Nativity - Black Hole Or Pre-birth Rest?
Christmas hustle, christmas bustle
Adults' stresses and children's hastle
Many together, many not
Whoever's fault - it's their lot
Some find themselves alone
As the Christ Child may have done
No home to call their own
No family to be as one
So let's take time from food and glitter
And pray for all who's life seems bitter
That some of us with love to spare
My reach out hands and bring them here.
Maureen, who sent me the above, is inviting a cross-section of local life to her home on Christmas Day. But here on Holy Island we are shutting down our Retreat House. Celtic tradition values seasons. We prayed that the stones, the fabric and the floors might be rested in order to bless the season of visitors who will follow. People, too, are heeding this call to rest. Graham is to go into a season, not of purdah or shutting down, but of reflection and having his praying times alone - in order to study more of the spirit of soul friendship within the Trinity and in Celtic Christians who were in touch with their emotions, bodies and minds and made deep connections with others.
Before Mary could give birth to Jesus she doubtless had to rest, albeit in a place far from home comforts.
For many, dread, loneliness or drunkeness surface at Christmas. If we face these demons and go into the place of deepest darkness, that may become the place where something wonderful, and of God, is born.
Happy Christmas.
Ray
Posted at 07:48am on 21st December 2012
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