Second Sunday after Epiphany - C4

Years C
John 2:1-11

What to do while waiting for our time to come? Doze? Run in circles? Take a class?

There is such a focus on completedness that we sometimes forget the journey.

Mother's know mothering is never done. The kid will always be in process. So idealized mothers attend to the moment. What does it mean for G*D to be with us in the manger? What about when in Egypt? How about as a runaway? At a wedding?

When we begin to ask what it means to evidence G*D in the particular setting in which we find ourselves it becomes more possible to just go ahead and find ambrosia and amrita in honey, nectar of the gods, and plain old water (divided by the firmament, but still water on both sides of the sky). Having found the moment of G*D present is now, not an hour away, allows a savoring of the simple and finding it simply divine.

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich may be another way of coming at this story. An excerpt: "We do not yet understand the neuronal basis of . . . pleasure, but an interesting line of speculation has opened up only recently. Humans are highly imitative creatures, more so even than monkeys and others of our primate cousins. As all parents learn, to their amazement, an infant can respond to a smile with a smile, or stick out its tongue when a parent does. How does an infant transform the visual image of a protruding tongue into the muscular actions required to make its own tongue stick out? The answer may lie in the discovery of mirror neurons, nerve cells that fire both when an action is perceived -- when the parent sticks out his tongue, for example -- and when it is performed by the perceiver. In other words, the perception of an action is closely tied to the execution of the same action by the beholder. We cannot see a dancer, for example, without unconsciously starting up the neural processes that are the basis of our own participation in the dance."

In other words, to see Jesus' baptismal water flowing in a wedding scene calls us to perceive it flowing through us. Water/Wine makes no difference, G*D is with us!

= = = = = = =

O little cana, how still we see thee lie
on the back of your "Welcome to Cana" sign
it reads, "Welcome to Cana"
your still had run dry
you had the makings
but not the time
for fine wine

look again
you've got the time
you still have the makings
for still water to become living water
to welcome the world
to welcome the universe
still no longer, still right now