Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet and theologian who leads the Corrymeela community of Northern Ireland, a place that has offered refuge since the violent division that defined that country until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. He hosts the Poetry Unbound podcast, a part of the On Being Project, and his original interview with On Being's Krista Tippett, entitled "Belonging Creates and Undoes Us," is well worth a listen as we struggle with an increasingly fractured world.

During this honest Advent, it is difficult to think of the story of Jesus' nativity without acknowledging the pain of the war that rages right now in the region in which he was born. As innocents suffer in Israel and Gaza, we cry out to God and we look to people like Ó Tuama, who have walked the way of peace-making before. Like Jesus, Ó Tuama embodies vulnerability, knowing it isn't a sign of weakness, but of wholeness—maybe even of holiness.

Below you will find a brief excerpt from essays he wrote in July 2010, following an increase in violence between Catholics and Protestants in his native Ireland, entitled "What Stories Do We Tell?"

"There is an Irish saying that I love: ar scáth a chéile a mhaireas na daoine. It translates as 'it is in the shelter of each other that the people live.'

[It] reminds me of the intentionality we must incarnate when working with our lives to create avenues out of violent conflict. We must nurture unpredictable relationships. We must share shelter with people whose shelter we would rather not share. We must share stories with people whose stories we would rather not share. This may not be popular, but it may just save us...

I am thinking now of Anaïs Nin who said: 'We do not tell stories as they are. We tell them as we are.' And who are we?

We are people who all know stories of hurt, pain, division, separation, fury, and prejudice. We are people who have loved the land we live on. We are people who have done and spoken and created and given beautiful things and terrible things to each other... And, we must tell different stories. Not necessarily new ones, but deeper ones — stories of remembering, belonging, safety, and shelter."

How is the story of Christmas a story of vulnerability? Of belonging? Of shelter? How does Ó Tuama speak to the same kind of radical vulnerability that is incarnate in Jesus? Where is the world most in need of a deeper story that can bring healing and wholeness? How much do you live in the shelter of others? What "shelter" is God calling you provide through your own vulnerability?

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Image used with permission from the artist, Scott Erickson.

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