Friends,

I wish you darkness.  Watch people, tell us of the night.  This is such an interesting time of year.  At least, here in New England.  The days shorten.  The longest night reaches its peak.  Cold settles in.  And we are filled with visions of trees laden with lights and gifts, and warmth by the glowing hearth.  All those iconic images that tell us that our dreams can come true with a little bit of Christmas magic. 

Love.  Joy.  Hope.  Peace. 

That is in our story.  And it is deeper than those images, fantasies really, defined out of one particular culture’s aspirations and narrative.  The story is more. 

A child was born.  God comes to us in the form of human weakness and vulnerability.  In a manger.  You’ve all said it… it wasn’t an inn or a palace.  To a young woman … the scandalous unwed teenage mother.  And there were shepherds abiding with their flocks.  The ones most consigned to the fringe of society are the ones invited to attend and bear witness to God’s birth.  Some stories are just too powerful. 

God, who spun the cosmos into creation with a Word and set that star in the east on its journey; God, supreme over all others, chooses this:  to enter the world through the margins, vulnerable, helpless, dependent, alone, powerless. 

I wish you darkness.  Not the darkness of grief, or pain, or woundedness, or despair, or loneliness.  There is enough of that.  Or maybe that is it exactly. 

I wish you the darkness stripped of all illusion and fantasy… into which the Christ, the light of God, is birthed.  And it is only in that holy darkness that you can perceive it.  And the darkness will not overcome it. 

Blessings to you who birth and bear God’s Light.