EMBRACING HOPE AMIDST A CULTURE OF “DOOM-SCROLLING”
(Saturday, December 14)
“In your womb, O all-blameless Theotokos, we behold a rich threshing-floor (θημωνία ἅλωνος, стог гуменный). You bear the Ear of Grain that grew without being sown; your Child is the eternal Word: In a wonderous manner you will give birth to Him in the cave of Bethlehem, He will lovingly feed every creature with the knowledge of God, freeing the human race from deadly hunger.” (Vespers Hymn, Forefeast of Nativity)
I learned a new expression yesterday: “doom scrolling.” It means, scrolling in one’s phone through negative news. If this becomes an addiction or a “deadly hunger,” it results in us having a crippling picture in our minds of a world (and our own lives) devoid of hope. This vision is not “ortho-dox,” a word that means, among other things, “upright expectation.”
The Orthodox Christian picture of the world and our place in it is by no means devoid of hardship. Our picture is of “a rich threshing-floor,” to which the womb of the Theotokos is compared in the hymn above.
What is a “threshing-floor” (ἅλως, гумнó)? It is a smooth and hard floor, where freshly-harvested wheat was spread out and manually beaten (before there was machinery), in order to separate and “reveal” the grains of wheat from the useless straw and husks. To help in this process, cattle and oxen were also led over the wheat, treading over it repeatedly to loosen the edible part of the grain from the inedible chaff that surrounds it. In biblical symbolism, the threshing-floor signifies (a place of) separation and revelation; judgment.
When we “behold” the womb of Mother of God as a “threshing-floor,” let’s note that this is a rather brutal image. It points to the difficult aspects of her vocation; of becoming, through a difficult journey, the “place” of God’s revelation of Himself to us. The Son of God is “separated out” from her womb, after a difficult journey to Bethlehem, seated on a donkey, – not unlike our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem, seated on a donkey, shortly before His cross and resurrection. Nonetheless, – spoiler alert, – this difficult journey culminated in great joy, so we by no means think about it in morbid terms.
This Nativity Fast or Advent, let’s think of our own journey to “Beth-le-hem” (meaning “House of Bread”) as a self-offering. Not a morbid self-offering into impending doom, but our surrender into the light and lightness of the Cross, which leads us into a new kind of birth-giving or productivity. By the prayers of the Theotokos, Savior, let us all receive You as our Bread of Life, so we become nourishing vessels of Your hope this season.
