Christmas - The Most Amazing Letter I Have Received
'AÂ LIGHT HAS SHINED ON THOSE WHO LIVED IN A LAND OF DEEPEST DARKNESS' (Isaiah 9:2)
Of all the Christmas cards and emails I have ever received a four page typed letter posted in New Zealand is the most extra-ordinary.
X's estranged friend - a friendship that had been bolstered by booze and marijuana - died of cancer. Only then did he realise that he loved her. This left this unbeliever between hell and high water. Until, in a garage sale in his small town, he picked up a book I wrote 21 years ago: 'Before We Say Good-Bye - preparing for a good death.' This helps us re-arrange the furniture of our minds and spirits in order to say a fulfilling goodbye before and after our dearest dies.
X wrote of the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, of how the spinning vortex of gas and dust congealed to become a planet, of how our planet is the most fortunate of the uncountable number of planets because it was the right distance from its sun to make life possible. He recalled Tina Turner's song 'We are living in a world of stars and dust between heaven and all that surrounds us. We are travellers here, spirits passing through and the love we give is all that will endure...'
He wrote me 'I found our secular creation was a miracle and I could make it my secular religion.' He used prayers, readings and thoughts from my book to weave a relationship that was too late for his dead friend but not too late for him because 'our spinning away from the sun puts on a light show'.
'IN THE DARKNESS A LIGHT HAS SHINED' (ISAIAH 9.2). May my friend, and you, and millions of us in these dark times, open our eyes to see the transcendental cosmic event. Did the Big Bang come from nothing, or from some intelligence or Some One? And if it came from Some One - is it any less credible to believe that that Some One (the Cosmic Force) should become incarnate in human form on planet earth to reveal to us 'the transcendent power of a new affection - defenceless but eternal Love'?
The Sun becomes the Son. The Son becomes our Brother. Pagan astrologers are guided to traverse eastern lands and bring Him gifts. Death has no more dominion over us.
'God from God, Light from Light, now in flesh appeaaring
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!'
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P.S. If you send me an old fashioned cheque (check) for £12 or the equivalent I will send you a signed copy post free.