Annunciation

MARY COULDN'T SAY she wasn't warned. The angel came with an Easter lily in his hand and stood so still he could have been one of the columns in the loggia where they met. Mary had trouble hearing what he said and afterward thought it might have been just a dream. Even so, it troubled her.  

It was not until later that the real trouble came. The real trouble came when what the angel announced would happen happened, but in a way she couldn't have dreamed: squatting there in the straw with her thighs wrenched apart, while out of her pain she dropped into the howling world something that looked like nothing so much as raw beefsteak: who was the one the angel had said was to be called Holy, the Son of the Most High: who was the Word itself fleshed with—of all flesh—hers.  

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Animals

OUT OF THE GROUND the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name" (Genesis 2:19). Following Adam's lead, we say that is the elephant and the albatross, that is the weasel and the goldfish. What or who they really are we do not know because they do not tell. They do not tell because they lack what is either the gift or the curse of speech, depending on your point of view. Perhaps another reason they do not tell is that they do not know. The marmalade cat dozing among the nasturtiums presumably doesn't think of herself as a marmalade cat or as anything else for that matter. She simply is what she is and what she does. Whether she's mating under the moon or eviscerating a mouse or gazing into empty space, she seems to make herself up from moment to moment as she goes along. 

Humans live largely inside their heads, from which they tell the rest of their bodies what to do, except for occasional passionate moments when the tables are turned. Animals, on the other hand, do not seem compartmentalized that way. Everything they are is in every move they make. When a dachshund takes a shine to you, it is not likely to be because he has thought it over ahead of time. Or in spite of certain reservations. Or in expectation of certain benefits. It seems to be just because it feels to him like a good idea at the time. Such as he is, he gives himself to you hook, line, and sinker, the bad breath no less than the frenzied tail and the front paws climbing the air. Needless to say, the whole picture can change in a flash if you try to make off with his dinner, but for the moment his entire being is an act of love bordering on the beatific. 

"Ask the animals, and they will teach you," Job says to his foul-weather friends. Innocence, as above, is one of their lessons, but the one Job has in mind is another, that is, that "in [the Lord's] hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being" (Job 12:7,10). When the ravens came and fed Elijah bread and meat by the brook Cherith (1 Kings 17:6), we're told they did it because the Lord commanded them to. However, I suspect that since, in spite of Poe, ravens are largely nonverbal, the Lord caused the sight of the old man to be itself the command the way the smell of breakfast is a command to be hungry or the sound of your best friend on the stair a command to rejoice. 

Elijah sat there all by himself—bald, on the run, in danger of starving to death. If the ravens could have talked, they would probably have tried to talk either the Lord or themselves out of doing anything about it. As it was, there was simply nothing for it but to bring him two squares a day till he moved on somewhere else. The sleek, black birds and the bony, intractable prophet—since all life is one life, to save another is to save yourself, and with their wings, and beaks, and throbbing birds' hearts all working at once, the ravens set about doing it.  

-Originally published in Whistling in the Dark and later in Beyond Words

Angels

SLEIGHT-OF-HAND MAGIC is based on the demonstrable fact that as a rule people see only what they expect to see. Angels are powerful spirits whom God sends into the world to wish us well. Since we don't expect to see them, we don't. An angel spreads its glittering wings over us, and we say things like, "It was one of those days that made you feel good just to be alive," or "I had a hunch everything was going to turn out all right," or "I don't know where I ever found the courage." 

-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Ananias

IT WASN'T BECAUSE ANANIAS held back from the poor box some of the proceeds of his real-estate deal that Saint Peter came down on him so hard. The poor would get by somehow. They always had. What got the old saint's goat was that Ananias let on he was handing over his whole pile instead of only as much as he thought he wouldn't be needing himself.  

"You do not lie to us but to God," Peter said (Acts 5:4), and the undeniable truth of the charge together with the unbearable shame of it were more than Ananias could take, so he dropped dead. His wife, Sapphira, had been in on the real-estate deal with him, and when she turned up three hours later and found out what had happened, she dropped dead too.  

Lying to God is like sawing the branch you're sitting on. The better you do it, the sooner you fall.  

Acts 5:1-11

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures and later in Beyond Words

Amos

WHEN THE PROPHET AMOS walked down the main drag, it was like a shoot-out in the Old West. Everybody ran for cover. His special target was the "beautiful people," and shooting from the hip, he never missed his mark. He pictures them sleek and tanned at Palm Beach, Acapulco, St. Tropez. They glisten with Bain de Soleil. The stereo is piped out over the marble terrace. Another tray of Bloody Marys is on the way. A vacationing bishop plunges into the heated pool. 

With one eye cocked on them, he has his other cocked on the unbeautiful people—the varicose veins of the old waiter, the pasty face of the starch-fed child, the Indian winos passed out on the railroad siding, the ragged woman fumbling for food stamps at the check-out counter. 

When justice is finally done, Amos says, there will be hell to pay. The happy hour will be postponed indefinitely, because the sun will never make it over the yardarm. The cashmere sweaters, the tangerine-colored slacks, the flowered Lillys will all fade like grass. Nothing but a few chicken bones will mark the place where once the cold buffet was spread out under the royal palms.

But according to Amos, it won't be the shortage of food and fun that will hurt. It will be the shortage "of hearing the words of the Lord" (Amos 8:11). Toward the end, God will make himself so scarce that the world won't even know what it's starving to death for. 

Amos 6-8

-Originally published in Peculiar Treasures