I send Christmas greetings and good wishes to all and to anyone who may be reading these words - truly heartfelt hopes for joy in this day for you, and for your family and friends. Let me also send additional hopes for the year upcoming. I have a feeling that the "year upcoming" is actually coming all too soon, though let me state that something new and different from the current year would be a very welcome change (and I am willing to say that a change is already overdue).
I am putting down these words before the events of Christmas Day transpire, and I am trusting that my family and I will be celebrating together, exchanging gifts (too many, I predict), eating well, and hiking in our hills, and on the coast (weather permitting). It is just possible that I (or someone) will be heard on Christmas Eve reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales," which would hark back to the former practices of the Patton family. Click that link, above, to hear Dylan Thomas read his own poem, if you are looking for a non-consumer-oriented activity for your own Christmas.
A far-off friend, Trudy Wischemann, who writes newspaper columns from Tulare County, on the Eastern borders of California's Central Valley, is telling her readers that "the true message of Christmas" is that "things could be different, better."
I'm with Trudy on that! Things could be different. And better. Jesus' birth does promise that, too. However, I don't think anyone is going to give us that gift without us choosing to change our own lives, first, and take action ourselves. I only went to theological seminary for one year (not the three years needed to complete the course, and to get the degree), but the wonderful adventure begun on Christmas, with its associated gifts, is clearly (if you read the Bible) dependent on us laying down our lives, as the way to find and hold on to that life in which things are, truly, different.
And better!
Christmas Greetings And Good Wishes To All
oooOOOooo
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