The Work of Christmas

 Howard Thurman suggests next steps for holiday revelers

"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 brothers,
To make music in the heart."

from The Mood of Christmas by Howard Thurman

GK Chesterton on Christmas

The rotund English Catholic and prolific journalist/writer pumped up Christmas like few have before or since

"It is in the old Christmas carols, hymns, and traditions--those which date from the Middle Ages--that we find not only what makes Christmas poetic and soothing and stately, but first and foremost what makes Christmas exciting. The exciting quality of Christmas rests on an ancient and admitted paradox. It rests upon the paradox that the power and center of the whole universe may be found in some seemingly small matter, that the stars in their courses may move like a moving wheel around the neglected outhouse of an inn.” — G. K. Chesterton

Sleepwalking Advent

 Shifting gears into Advent may take some time...but don't lallygag too long

Advent begins
in a fog of unreadiness,
as if by dull surprise
or in a twilight zone,
we groggily hang the greens.

Hardly with awareness
much less anticipation
good people sleepwalk
through the prophecies
and Annunciation.

We may finally stir
by the time children sing
“Away in a Manger”
the Sunday before Christmas,
their raised voices spark
a light in our slumbering souls.

Is it only children and prophets
who grasp the urgency,
sense the passion;
whose hearts are rended
and readied by the
promise of Light shining
in the darkness?

Is it only to them that Advent
becomes no mere repetition
of myth-laden past events,
but days of embracing
the living Mystery,
the ground of all hope?

By God’s mercy and grace
children and prophets are
only the first to hear,

the first to recognize,

to proclaim that

it is, indeed, Mystery.

The Light ever dawns,
beaming its rays into the
eyes of the groggiest saints,
the hardest sleeper
among us.

Only those who refuse to rise
amid many urgent shakings
and light flooding their beds
sleep through the
Incarnation.

“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”