WRITEON FOR DECEMBER 30, 2020
sister alies.
I know it’s hard to believe that Christmas is only five days ago. We prayed and fasted, decorated and baked, bought a few prezzies on and off line, sent a few cards, sung a few beautiful songs, and well, we have thought of others. In spite of, or maybe because of, the pandemic we have learned something about silence, joy, and love. A new take on love always helps!
There are so many aspects of the ‘Christmas Story’; some include angels, and the Wise (coming Jan 6), tax collectors, donkeys, camels, inn keepers, shepherds, and a young couple having their first and only child. A lot of the Story is beyond our understanding, well at least mine, because it is Divinely created. On the other hand, it is dead simple: God decided, Mary said YES, Joseph agreed and the rest was glory unfolding.
How all this winds together in love is the point. Well the very ordinariness of a young couple having a child, a poor young homeless family, crowded into a cave in the back of an Inn. Don’t we hear of these folks every day? Don’t we see them, if we would but look, refugees in the ‘throw-away-culture? The pandemic has ripped the band-aide off the cancerous wounds and if we have never seen the inequities of our society or world before…we have them in triplicate, by the bundle. They were simply in town paying taxes. Nothing new in that.
For me, the love lies in the Promise; the Promise that what had gone before, though loving in itself, would now be fulfilled by an amazing God, becoming one of us. ‘Word made flesh’. In order to get there our most creative God designed it so love would bind God and humankind (Mary) together in a sort of marriage that would be unbreakable and would make possible the hopes people held for so long. A tiny poem from St. John of the Cross reminded me of this:
“The Virgin, weighed with the Word of God, Comes down the road: if only you’ll shelter her.” Let us shelter the loves in our lives and be sheltered by Love itself.
We use all sorts of symbols to tell this Story and maybe each Christmas brings out one or another more starkly. Notice this Christmas tree, made by QUANNETTE for her mom; shining orange lights nailed to the palate and providing a sparkle in the darkness that nothing can put out. Sweet Little Jesus Boy, Light of the world, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And a very HAPPY NEW YEAR!
BLESSINGS.
