me thinking once again about stars, the importance of perplexity and frustrated intellect as the context for thinking about what it means to speak of our fragility and the mindfulness of God in the one breath, and to speak of incarnation, the Word made flesh:

"Wind moving the branches of the trees. Strange how warm for November. Hit possible to take this for granted? What does it mean? Monday morning. Wake up, dress, eat breakfast, set off on my ratlling old bicycle, through the Grafton Centre, across the common to the black iron footbridge where the swans are waiting to be fed, past Castle Hill, through St Edmund's Gardens and up to the old stone walls of the observatory building. Put up a picture on the screen of part of a small swarm of stars seen by a telescope that hundreds of people, using the accumulated knowledge of thousands of thinkers, put into orbit around our planet. Think about what it means. What does it mean? And is it just, in the end, a discipline like anything, like building brick walls, or balancing accounts, or sitting at an altar in a pose of meditation? This is what I practise, practise it with compassion, with honesty, with dignity, with dedication to some ideals."   (Rebecca Elson, A Responsibility to Awe, page 102)

"Think about what it means." That isn't only an intellectual imperative, it is a spiritual summons, an insistent call from deep within the miracle of our own mortal humanity, an invitation to astonishment, to see what infinity might look like, if only we could see. This woman who wrote of swans and stars, of bicyles and telescopes, of balancing accounts and scrutinising the night skies, is like a secular Psalmist. She wants to know, "What does it mean?" It is a good Advent question. And part of its answer is in that other question, "What are human beings that you are mindful of them?" Unsurprisingly, I'm astonished at the answer.