The Seventh Day of Christmas: Belief Makes a Difference

What we believe makes all the difference in the world.  What we believe determines what we do, how we think,  and how we live and treat one another.  What we believe makes possible the “new things” that can happen in  us and in the world on this seventh day of Christmas.   

We live in a physical universe.  This world, some say, operates according to the laws of nature and came into being with a “big bang” or was formed by some unconscious force.  I, on the other hand, believe that in addition to this physical world and those natural forces, there is One who gives meaning to all existence.  I believe God was before the world was created, and that God will be, even if this physical universe be rolled up like a scroll (Isa. 34:4).  God is not only the Creator, without whom the world would not be, but also the One who is constantly sustaining  and intervening in our history every step of the way.  Indeed, the order of nature, far from limiting God’s action in our present world, is dependent upon God’s purpose and is subservient to it.  This order is dependable, not because it is mechanical or unchangeable, but because it is purposeful and therefore intelligent.

God is a Person.  God is not an “it.” God is objective, not a creation of my fancies. I can talk to God (prayer).  God cares for every person and knows and loves us individually.  This conception of God is not something I’ve contrived.  It is the conception of God that underlies the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and one that gives the world meaning (at least for me).  God is a Person.  God has consciousness, God is able to be aware, God is able to have purposes, God is able to know and to care. We are made in this image—there is “that of God” in each of us—but we are not God.

If this “believing” of mine is not so, then all of my thoughts in Advent and Christmas about openness, expectancy, and annunciations are false.  If this “believing” is not so, what a dismal world this is!  And if it is not so, how do I make sense of my “self”—a person who is aware, a person who has purpose, a person who knows and cares? 

The Sixth Day of Christmas: Sing a New Song

Anything happening?  Have you experienced an annunciation, a vision, or perhaps a dream?  Have you found the baby this Christmas as the wise persons and shepherds did on that first Christmas long ago? Trust me, something is happening whether you know it or not.  How can I say that?  I can say that because I believe with Thomas Merton, that the message of hope that Christmas brings is that God loves us whether we know it or not.  

My son, Paul, singing his new song
with a new guitar--one Christmas
"long, long ago,
in a galaxy far, far away"

In that sense, something is always happening  in us and in the world (and especially at Christmas) because Love is here embracing us and our world.  Our lives have been re-shaped by yet another year’s events, the joys and the sorrows, the loss and the gain, the good and the bad, and  we will soon move into a new year.  The song we sang in 1999 or in 2015 no longer fits our situation.  So much has happened in us and in the world we know and so much has changed. I am reminded of the song from Les Miserables, “There’s a grief that can’t be spoken.  There’s a pain goes on and on.  Empty chairs at empty tables, now my friends are dead and gone.”  Many of my friends are gone and will not be with me in 2016. I have no choice, you have no choice.  We will have to sing a new song. The songs we sang yesterday no longer fit the present time.

That new song is in you now waiting to be sung.  The lyrics are there already waiting to burst forth and fit themselves to the melody that is already playing within your heart.  The song is a gift—a Christmas gift on this sixth day.  Will you accept the new song and start singing?

Why not join Howard Thurman and say, “I Will Sing a New Song”

“The old song of my spirit has wearied itself out.

It has long ago been learned by heart;

It repeats itself over and over,

Bringing no added joy to my days or lift to my spirit.

I will sing a new song.

I must learn the new song for the new needs.

I must fashion new words born of all the new growth

   of my life—of my mind—of my spirit.

I must prepare for new melodies that have 

   never been mine before,

That all that is within me may lift my voice unto God.

Therefore, I shall rejoice with each new day

And delight my spirit in each fresh unfolding.

I will sing, this day, a new song unto the Lord.”

The Fifth Day of Christmas: My Time; Your Time

We suffer today from what Elton Trueblood called the “disease of contemporaneity.”  We focus on the “present” and have distain for that which happened or was written a hundred or five hundred years ago.  We read the books on the New York Times list, but ignore those written in earlier times.   This penchant for only the contemporary means that we may never read François Fénelon’s (1651-1715) The Inner Life or any of his other writings.  

I could not resist using this photo--a moment in time!

