Category: Michael D
Christmastide
Several years ago we began keeping the 12 Days of Christmas. We decorate our Christmas tree a week or so after Thanksgiving and leave it up until the Sunday after Epiphany (Jan 6). These are old ways. They are not nostalgic for us, rather it is a counter-cultural and counter pop-Christianity act.
How will you embody the Spirit of Christmas?
The more I live, Ebenezer’s words ring out a truth like the bells that announce Christmas.
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. In Prose being a Ghost Story of Christmas. (Chapman & Hall: England 1843), Stave 4.
It is how I’m living the spirit of Christmas. It is a way. Maybe it is the best way in times like these; or any time.
You?
Advent Week 4: all you need is love
How or when have you experienced love?
Accepted for who I am.
Challenged to be better than I am.
Encouraged, accountable, and forgiven when I am less than I can be.
It is my companion, family, friends, and colleagues that are invested in me enough to express a love that accepts, challenges, encourages, keeps me accountable, and forgives. It is tough love and a risk to accept it. And, it is a risk to invest that kind of attentive presence in others: colleagues, friends, family, my companion, and strangers. That’s my love offering.
How are you offering Love?
