"Birthing"
Jane Leyden-Cavanaugh
Sunday, December 24th 2006

Tessy’s birth
I am no expert at “birthing.” My aunt Midge should be up here talking about birthing because she had 14 kids. I have first-hand experience giving birth once. To my sweet daughter, Tess, a year and a half ago. And I don’t remember much about that event.

In the midst of the toughest part of my labor, I remember my husband Joe and my doctor were laughing and having a good time. Joe leaned up to me and asked, “Is it o.k. if we laugh during your labor?” I remember saying, “Sure. Have a good time… Is it o.k. if I don’t laugh? I need to concentrate on delivering your child.”

I had no idea the birthing process was so messy, bloody and gooey. But what a wonderful end product – a miraculous little person! After seeing little Tessy come out, 6 pounds of her, with lots of jet black hair skin covered in goo, I got the giggles and started laughing

Jiternice story
But how I want to talk about birthing today doesn’t have to do with my daughter Tess. It has to do with my Grandmother (Gra). Because my older brother Peter, supposedly the smart one, when he was a baby, couldn’t pronounce the word Grandma.

My grandmother (Gra) on my dad’s side was Bohemian, her hair was curly and white and she wore a hair net, gave us old-fashioned pink sucky candies, kleenex stuffed in her sleeves, flabby wrinkley skin that hung down her arm, as kids in the car, we’d sit next to her and swing it back and forth and laugh.

She’d invite us over to her apartment for a sleepover and we were fascinated when she’d take her teeth out and put them in a glass of water by her bed, I remember the sound of the clock that ticked by her bedside, but the thing that I remember most about her was making this (show it) “jiternice.” Bohemian sausage. Every year on a special Saturday, we used to pile into our basement and spend the day making “jiternice.” with her sister, my great Aunt Nonny, my mom and dad and siblings, and my aunt Joanne and cousins.

Basically, there were three jobs - the choppers, the people who chopped all the ingredients and got them ready, the grinders, the ones who’d take all the ingredients and grind them up them with the grinder, and the stuffers, the ones who made sure the sausage went into the sausage casings. Cook it. Delicious!

How many of you in this room are Bohemian, raise your hand? How many are not Bohemian?

For those of you who are not Bohemian, here’s the recipe:

• 2 bags of onions
• 2 loaves of dried white bread
• 2 whole bulbs of garlic
• a 16 ounce box of barley
• ½ cup of marjoram, not marjorine like the butter, but marjoram the herb and last but not least
• 22 pounds… of pork butt

To some, that may sound disgusting. It did to us too as kids. And we would ask, “Gra, can’t we make this without the pork butt?..” And Gra would smile and say, “Honey, then it wouldn’t be jiternice.” 

Tie-in to Scripture
The readings today are kind of like a recipe for jiternice. Just as my Grandma can make delicious sausage from something as disgusting as pork butt, God can make great things out of flawed people and very undesirable circumstances.

The first reading from Micah. “But you, O Bethlehem, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me, one who is to rule in Israel.” With God, out of little, unknown, obscure, nowheresville Bethlehem comes the savior of the world.

The Minnesota translation would be:

Out of Anoka comes Garrison Keillor

Out of Cloquet comes Jessica Lange

Out of Duluth comes Bob Dylan.

The Christmas story is a story of the birth of the Savior, in a smelly barn, with donkey poop, spider webs and pork butts.

A story of God using very earthy ingredients and making a chef d’oeuvre an award winning cordon bleu – the Christ child.

But it is also a story of imperfect people (like you and me) giving birth to Christ in our world today.

 My Life
If I look back at my life as a recipe, there are many great tasting ingredients. I consider myself an optimistic person, I can be very kind. I’ve made some good decision like choosing Notre Dame as my college, studying abroad, marrying my husband Joe – delicious ingredients, but there’s some pork butt in there too.

Things that I am not proud of, bad choices, stretches where I was off-track.

During my mid 30s, my acting days in Chicago and L.A., my pork butt was being self-centered, living basically for myself and not seeing the needs of people around me. Well I saw them, but I didn’t want to get involved. Someone else could deal with them. Not me. I was focused on my life and my career. That’s all I had time and energy for.

In my life now, sometimes my pork butt comes out with my husband, Joe. Although I try to give him the best in me, sometimes he can get the not-so-best in me. Boy can I sulk around him when I want to, punish him with my silence, refuse to forgive him (because he’s so often wrong) and get on with it when he says he’s sorry. Too often I just want to bask in my “rightness” before patching things up.

There are things in me that I don’t like – some that I’m working to change and some that, despite my efforts, I most likely won’t ever be able to change.

I wish I could relive my acting days in my 30’s.

I wish I had gotten more involved with those in need.

I wish I wouldn’t be so self-righteous at times.

“Please God, take this pork butt out of my life.” And God smiles and says, “Honey, then it wouldn’t be you.”

Your life
Perhaps there’s some pork butt in your life too. Something in your past or present that you aren’t proud of, or you wish weren’t there.

Some of you might be thinking:

• “I can’t shake how critical I am of my daughter or my son.” Or
• “There was that whole stretch in my life when I didn’t go to church and was really distant from God.” Or
• “I wish I could erase that ugly relationship in my past. I wish I could take back what I said or did.”
• “I hurt so many people that I love by my alcoholism. I wish I could erase all those years.”
• “I’m so patient with everyone else in my life, why can’t I be that way with my husband? Or my wife?”
• “People tell me I’m one of the nicest people they know. They wouldn’t say that if they saw how I treat the co-worker I can’t stand.”

• “My teacher deserves more respect than I’ve been giving him/her.”
• “I’ve been too afraid to stand-up for this kid in my school that gets made fun of all the time.”

Place this in the hand of God. See God bless it and give it back to you, for you to try again and do a little better next time.

You say “Please God, take this pork butt out of my life.” And God smiles at you and says, “Honey, then it wouldn’t be you. I see all the ingredients in your life – those which taste good and those that don’t – and I still love you. And I can do wonderful things through you.”

Action
I wrote this talk for anyone in this room who is weighed down by your shortcomings, your stumblings. You might be afraid that somehow you’re not good enough for God to work through you.

I’m asking you to look at your flaws and mistakes in a new way. Not as something that stops God from working through you. But as opportunities for God’s grace to heal you and strengthen you to do a little better next time.

It has something to do with Paul’s great line in 2 Corinthians 12: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” God’s power is made perfect in our weaknesses.

When we focus too much on our flaws and mistakes in the past, we fail to see the possibility of what God wants to birth in us and do in us in the present.

I assure you, God works through us — pork butt and all. God sees all of us — the entire recipe and says, “It is good.” “You are delicious.”

No matter who you are –  with a resume of great things to be proud of or a wake of mistakes, bad choices, and things you are ashamed of — God can still use you and all of us in a most extraordinary way, through our gooey and messy lives. This is the Advent story.

This Christmas, give yourself a great gift and release some of the anxiety you feel about your mistakes and feel confident that God is birthing even now in your humanness a beautiful purpose.