In which I stroll through the Liturgical Year | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Trust: A Message of Christmas

By Anita Mathias

He came to earth in a splash of energy

And gentleness and humility.

That homeless baby in the barn

Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn

Who would have thought it?

But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.

He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things.

* * *

Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,

The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.

And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.

He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.

For he created all things, and in him all things hold together

Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth

Drawing astronomers to him.

And drawing him to the attention of an angry King

As angelic song drew shepherds to him.

An Emperor, a King, scholars, shepherds, angels, animals, stars, an unwed mother

All things in heaven and earth connected

By a homeless baby

The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.

The One who makes connections.

* * *

And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.

To me, today, it says,

“Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.”

The baby lay gentle in the barn

And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents.

“Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says,

“I will make a way. I will show it to you.”

Happy Christmas everyone.

Why I Believe in the Resurrection

By Anita Mathias

As I was drifting off to sleep last night, I murmured, “I believe in the resurrection.”

Roy, woken up, said, amused, “I am glad to hear it!”

* * *

I was thinking of this passage I had recently read in Diarmaid MacCulloch’s magisterial, A History of Christianity.

Christianity is, at root, a personality cult. Its central message is the story of a person, Jesus, whom Christians believe is the Christ (from a Greek word, meaning Anointed One): the God who was, is and ever shall be, yet who is at the same time a human being, set in historic time.

Christians believe that they can still meet this human being in a fashion comparable to the experience of the disciples who walked with him in Galilee, and saw him die on the cross. They are convinced that this meeting transforms lives—as has been evident in the experiences of other Christians across the centuries.

For me, that’s the ultimate proof of the resurrection—that Jesus is as real to me as anyone I know. Realer, perhaps, because I feel I know him better than most people I know.

* * *

The pastor of my old church, Williamsburg Community Chapel, Virginia, Bill Warrick, said he asked a Young Life mentee, “If you could speak to Jesus, and be answered, would you believe?” The young man replied (this was the American South), “Oh yes, Sir, that would be the ultimate extra-terrestrial experience!”

Indeed, prayer, asking Jesus how to do things–whether it’s home-managing suff, or business stuff, or writing, or blogging, or even Twitter!!—and receiving surprising and brilliant answers…yes, that’s the ultimate extra-terrestrial experience.

* * *

American Bible teacher Beth Moore was asked, “How do you know that Christ is real?” She replied, “If he wasn’t, then I must be crazy, because I talk to him all the time, and he answers.”

It’s one proof, to me, that Christ is real and alive. I feel I can ask him questions, and get an answer.

I can ask him how to do things, or what to do, and clarity comes, and, often, insight and a Gordian-knot-cutting to the heart of the problem, that comes from beyond myself, from beyond my radar, my intelligence, or the way I normally think.

Of course, if researchers track creative people who meditate, they might come across similar answers surfacing from the unconscious. Whole mathematical careers, for instance, Ramanujan’s, have been built on these heuristic insights. (Interestingly, Ramanujan claimed he received his mathematical insights in prayer and meditation).

What is more amazing, perhaps, is when prayer changes things outside yourself—other people’s hearts; external events; the acceleration of a career; how co-incidences accumulate when one prays, Berlin walls topple, glasnost occurs, in our lives and in the world.

* * *

Ultimately, I believe in the resurrection because to me Christ is so real that I can often “see” him with the eyes of faith. Because, on request, he can turn my moods around, and fill my heart with joy.

Because he answers my prayers, in the micro-level of my mind, heart and spirit, and on the macro-level by orchestrating events which I am powerless to.

* * *

John’s proof of the reality of Jesus was that he had seen him: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it. (1 John 1).

I believe in the resurrection because I have experienced Jesus, and He has changed the deep structure of my mind, heart and spirit on a molecular level, as he changed water to wine; fed 5000 with 5 loaves; made water as solid as earth and walked on it; and resurrected the dead body of Lazarus—and then his own.

