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<\/a><\/h1>\nTHE BONDING<\/h1>\n
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A cold and listless season,<\/p>\n
And full of cheerless cheer,<\/p>\n
When hopes are raised and dashed again<\/p>\n
And joy dissolves in tears.<\/p>\n
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The search for endless family<\/p>\n
The search for one true Friend<\/p>\n
Leaves questers tired, disconsolate<\/p>\n
With questions without end.<\/p>\n
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Best find some potent pleasure quick<\/p>\n
Some superficial thrill<\/p>\n
Than search for everlasting love<\/p>\n
When none can fill that bill.<\/p>\n
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So hide yourselves in shopping<\/p>\n
And eating \u2018til you burst,<\/p>\n
Use endless entertainment<\/p>\n
As shelter from the worst.<\/p>\n
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And hope at least for truce on earth,<\/p>\n
Though warlords rattle swords<\/p>\n
As if to kill could solve our ills<\/p>\n
We seize our \u2018just\u2019 rewards.<\/p>\n
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Mistake some rest for lasting peace<\/p>\n
And calm for \u2018all is well\u2019<\/p>\n
And absence of activity<\/p>\n
As year end\u2019s victory bell.<\/p>\n
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But what if Advent is no quest<\/p>\n
Despite the wise men\u2019s star<\/p>\n
What if Advent isn\u2019t reached<\/p>\n
By driving from afar?<\/p>\n
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What if Good News comes to us<\/p>\n
From well beyond our reach?<\/p>\n
What if love and peace on earth<\/p>\n
Are more than things we preach?<\/p>\n
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What if a restless peace<\/p>\n
Is what He did intend<\/p>\n
Until we open up our lives<\/p>\n
And let the stranger in?<\/p>\n
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What if a peaceless rest<\/p>\n
Is not the Christmas hope<\/p>\n
What if nothing we could do<\/p>\n
Helps us truly cope?<\/p>\n
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What if there is a bonding<\/p>\n
With one who rules above<\/p>\n
Who came to us in beggar\u2019s rags<\/p>\n
And brought the gift of love?<\/p>\n
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The God shaped hole in every heart<\/p>\n
Is healed by just one source<\/p>\n
When Jesus comes to claim his own<\/p>\n
Who are without recourse.<\/p>\n
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So give up endless seeking<\/p>\n
Surrender is required<\/p>\n
The one who is the Lord of all<\/p>\n
Cannot be bought or hired,<\/p>\n
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He\u2019s not conjured into life<\/p>\n
By pomp and circumstance<\/p>\n
By Yuletide carols boldly sung<\/p>\n
By fun or drunken trance.<\/p>\n
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He comes unbidden, unawares<\/p>\n
Fills crevices of souls<\/p>\n
He comes on his own timely terms<\/p>\n
And makes the sinner whole.<\/p>\n
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\u2018We shall be restless\u2019 said the saint<\/p>\n
\u2018Until we rest in thee\u2019<\/p>\n
And find that we have been reborn,<\/p>\n
Our own nativity.<\/p>\n
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How silently, how silently<\/p>\n
The precious truth is given<\/p>\n
And God imparts to human hearts<\/p>\n
The blessings of his heaven.<\/p>\n
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THEOLOGICAL MUSINGS<\/p>\n
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This poem was written when I was quite fed up with the commercialization of<\/p>\n
Christmas.\u00a0 I felt that we were getting it all wrong, as Christmas was supposed to be about giving not getting, about relating not acquiring, about a spiritual transaction not a monetary one.\u00a0 But there is another side to this, namely that Christmas is a time of questing, not just requesting.\u00a0 It can be the most hideously lonely time of year if one does not have close family or friends to spend it with, or if one\u2019s nearest or dearest has recently passed away.\u00a0 This is of course one reason why alcohol flows so freely at this time of year\u2014 for some it\u2019s a matter of surviving Christmas, and obliterating the bitter memories or pain that the season causes to surface in one\u2019s soul.\u00a0\u00a0 Some drink to remember, but more drink to forget and block out the pain.<\/p>\n
It is a strange thing nevertheless, that Christmas should become something of a litmus test on the state of one\u2019s unions or relationships.\u00a0\u00a0 That first Christmas was surely not experienced as a condemnation or inquisition.\u00a0 It was rather a time of awe and wonder and celebration by various orders of beings from the angelic to the bucolic, from the questers to the sequestered family.\u00a0 And we should note that the gifts brought by the star gazers were not gifts they exchanged with each other or with the Holy family.\u00a0 They were gifts given to the new born king. \u00a0The primal question these stories raise is not the question of one relative to another hinting \u201cwhat have you done for me lately\u201d?\u00a0\u00a0 Rather the primal question raised is\u2014in light of the gift of the Son, what of yourself are you prepared to lay at his feet?\u00a0 Indeed, what about your life do you need to lay at his feet and subject to his inspection?\u00a0\u00a0 For the King that has everything, ultimately all we have to offer is our selves, or some token thereof.\u00a0\u00a0 And in the end, Christmas is not about seeking, it is about allowing yourself to be found, to be loved, to be treated as a person of sacred worth, just like the Christ child.<\/p>\n
