Merry Christmas!

This is not one of those “Keep the Christ in Christmas” culture-war posts. I live in vast and diverse world, one in which I am called to love others generously and with humility, without demands that they conform to my vocabularies and traditions.

So I am just speaking for myself when I say...

All that is best in my life comes to me through Jesus Christ, who calls me to serve rather than to dominate, to listen much more than I speak, to show love without expectations. What little of love and beauty that I have seen, what little of the Truth I have discovered, what misdeeds and foolishness I am forgiven (when I confess), what meager matters I am able to offer in service by his grace — all of it comes from him, lives through him, and takes place for his glory. If I am attending to him, all tribal, cultural, and denominational borderlines dissolve and I know that my family, my church, my community, and my nation hold no exclusive or privileged status. I am a child of God like any other neighbor of mind — known or stranger — in this world. And the only evidence anyone has that I know this Jesus whose name I praise is in the evidence they find of my love for them and for others.

I don’t need to “keep the Christ in Christmas” — because nobody has the power to remove him. And any effort made under that banner is probably an act of insecurity (at best) or self-interested coercive force.

I’m taking the next three days off, giving my computer a rest and focusing on Anne, and on the rest of my family, giving back to them a small fraction of what they’ve given me. As a wise songwriter once sang, “The world can wait.”

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. And to the rest, I wish you a meaningful journey on paths of beauty, joy, and peace. For I believe that Christ is alive in all of those things, offering them freely to all without requiring some kind of club membership.

Don’t let the stress, the family disputes, the sugar-highs, and the new toys distract you from the act of quietly attending to the Gospel — that is to say, attending to the presence of Love — this Christmas. Tune yourself to prayer, to silence, to a walk outside in the cold air, to listening.

After all, it was the spirit of watchfulness and attentiveness that drew shepherds and wisemen, fools and scholars, people of many cultures and languages, to the same place, where their only response, in the middle of poverty and simplicity and ordinary things — straw, wood, dung, blood — was awe and reverence and gratitude.

Do what you do best, and do it for Love.

Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.

See you in a few days.

Jeffrey