I do not want you to miss Fénelon.  He wrote in one of his letters about “Time”:

“Time bears a very different aspect at different seasons of one’s life, but there is one maxim which applies equally to all seasons, namely, that none should go by uselessly; that every season carries with it various duties of God’s own appointing, and concerning the discharge of which we must give account to Him, since from the first to the last moment of life God never means us to look upon any time as purposeless, either to be used as our own apart from Him, or lost.  The important thing is to know how He would have us use it, and this is to be learned not by an eager and uneasy ardor, which is much more calculated to confuse than to enlighten us concerning our duties, but by pure and upright heart, seeking God in simplicity and diligence in receiving all of the experiences which He would provide us, for remember we lose time not only by doing nothing, or doing amiss, but also by doing things in themselves right, which things yet are not what God would have us do.  Our general rule for the right use of time is to accustom yourself to live in continual dependence upon the Spirit of God, receiving whatever He vouchsafes to give from one moment to another.”

What will God give in this moment—on this fifth day of Christmas?  What gift is to be received today?  

Again, Howard Thurman speaks, “I cannot say of my life that it is of no account, I cannot say of the time that I am living that nothing seems to be happening, because this is not one of the great and tempestuous or creative moments in human history or in the history of the world.  My time is my time, and I must live my time with as much fullness and significance as I am capable of, because my little segment of time is all the time I have.  I cannot wait to begin to live meaningfully when I will have more time, because all the time I can ever experience is the time interval of my moment, so that my minutes, my hours, my days, my months, must be full of my flavor and my meaning.”

The Fourth Day of Christmas: It Keeps on Ticking

This morning I had an appointment with my fifty-year-old cardiologist.  I knew and loved his parents who were frequent guests in our home and a part of our family life for many years.  I’ve known their son, now a cardiologist, since he was six years old.  How strange it seemed this morning to have that six-year old (I still see him as six years old) placing a stethoscope to my chest and back, listening to the beat of my heart.  “It is still ticking and ticking well,” he says,  “I’ll see you next year.”

Some are probably already saying, “See you next year” to Christmas 2015.  But Christmas is still ticking away—it is only the fourth day.  Christmas is one of those events that keeps on ticking through the labyrinth of time.  Christmas was the moment in the life of Israel in which a baby was born.  In this baby many saw that for which their hearts had hungered and their dreams had foretold.   He grew to adulthood and exhibited in word and deed a fresh new quality of the age-old response of the spirit of man to the call of God.  God was the center of his life.  “His was a vision,” writes Thurman, “of a great creative ideal that all men [and women] are children of God, that the normal relation of one person to another is love (anything else is against life), and that there is a Personal Power, God, equally available to rich and poor, to Jew and Gentile, to men and women, to the wise and the foolish, to the just and the unjust.”

For some of us, Christmas was and continues to be, a turning point in human history marking the moment when a new meaning was given to the promises of old:  The eyes of the blind are opened, the captives set free, and the dream has become a real possibility—a “friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”  

Astronomical 14th Century Clock in Prague

Christmas announces that there is a Presence in this world, a Light that lighteth every man and woman that cometh into this world.  Within my heart and yours, in the heart of every new baby born, the ticking goes on and will go on until the dream is fulfilled.  You can’t say to Christmas, “See you next year!”  Christmas is still ticking.

The Third Day of Christmas: Surrendering to the Divine Promise

There is a crucial word that must be part of the Advent and Christmas message, a word I have not  yet used. It is a word most of us avoid because it means something we do not easily handle and something we resist with all our being.  That word is “surrender.”  The act of surrender is repugnant to us.  It means “to cease resistance to an enemy or an opponent and submit to their authority.” The synonyms for the word do not help us at all and perhaps are even more repulsive to our spirits—words like,  capitulation, submission, yielding, succumbing, acquiescence, and resignation.  Who is willing to do that?  Who wants to do that?

Yet this word “surrender” is central to the preposterous promise of Advent and the deeper meaning of Christmas.  No annunciation can be heard without yielding.  A visit to the manger of Bethlehem (within the heart) is impossible without capitulating to the “song of the angels” as the shepherds did, or succumbing to the urge to “follow that Star” as the wise persons did long ago. 