The peace that passes understanding does not refer to the absence of activity of any sort, but rather the presence of a sense of well being which comes from the encounter with the Presence.\u00a0 No amount of revelry, however joyful, \u2018produces\u2019\u00a0 revival\u2014personal or corporate.\u00a0\u00a0 Christmas is not something one can conjure into life by activities.\u00a0 Christmas comes when the Christ enters in once more into our life, and fills up the crevices of our souls with the divine presence and love.<\/p>\n
I have often wondered why the Incarnation happened as it did.\u00a0 \u00a0The Son of God could surely have come as a full adult if God had so willed it.\u00a0 Is there something to the notion that Jesus came as he did: 1) to make clear every age and stage of life is of sacred worth; and 2) he came in the humble condition he did to make clear that no one on earth is beneath his dignity\u2014 not even the least, the last, and the lost.<\/p>\n
And there is more to contemplate.\u00a0\u00a0 If there really was an Incarnation of the divine pre-existent Son who took on human flesh and dwelt amongst us, then surely this required remarkable condescension on God\u2019s part.\u00a0 If there is to be a corporate merger between the divine and the human, then surely the divine must accept some limits, lest the human side of the equation be obliterated.\u00a0\u00a0 Human beings have limitations of time, space, knowledge, and power and Jesus reflects all these limitations in the Gospels if we read them closely.\u00a0 His life was a real human life, while not ceasing to be divine.\u00a0 His life was not a charade or a play where he pretended to be human.<\/p>\n
The Ch ristmas story then is indeed about the goodness of being human, and how human nature can even be hallowed and embraced by God, and it is about God\u2019s great love and desire to renew, restore, redeem human beings so they might better reflect the image of God within us.\u00a0\u00a0 But there is more.\u00a0\u00a0 The Christmas story, involving as it does the story of a miraculous virginal conception, reminds us that Jesus could not come simply as we are\u2014 fallen creatures, if he wished to redeem us.\u00a0 He did not come simply to identify with the fallen human condition as if that in itself would make us better persons or at least feel better about ourselves.\u00a0 Jesus came as we ought to be, and modeled how we ought to be.\u00a0 His entire life \u201ctempted like us in all respects, save without sin\u201d is a reminder that sin is not an inherent and necessary feature of human nature as it was originally created.\u00a0 It is however endemic of all fallen humans, which is to say all of us except Jesus.\u00a0\u00a0 So Jesus did not come to simple identify with us, he came to redeem us, since we had fallen and could not get up on our own.\u00a0 Perhaps one reason Christmas time seems like a condemnation to many is that it reminds us that we are not light, or in the light,\u00a0 unless we are in Christ, and yet we so badly long to be in\u00a0 the light, and to have\u00a0 the light within us.<\/p>\n
So then Christmas does indeed reveal the human face of the Christ, but it also reveals the all too human face of us all, and so it becomes a time for taking stock, contemplation, re-evaluation.\u00a0\u00a0 It is then the perfect time for some spiritual reflection of the first order.<\/p>\n
.\u00a0 In his poem \u201cHe Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven\u201d\u00a0 W.B. Yeats says \u201cbut I being poor have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;\u00a0 tread softly because you tread on my dreams\u201d.[1]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 What would it mean to lay your dreams before God, and submit your plans to Christ?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Do you, like Yeats, find this a daunting prospect, something you would be afraid to do, and so you must ask God to tred lightly?<\/p>\n A brief story is in order.\u00a0 For a long time in my life I assumed my mission was to get a job at a United Methodist seminary and help with the renewal of my own denomination. This was my dream and my mission, or so I thought.\u00a0 I went through a gut-wrenching interview process at one U.M. seminary and was told after the fact that I did a better job than the other finalist, but the other finalist \u201cmet a certain quota we needed to fill\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 It was this experience that led me to go back to God and submit my dreams to him, and ask\u2014 \u2018What is it that you want of me?\u2019\u00a0 not merely\u00a0 \u201cWhat is it that I would like to do for you?\u2019\u00a0 I realized that if one loves one\u2019s dreams more than one loves one\u2019s God, God will require that dream of you, however salutary or noble the dream is.\u00a0\u00a0 It is never easy to lay what is on and in your heart before God, hoping he will not smash your dreams to pieces.<\/p>\n Dreams are a good litmus test of where one\u2019s heart is, or what is on your wish list, much like the saying of Jesus about how are hearts are where our treasure is.\u00a0 Ask yourself the question\u2014 what do I treasure the most, about what do I most often dream and hope for?\u00a0\u00a0 Then, say to yourself\u2014Am I prepared to offer this up to God and see what God will do with it?<\/p>\n