I Said to the Man who Stood at the Gate of the Year

By Anita Mathias

Image credit

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’

And he replied,

‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’

* * *

King George VI ended his famous 1939 Christmas message with these words. (Listen here.)

They were written by an unknown poet called Minnie Haskell. She wasn’t credited.

“I read the quotation in a summary of the speech,” she told The Daily Telegraph the following day. “I thought the words sounded familiar and suddenly it dawned on me that they were out of my little book.”

Minnie Haskell published 3 books, none of which were successful. Sadly, even the rest of this poem was not particularly good.

* * *

A lifetime of writing, and you are remembered for 4 lines.

Success or failure?

* * *

If you are a writer or an artist and say, “failure,” well, you are in trouble.

Because there is something mysterious about art.

Art is the spark

From stoniest flint

That sings

In the dark and cold, I’m light.

The craft can be learned by study and practice, but the spark in art which speaks to other people–that is a gift from God. It cannot be learned or simulated.

And we, ultimately, cannot control whether our work has that spark that will live longer than we do.

All we can do is tell the truth, as beautifully as we can.

* * *

And that is why these four lines, which are all that Minnie Haskell is remembered for, are apt as we enter a new year we cannot control.

‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’

Opening a New Chapter, a New Year, under God’s Secret Service Protection

By Anita Mathias

Image: Christ in glory in front of the Heavenly Jerusalem, (Mosaic, Burne-Jones, St. Paul’s within the walls, Rome)

I listened to the entire Bible on my iPhone this year—the NIV’s dramatised edition– as I walked the country trails around Oxfordshire.

And the year dies spectacularly as one walks listening to Revelation—chilling, majestic, dramatic.

His eyes were like blazing fire, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. And coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.

¹⁷When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever!

Oooh, listening to it was like a worship experience in itself.

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne⁸And the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. ⁹And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
¹⁰You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”

¹¹Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. ¹²In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”

¹³Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honour and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

¹⁴The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Doesn’t it make you just want to worship too?

Revelation is so sheerly beautiful that I was grateful I was alone as I walked through country footpaths, icy rain blowing into my face, along with hot spontaneous tears I could not hold back as I listened to the sheer chilling beauty of that mysterious book.

* * *

The door I close, no one can open, and the door I open, no one can close.

What a wonderful verse for the New Year!

No ramming open of doors shall be done this year; no time-consuming hustling; with God’s grace, no manipulation— just a gentle leaning into the force-field of God’s power, a gentle knocking, a gentle using of the greatest and most powerful lever in the world, which is prayer.

And the doors he opens not all the enmity or envy or malice in the world can close, and the doors he closes, we will have the sense not to try to force open.

* * *

The week between Christmas and New Year is a strange week, a melancholic, dreamy in-the-womb kind of week, a time of rest before new beginnings.

We consider our year, and relive the past, even as we look to the future.

And those who read (or listen) through the Bible in a Year listen to Zechariah, Malachi and Revelation, to the dramatic end of the world in eternal time, even while we prepare for a New Year, with new beginnings, new goals, the opening of new doors.

Christ’s amazing self-revelation repeated through Revelation is I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the A and the Z.

A year closes in which his grace has shielded us, and a new one opens, in which his love will protect us.

“Let the beloved of the LORD rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the LORD loves rests between his shoulders.” Deut. 33:12.

The goodness of God trails and shadows us throughout our lives. We are always under his secret service protection.

The Stalingrad Madonna: Life, Love, Light at Christmas

By Anita Mathias

The Stalingrad Madonna (credit)

Translation: Christmas in the Cauldron (German term for Fortress Stalingrad).Light, Life, Love.

Writer Mark Stibbe blogged about the worst moment of the battle of Stalingrad, when 300,000 troops of the German Sixth Army were trapped in the destroyed city of Stalingrad, without adequate winter clothes, almost out of food, fuel and ammunition. The attackers became the besieged; the Red Army surrounded them by Christmas 1942.

