When Stuart placed the bambino Jesus in the crib, he reached over the wall and into the scene. And I mused, possibly less coherently than I'm stating it now: "It looks very deus ex machina; the incarnation wasn't like that." But not until I saw The Nativity, all 4 lots of 30 minutes of it today, had I ever really considered the sheer biological and emotional messiness of it all. God is not outside the machine, setting it whirring and dispassionately observing or even ignoring it; God is fully, intimately involved.
I was going to write more, but I'm tired and it's all gone right out of my head. Probably over-excitement engendered by Ian's excellent quiz. Who knew that Burnley Miners' Club is the world's biggest single consumer of Bénédictine liqueur?
* Deus ex machina doesn't really have an opposite in this sense, but you get the idea.
Between September 2010 and September 2011, I lived alongside an Anglican Benedictine community of monks and nuns. In November 2010, we moved from Broad Marston Manor near Evesham to Mucknell Abbey, a new eco-monastery near Worcester. This blog was about things that I observed and things that interested me. I have now stopped writing it. Thank you to all who were also interested.
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