The preposterous promise is that God has acted, is acting, and will continue to act until God’s dream for this world becomes a reality.  Christmas is about believing this promise.  It is about believing that the “Holy Spirit can overshadow us,” like Mary, and that a new birth can and will occur in us.  This is the work of Christmas, to believe at the deepest level of our beings that this promise can come true.  So it is, if we want anything to happen in us this Christmas, we have to surrender (submit, capitulate, yield, and succumb) to the promise and such surrendering goes against our grain!

Come to think of it, we can’t even pray without surrendering—as in this prayer written by Howard Thurman:

Our little lives, our big problems—these we place upon Thy altar!

Brood over our spirits, our Father,

Blow upon whatever dream Thou hast for us

That there may glow once again upon our hearths,

The fire of Thy contagion.

Pour out upon us whatever our spirits need of shock, of lift, of release

That we may find strength for these days—

Courage and hope for tomorrow.

In confidence we rest in Thy sustaining grace

Which makes possible triumph in defeat, gain in loss, and love in hate.

We rejoice this day to say:

Our little lives, our big problems—these we place upon Thy altar!

The Second Day of Christmas: Luke Is Born!

Has anything happened?  Some “new thing,” some “new birth,” some “annunciation,” some “new dream,” some “new discovery?”  Don’t fret.  There are still eleven days of Christmas for something to happen—today being the second day.  There is still time for any of the above to occur within you, within me, and within the world!

Our son, Luke, was born thirty-nine years ago today.  What a gift he was to us that Christmas and what a gift ever since!  Can you imagine, though, being born the day after Christmas?  The big day is over for most, and all that’s left is crumbled wrapping paper, tangled ribbons, scattered toys and gifts, worn-out and over-fed adults, and left-overs in the refrigerator.  We tried our best over the years to make Luke’s Day (the second Day of Christmas) as exciting and special as that Day before, but I’m not sure we ever succeeded.  Early on, I think Luke himself tried to help, insisting on blueberry pie instead of a birthday cake!  Anything—anything—to make the “Day After” as special as the “Day Before!”  Well, Luke, let me say as plain as I can for all to read, your birthday has been one of the most important days in my life and every day since has been special because you are!  Every Christmas since has been extraordinary because you have been with us—and the “Day After” has been, since your birth, even more important to us than the “Day Before!”

There are Twelve Days of Christmas—each of these days can be just as important and special to us as Christmas Day.  Luke came to us the “Day After.”  What gift might each of us receive if we remain open to the possibility and attempt to make each of the eleven days remaining as significant as the “Day Before?”

The Last Day of Advent: “We Are Visited”

Have you heard an annunciation, seen a star, or been visited by some Gabriel during this period of Advent?  We are never alone.  We are visited in so many ways.  As Howard Thurman writes in The Mood of Christmas,  “We are visited in ways that we can understand and in ways that are beyond our understanding, by highlights, great moments of inspiration, quiet reassurances of grace, simple manifestations of gratuitous expressions of the goodness of life.”

The genius of Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol lies in his awareness that we, like Ebenezer Scrooge, are visited at Christmas.  We are visited by  loved ones, by friends, and old acquaintances long since gone (as Scrooge was visited by his partner Jacob Marley).  We remember those who carried the light against the darkness for us, those who guided and helped us along our way.  They visit us.  The Spirit of Christmas Past, Present and Future visit us too, if we pause and open the inner inn within our hearts and make room for them.  

We are visited.  We are never alone.  Who is to say that when I remember one of the “Star Persons” of my life and feel her close even now, as though visiting with me, that that experience is not similar to that of Gabriel approaching Mary?  Who does not, at this time of year, recall and feel visited by the Spirit of  Christmases Past, Present and Future?  Are these visits the “stars” that can guide us, or perhaps the annunciations that will give us new purpose?  Advent means “to come” and in this period many visitors have come to you  and me (in the deep recesses of our hearts).  

Just because the season of Advent comes to an end today does not mean that these visits will cease.  If we keep the Advent Spirit of openness and receptivity such visits may actually increase.  May I remind you too, that there are yet Twelve Days of Christmas, during which all kinds of “new things” can happen!

“And ye, beneath Life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,

who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,

look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.

O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!