At the darkest hour, the soldiers walked into a small underground chamber to pay homage to a picture drawn by Lieutenant Kurt Reuber, Protestant Pastor, artist, staff physician, and Panzer division commander, a friend of Albert Schweitzer who was conscripted into the German Army.

The image, 3 feet by 4 feet, of the Madonna and Child, entranced the soldiers

One of the only 6000 Sixth Army soldiers who survived later wrote this, For me that Christmas was heavenly. I felt there was a bridge that stretched over the entire earth, the starry sky and the moon, the same moon that my family could see in Germany.”

* * *

Kurt Reuber wrote: I wondered for a long while what I should paint, and in the end I decided on a Madonna, or mother and child. I have turned my hole in the frozen mud into a studio. The space is too small for me to be able to see the picture properly, so I climb on to a stool and look down at it from above, to get the perspective right. Everything is repeatedly knocked over, and my pencils vanish into the mud. There is nothing to lean my big picture of the madonna against, except a sloping, home-made table, past which I can just manage to squeeze. There are no proper materials and I have used a Russian map for paper. But I wish I could tell you how absorbed I have been painting my madonna, and how much it means to me.”

“The picture looks like this: the mother’s head and the child’s lean toward each other, and a large cloak enfolds them both. It is intended to symbolize ‘security’ and ‘mother love.’ I remembered the words of St.John: light, life, and love. What more can I add? I wanted to suggest these three things in the homely and common vision of a mother with her child and the security that they represent.

He added I went to all the bunkers, brought my drawing to the men, and chatted with them. How they sat there! Like being in their dear homes with mother for the holiday.

Later, Reuber hung the drawing in his bunker,

When according to ancient custom I opened the Christmas door, the slatted door of our bunker, and the comrades went in, they stood as if entranced, devout and too moved to speak in front of the picture on the clay wall…The entire celebration took place under the influence of the picture, and they thoughtfully read the words: light, life, love…Whether commander or simple soldier, the Madonna was always an object of outward and inward contemplation.

The Madonna was flown out of Stalingrad by a battalion commander who was one of the last soldiers of the encircled German Sixth Army to be evacuated.

Reuber was taken prisoner, and died of typhus in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in 1944. Of the 95,000 German prisoners of war taken at Stalingrad, only 6000 survived, and returned to Germany.

Self Portrait Kurt Reuber (credit)

The Caucasian oilfields of Russia were Hitler’s target, rich and tempting. But it did not make sense to leave a major Russian city unconquered, especially one named after Stalin, whom Hitler despised.

And so Hitler attacked Stalingrad, and, like Napoleon, was defeated by the Russian winter.

Moral: be careful when it comes to attacking others, no matter how much you despise them. Never try to destroy their Stalingrad. Be content with your own oilfields and your own cities, big or little.

* * *

And what when others cast an envious eye on your Stalingrad, and move in to destroy and conquer it?

If you are a follower of Jesus, He has told you what to do. Do not waste time in resistance. “Do not resist one who is evil. If they take your cloak, give them your cloak.”

If they conquer Stalingrad, let them. Do not resist. Do your work elsewhere.

God will not permit evil to prosper for long. Eventually, winter will come. The aggressors will be frozen out and leave.

Normalcy will return, and you will eat the hidden cabbage still fresh beneath the snow in your garden, and go to your secret cellars, to the concealed beets and potatoes, and drink borscht all winter.

And meanwhile, you will have kept doing your work.

In Which Stars Make News Viral, and We Can Trust our PR to Him

By Anita Mathias

His birth could not have been more humble, more anonymous–in a manger, for there was no room at the inn.

Of their social network, only Elizabeth, Mary’s elderly cousin, confined by pregnancy, and married to the priest Zechariah who was temporarily dumb, had been told.

But everything was in the hands of God who loved Jesus, his son who would teach us to see differently, to think differently, and to live differently.

And so God splashed a new star in the sky, luring Magi, wise men from the east, astrologers and astronomers to Bethlehem, bringing news of the birth to King Herod. Shepherds heard angels sing of it.

