These words from Howard Thurman are an invitation to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. A blessed Christmas to each one of you, dear readers.
This Is Christmas
The evergreen singing aloud its poem of constant renewal,
The festive mood spreading lilting magic everywhere,
The gifts of recollection calling to heart the graces of life,
The star in the sky calling to mind the wisdom of hope,
The warmth of candlelight glowing against the darkness,
The birth of a child linking past to future,
The symbol of love absorbing all violence.
THIS IS CHRISTMAS
Gifts on My Altar
I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas;
Gifts that are mine as the years are mine.
The quiet hopes that flood the earnest cargo of my dreams;
The best of all good things for those I love.
A fresh new trust for all whose faith is dim.
The love of life, God’s precious gift in reach of all:
Seeing in each day the seeds of the morrow,
Finding in each struggle the strength of renewal,
Seeking in each person the face of my brother.
I place these gifts on my altar this Christmas;
Gifts that are mine, as the years are mine.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
Readings are from The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations (pp. 25, 26, 28)
On this particular Christmas Eve where there is so much warfare, hatred, fear, and greed these words of Thomas Merton speak volumes to me.
Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it — because he is out of place in it, and yet must be in it — his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected because they are regarded as weak; and with those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, and are tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world. He is mysteriously present in those for whom there seems to be nothing but the world at its worst. — Raids On the Unspeakable and A Thomas Merton Reader, p. 365
The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world—free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless; free also to receive love from people and to be grateful for all the signs of God’s presence in the world. I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.
“There is no such thing as single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.”—Audre Lorde
A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes – and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas
Verse of the day
Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his suffering ones.
– Isaiah 49:13
Voice of the day
There is no better compass than compassion.
– Amanda Gorman, “Call Us What We Carry” (2021)
Prayer of the day
Guide us with the compass of compassion, that we may reflect your comfort and love.
If we… accept God’s revelation of [God’s self] in the Infant of Bethlehem, we must realize also that this acceptance has grave consequences for our lives. It means accepting One for whom there is no room in the “inner” of an excited and distraught world….. We see this in the disturbing symbol of that census which brings “the whole world” into the books of a Roman imperial power. If we accept this Infant as our God, then we accept our own obligation to grow with Him in a world of arrogant power and travel with Him as He ascends to Jerusalem and to the Cross, which is the denial of power. —- Thomas Merton (Love and Living as found in Advent and Christmas with Thomas Merton, p. 39)
When God chooses Mary as the means when God himself wants to come into the world in the manger of Bethlehem, this is not an idyllic family affair. It is instead the beginning of a complete reversal, a new ordering of all things on this earth….
What is going on here, where Mary becomes the mother of God, where God comes into the world in the lowliness of the manger? World judgment and world redemption—that is what’s happening here. And it is the Christ child in the manger himself who holds world judgment and world redemption. He pushes back the high and mighty; he overturns the thrones of the powerful; he humbles the haughty; his arm exercises power over all the high and mighty; he lifts what is lowly, and makes it great and glorious in his mercy. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons as found in God Is In the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, p. 42
What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. — Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers
“When the power of love overcomes the love of power, then we will know peace.”—Jimi Hendrix
