(a post by Rev Dr Stephen Koski)
Christmas began on Christmas Eve. It didn’t end on Christmas Day. We just shook off the retail part. Christmas is a 12 day feast beginning the evening of December 24 and ending on the evening of January 5 or Twelfth Night. The mystery is too vast for one day. We are invited each day to move from a Merry Christmas to a deeper Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, we lit candles and remembered what all children know. We come from Love. We are here to love. One day we will return to Love. We made room to give ourselves to the mystery of the Source of All Love becoming flesh entering this harsh and hostile world in a helpless, innocent, vulnerable child. We lit candles and shared them one to another allowing something deep within us, long since forgotten, to be awakened.
A New England medical journal published a story of a couple who had a 4 year-old little girl who gave birth to a baby boy. When they brought the baby home from the hospital, his little sister insisted on spending time alone with her baby brother. The parents waited just outside the bedroom door listening on the baby monitor. The little girl moved closer to the crib and they couldn’t believe their ears when they heard her say to her little brother, “Tell me about God. I am beginning to forget.”
The gift of the child in the manger is intended to awaken something within us long since forgotten. The days following Christmas are an invitation to stay awake and make room for love to deepen and dwell before business as usual occupies those spaces.
The poet Hafiz wrote, “How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of Light against its being; otherwise we all remain too frightened.”
May we find moments of stillness in these 12 days of Christmas to feel the encouragement of Light against our being. May that which is long since forgotten awaken within us that we might open and give to this broken and aching world the fullness of our hearts.