The good news crossed national, ethnic and socio-economic boundaries; it reached the rich and the poor, the wise and the powerful. The King heard of it, the priests heard of it, the army heard of it, the scholars heard of it, the shepherds heard of it. While Mary and Joseph quietly went about their own business, telling no one about their marvellous child.

God brought about all the connections Jesus needed.

* * *

Today, as in the Prophet Habakkuk’s day, “The nations exhaust themselves for nothing.”

We live in a harried world of self-reliance, in which we can feel that everything depends on us.

Our world tells us exhausting things like, “It’s not what you know, but whom you know.”

We are told that new media—blogging, tweeting and Facebook– has eliminated the old gatekeepers; that now anyone can socially network their way into success, fame, and influence.

Right! To the old imperative of doing the work, we’ve added the new imperative to network to get our work out there, to get the word out.

And all this makes us busier and more tired.

* * *

But, oh man and woman loved by God, the one whose birth we are celebrating offers us rest.

Do your work peacefully, and leave your PR in the hands of a very clever God, who used stars and angel song so that, within days, the news of the birth of his son went viral. He will be more creative than you could ever imagine.

Put your hope in him.

* * *

At the end of this year, we cannot do better than to put our work, our lives, and our futures into his hands who promises us joy, peace, and answered prayer.

And to do so is exciting, for he specialises in surprises.

A new star in the sky: who would have thought of it?

I am entrusting my life to him today.

Join me?

My guest post for Share the Hope UK

The Process of Sanctification: A Guest Post by Kris Camealy

By Anita Mathias

Holey Wholly Holy

I am honoured to host this excerpt from my blogging friend Kris Camealy’s first book, Holey, Wholly, Holy. The best title of the year, isn’t it?

“We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love” (Psalm 44:25-26).

We begin collecting wounds and piling on scars from birth. Ejected from the safety of the womb, we immediately meet with a sinful world ripe with suffering. We grow and endure hardships of varying degrees from the mildly wounding to the most atrocious cruelty. We survive deep cuts and gashes and sometimes, if we can manage, we block the memories, and the pain dulls just enough.

But God has something better in mind. We can do more than simply limp along—His desire is for us to be complete. He longs to restore us, to strengthen us for the call He places on our lives.

In pursuit of life, of our own dreams, of our own magnificent imaginations, we have a knack for running right into the boiling furnace without even seeing it coming—“We sow on bright clear days the seed of our own destruction” (Capon 52).

God’s desire for closer relationship with us requires us to be purified. Though He accepts us as we are, He has even better for us. He loves us too much to leave us in our mess. He collects our broken shards and creates beauty from mere fragments, but the process does not come without pain.

The truth of the Christian life is that we grow most in our faith through adversity. When our faces are pressed against the dirt, that’s when our eyes are most open. The weight of the world presses us lower and it’s there, in the spaces where we can scarcely breathe, that we find He is closest, holding our hands, lifting our spirits, filling up the holes in our cracked-up hearts.

Restoration is a process. It’s not that He doesn’t miraculously heal, certainly there’s plenty of testimony to this kind of miraculous, instant healing. But for most of us, soul healing comes slowly—painfully. You’ll know it when He’s calling you toward His refining fire. The smooth surface you’ve long stretched over, covering the cracks underneath, begins to ripple from the heat. Memories surface, old wounds begin to weep—the cracks widen and hurts spill.

This is not a time to turn and run, though that may be our instinct. This is the time to stand still, to listen to what He’s whispering, and to allow Him to strip you of the covers you’ve been hiding under. Trust me when I say you’ve not got anything He hasn’t seen before. Stand in this fire, let Him purify you—this is how He loves us. This is the process of sanctification.

