O holy night
All this week, three porcelain magi have been making their slow way across the top of my dresser. Two shepherds and a single sheep are on the high ground of the piano lid. Perhaps there was once a flock of 100, and one got lost, and when the shepherds went off to find it, the other 99 wandered away. This is what happens, if you are not The Good Shepherd, when you have no dog.
Joseph and Mary are also on the piano lid, a little way off, with a cow and a tiny donkey. On this Christmas Eve in my apartment, angels are appearing, on the bedside table. Atop the bookshelf. On the windowsill. All is calm, all is bright. We are waiting.
For what? For restoration. For heart's ease. For love. For the chilly hand of loneliness to lift from our hearts. For sick toxic fear to disperse. This night of all nights.
I know a woman who has just moved to a new town to be with family. But her family has gone to a vacation home for Christmas holiday. She waits for them to return.
I know a man whose parent is sometimes afraid of everything, and lives wrapped in a dark depression. He waits for the moments of sunshine.
I know a woman who suffers from debilitating migraines. Her insurance company will not allow her all the medications she needs to be both pain-free and functioning. She has to choose, on any given day, between those two states. She waits for some way to be healed.
I know an artist who can't pay his rent because he is owed money for work already performed. He waits to be paid what he was promised.
I know people who were ignored by their parents, waiting to be seen. People beaten by their parents, waiting to be healed. People who were abandoned by their children, waiting to be found.
One of these people might be you. Or me. Or that person down the road, or in the next pew, or in the pulpit, on TV, in the Senate. Who can tell? Most of us work very hard to hide our wounds and manage our emotions. Histrionics in singing or acting, while spectacular, rarely ring true because in real life most folks try to seem OK, and just carry on. That can cost all the energy we have, especially in this holiday season, when we run till we fall and are shattered, and our sharp shards wound us and those around us. We try to have a Christmas that most of us have never in our lives actually had. It's not even our own remembered experience we chase. It is an accumulated tissue of dreams and novels and movies. We chase Christmas around the tree, without ever quite catching it. We are looking for satisfaction in the trappings and symbols of love, and not giving ourselves room and time to do the love itself. To give love. And to receive love - which can be even harder.
Perhaps that's the real problem with Christmas: receiving love. How many of us have heard the words, "I love you" and believed them, heard them and did not think "you wouldn't if you knew"? It is almost impossible to believe one is loved no matter what, without conditions, extravagantly, exuberantly, and forever. I think God tries to show such love in a billion ways, and we refuse delivery. So God finally sends us Love, incarnate in the form of us, to show us how it's done. A gauntlet is thrown down at our feet. What are we going to do with it? It is always there.
Every year, just after the solstice, we have another big chance to rise to our occasion. Actually, we get that chance every day, but on Christmas the invitation is written a little larger, brighter, easier to read. The angels are singing - and angels are loud - the news that Love is born, and looks like us, and that we are the ones to put that Love in action.
Good people all, this Christmastime, consider well, and bear in mind what our good God for us has done in sending his beloved son. Let's pick up the gauntlet, accept the challenge, shine love like the angels and roar like the star.
A most blessed Christmas Eve to you all.