Merry Christmas, Edwards Church Community!
I know it is only Advent, but this year I need to start really savoring where the season is going! May the spirit of Christmas buoy you and me and all whom we love in the days to come. May all that Christmas means – faith, hope, joy and love, family and friends, sharing what we have with those who are struggling – may all these positive values that we hold close with Christmas warm our hearts and minds, imbue our attitude toward daily life, and guide our living through the year ahead.
As Christmas approaches, we who have celebrated many a Christmas are drawn to the songs, sights, and smells that awaken memories of Christmas past and excite us for our Christmas present. I recall cookies – my mother’s and my daughter’s and the wonderful cookies that some of you bake – and other favorite ways to savor the holiday. Maybe, like me, you too enjoy singing louder and with more abandon than at any other time of year. Stay “tuned” for a virtual Christmas carol sing. We cannot gather for an Advent dinner in Addis Hall, but we can still sing our favorite carols at the same time, even if not physically together!
This Christmas I am thinking more than most years about a favorite folk song, “Christmas in the Trenches” by John McCutcheon2, and the human impulse to make peace whenever possible instead of war, to build up and not tear down. I am thinking of what at least one member of our community calls the “Christ spirit” in all of us and how, when invited, that spirit can overcome fear and anger to rebuild old structures and begin creating new ones to increase that peace.
Living through a life-threatening pandemic, we wonder when it will be safe to resume our life, lived in ways anything like before – going out just for fun with people we haven’t seen in person for over a year, shaking hands with a stranger, embracing a friend to say hello or good-bye. Living through a time of intense partisan division, when violent encounters erupt over long simmering political differences, we wonder how to avoid a cataclysmic showdown, how a new beginning might emerge.
This Advent we will observe many of the familiar rituals and customs we have developed to prepare for and celebrate the arrival of Emmanuel, of God with us. Our observances will be adapted to the threatening background of disease, our rites and customs reshaped by current conditions. This is not a new phenomenon, but the details are new for this time in history.
All our preparations – the baking and decorating, the wrapping and mailing, the quiet reading of a daily devotional and time set aside to consider how the “Christ spirit” lives in some of the most surprising people and places – come down to this:
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given;
so God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
where meek souls will receive him, still, the dear Christ enters in.5
May your Advent preparations be so full of good intentions that they leave room for the reliably surprising gift from God, which is her presence in our lives all year long.
With hope, peace, joy and love, Michael
1. Madeleine L’Engle poem “The First Coming.” 2. For a wonderful rendering of the song, try this recording of a performance at the WW II Museum, which includes historical background: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIxqJlnH2m8&list=RDcIxqJlnH2m8&start_radio=1&t=0 3-4. Madeleine L’Engle poem “The First Coming.” 5. Third verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” lyrics by Phillips Brooks.
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