2014-12-20

This Week's Prayer

Christmas: the anniversary that we, by convention, celebrate -- of the time when, according to legend, God became flesh and was simultaneously human and divine.

Like those shepherds in the field in the story of the first Nowell who looked up and saw a bright light in the east, our eyes, too, are cast to the east, looking for a star.

We look east, where there is fighting, unrest, and political manipulation in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the West Bank, Israel, Afghanistan, Somalia, and tragic violence in Pakistan and Nigeria.
We look also to Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island -- and Brooklyn -- wherever violence erupts between police officers and citizens.
We look to Lima, Peru, where the Climate Change conference did little, but might have paved the way for something more.
We look to Cuba, where a new period of relations with the US now begins.

Our eyes scan all around the horizon for signs of hope -- for the rising of some kind of star.

We pray that love can, indeed, somehow become flesh and dwell among us.

We perceive that the divinity of humankind is the humanity of God, that everyone who serves love is the child of God, and everyone who bears love is the parent of God.
We celebrate the discovery of such fact in the garment of legend for God is not greater than life, and life is not less than God.

In this season, in these times, then, let every cradle be visited by the three good monarchs: Faith, Hope, and Love. Then Christmas will be with us always, every birth the birth of God among humankind, every child a Christ child, every song a song of angels.

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