forage

i'm finding a little more of my christmas spirit of late. maybe it's going to a few christmas parties this last week. the egg nog. the candy canes. the christmas lights going up. the few christmas movies i've watched recently. some good time with old friends and new. yeah it's probably a lot of those things. and it's probably more than that as well.

i feel like i've been kind of hiding a little lately. from myself as much as from others. i am judicious in my revealing, giving enough to seem open but not enough to be vulnerable or perhaps find real support or healing. a part of me believes it is not really wanted. deep are the wounds that must be healed. but we stay away from those--better to be functional and on the more socially acceptable level. which is also called being somewhat detached or independent. it's safer to live this way, boy do i know. but surviving is not living.

i watched love actually the other night. which kind of has something to do with christmas. it's one of my favorites. i like the myriad of stories, all with somewhat different sides of love. sure it maybe stays mostly on one side of the diamond, occasionally showing a little of the other--but the focus is the positive. and it really does matter where you look. you can see the airport reception lines and all the people meeting their loved ones. or you can see the ones walking on through with no one to greet them. only true reality sees them both. love is all around, but so is loss and loneliness and rejection. but there is a time for everything. and this is a christmas movie. and christmas is its own time.

christmastime, or more correctly advent, isn't about the things that you have in your life--the blessings, the gifts, the possessions, the haves. it's about waiting for what you do not yet have, the fulfillment of which comes on christmas, when you are given the one and only thing you really truly desperately need. there is nothing else that holds your life like that which you receive christmas morning, every year--the time of remembrance of the gift you receive within you every moment. and there is nothing in life, no circumstances, no loss, no trouble that can take that away. yes death cannot separate us from the love of God, but just as much neither can life. life and all of its cruelties. it cannot touch christmas. the disappointments of life become the celebration of the greatest fulfillment in this meeting. the losses meet the greatest gain. the loneliness meets the greatest companion. the rejection meets your greatest acceptance. it all falls away in light of emmanuel--God. with. us. God given for us. all else is chaff, straw in the trough.

Christ be born within me anew again. find your mangers in the dark caves of my heart.