An excerpt from: Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement

* * *

Kris Camealy

As a sequin-wearing, homeschooling, mops-coordinating mother of four, Kris Camealy is passionate about Jesus and her family. Her heart beats to share the hard, but glorious truth about life in Christ with anyone who will listen. When she’s not writing, she gobbles up books like they’re going out of print and plays in the kitchen. She’s been known to take gratuitous pictures of her culinary creations, causing mouths to water all across Instagram. Once upon a time, she ran 10 miles for Compassion International, a ministry for which she serves as an advocate. You can read more of her heart-words in her new book, Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement, and on her blog Always Alleluia. Find her on Facebook, twitter and Pinterest.

My Minimalistic and Opted-Out Christmases

By Anita Mathias

There was a time when I did Christmas.

Wrote and addressed a stack of Christmas cards and letters-a depressing, burdensome chore when all I wanted to do was read and write. Made family collages to enclose with them. Made Christmas cake and Christmas cookies. Set up the tree. And lights. And decorations.

Bought the kids 14 presents. I started ordering so they would not be sad at the competitive back to school question, “What did you get for Christmas?” and then went on, and on. Our cheeks ached with smiling as they opened them; perhaps theirs did too. Perhaps they felt like actors—ecstasy expected!—and then, there was a mass of wrapping paper and ribbons, and packaging to clear up, and parts to keep together. And more stuff to nag them about keeping tidy and organizing—and eventually, decluttering!!

We did a turkey, which none of us like, so that if they compared Christmases in school, ours would be the same. Did (other people’s) traditional Christmas dinner with all the fixings–glorious excess that left us in a sluggish overfed torpor even before the Bailey’s Irish Cream and Christmas pudding.

Gone, all gone, gone in incense wisps of peace.

* * *

First went the cards. I am on Facebook, and so are my friends. Cards are no longer necessary. I email the few people who still send me cards, but we don’t send cards, except to our mothers. If I have the energy, I write a Christmas letter and post it on my blog with a link on Facebook for anyone who really, really wants to know what I did all year.

The tree, we still do. But it’s a large beautiful fibre optic tree we bring out every year, with sentimental memories from the Christmas ornaments bought over the years. Irene likes to lie on the carpet and watch red, green, blue lights travel to the tips of the needles and back. And, well, so do I. In America, we had a potted living Christmas tree we brought in every year; I could not bring myself to buy a tree, and then throw it away.

Special treats cooked during the Christmas season—no longer. We have enough of these moment-on-your lips, lifetime-on-your-hips treats at parties. The kids are getting a lot of chocolate gifts from their friends. Why cook things that are not a blessing to our bodies? I cannot do that to myself anymore. I do adore Christmas cake, but Tesco’s Finest Christmas Cake is better than Anita’s. We do have a traditional roast duck dinner, but that’s because we like it, but we don’t overdo the sides—or dessert.

* * *

Then went presents, and what a joyful goodbye! Roy and I are both trying to be minimalistic, so we tell each other one thing we’d really like, and the gift is in the hunter-gathering. Last year, Roy asked for a fur-lined winter hat. I’ve been borrowing it for weeks, so I’m asking for one this year.

While we give the girls a surprise whimsical gift or two, their Christmas present is one thing they really want—a camera, an iPad, a laptop, a kindle, an iPhone have been recent gifts, and a couple of coveted items of brand name clothing. They are teenagers in an all-girls’ school after all.

When they were young, Christmas was Christmas Day, and being told to wait for the sales on the 26^th for their presents would have been a disappointment. And I guess retailers count on this traditional sentimentality. Now that they are older—13 and 18 and savvier, part of their Christmas gift is cash for the year’s clothes shoes, bags, accessories, and so they shop the sales the week after Christmas. They are wiser, and can understand and resist the lure of marketers to spend, spend, spend on the big day to create an illusion of perfection as tenuous and fragile as glass Christmas ornaments, and never mind the fiscal consequences. Spending the way an alcoholic drinks. Crazy!

* * *

Why celebrate the birth of the beautiful person who taught us that the Kingdom of God is within us by giving each other things, stuff, which will become clutter? People ruefully say this every year–and what a relief it is to opt out.

