"For the mystery of Advent/Christmas is the mystery of the human and the specific—as specific and human as each one of us, as the face you saw in the mirror this morning, as the old woman you passed on the stairs, as the children you almost tripped over on your way out of the subway or into the office, as the shoppers elbowing their way through to the store counters, as the human faces and shapes and sizes and colors wandering the streets with you.
"I titled this book Tracks in the Straw to suggest that God isn't obvious in entering the world. What is more ordinary than a baby's birth to a poor family in a poor country? Still, God leaves 'tracks' in the straw. The tracks are faint but there for those who look and follow them with imagination. And imagination is the dancing partner of faith.
"Poet Kathleen Norris writes that in Ephesians when Paul explicitly compares marriage with Christ's love for the church, he finally gives up and simply says, with exasperation as well as wonder in his voice, 'This is a great mystery.' Norris concludes, this is 'what happens when you discover a metaphor so elusive you know it must be true. As you elaborate, and try to explain, you begin to stumble over words and their meanings. The literal takes hold, the unity and the beauty flee. Finally you have to say, I don't know what it means; here it is.'
"The poet's insight holds for the birth of Jesus and what it means, and for the Advent/Christmas season that gathers around it. Though that birth is surely not just a metaphor, it is a mystery because it involves the unknowable—dare I say sneaky? —ways of God.
"I put my experience of that incredible mystery in stories because I believe with all my heart that is the most accurate and faithful way to follow God's tracks in the straw."