I am me. Why should I celebrate the same Christmas as every other person up and down this land? Why should I adopt other people’s Christmas traditions if they are not nourishing to my soul—and it is not nourishing to put up lights and decorations which will be taken down, to make things with sugar and white flour and chocolate which are not a blessing to my body, to send cards which will be opened, looked at for ten seconds and tossed aside. I will not do it!

It’s all a big consumerist keeping-up with the Joneses conspiracy. A spiritual occasion that has been hijacked by marketers, who sell us food to fatten us, alcohol to inebriate us, presents to choke our houses and wardrobes. Oh, how has the celebration of the birth of the simplest and wisest and most beautiful of men become this Belshazzarian feast of excess which strains bodies, emotions, spirits and finances? Are we celebrating Jesus or our traditions? Oh, I am opting-out!

* * *

We do not need to follow other people’s traditions. If you are young and newly married or a new parent, create your own joyful, restful, peaceful, life-giving, people rather than thing-centred traditions.

If you are not young, it’s not too late to gradually change your celebration so that Christmas is a time of rest, and peace and reading and extra prayer, and extra scripture and family and friends without the additional burden of gifts and cards and trees and cooking and shopping and lights and decoration and expense and maybe debt. Perhaps each year, rule out the least satisfying, most exhausting Christmas tradition, and put in a restful, minimalist one?

Don’t cook what you don’t love even if it’s traditional. Don’t send cards to those you don’t love. Give home-cooked treats as gifts, and your sister-in-law who gave you the cashmere sweater in the ugly colour will be so cross that she’ll reciprocate with a home-baked cake next year—and you’ll both be released from the treadmill.

The decorated house, the creaking tables, piles of gifts decked in beautiful wrapping paper and ribbons and cards to be ripped apart in seconds– these bring us distraction, and tiredness, rather than serenity of that first night of stars whose eternal silence was shattered by angels singing of the glory of God!

I sometimes use the extra energy not “celebrating,” to serve—join a group singing carols at a retirement home, or serve lunch to homeless, at which my husband was mistaken for one of the homeless men, and asked, “When have you last eaten?” by a rude woman, and with exquisite sensitive manners, he pretended he didn’t remember just to spare her feelings.

* * *

Rather than celebrate Christmas just like everyone else—tree, gifts beneath it, lights, decoration, cooking, dressing up, frivolity, triviality la-di-da—we started, in contrapuntal harmony, a family tradition we really enjoy. We go away.

One of my treasured Christmas memories is walking by La Jolla Cove in San Diego, California, watching the harbour seals lounge and lollygag. People were out, running or walking by the beach. Celebrating the goodness of God out in nature! Other Christmases have seen us in the unspeakably lovely Monteverde Cloud Forest in Costa Rica; in magical New Zealand; in Mexico, Granada, Barcelona, Madrid. We are going to Malta this year.

We walk by beaches or in the mountains, sleep in, read, talk, eat out, and come back rich in memories, but with little clutter.

Travel is not necessarily cheap, of course, but then neither is a traditional Christmas–£835 in Britain, while the average American spends $854 on gifts alone.

I am not suggesting Bah-Humbugging everything about Christmas. Keep the parts you love. Keep Christ.

Christmas is for people, Christmas is for peace, Christmas is for rest. Christmas is for quieting the manger of one’s heart and silencing the lowing of consumerism, that there may be more room to welcome and listen to the Beloved One whom we are, after all, celebrating.

The Radical One who shocked everyone by shaking up their ideas and has shaken up our family’s Christmas, and returned it to us as a sheer gift.

Christmas, for us, with the girls at home for three weeks, has become nine days in the sun on holiday, and then fifteen days at home, watching dvds, reading, playing family games, sleeping in, resting up, glorious lazy peace and winter walks observing unusual understated glory.

And just a little bit of Christmas music in the background:

“Glory to God in the highest

And on earth, peace to those of good will.”

anita.mathias