Beloved,
            “Hello, my name is Jacob.*  Welcome to Trinity,” said the young man who greeted me at the church kitchen door.  “Hi Jacob, I’m Pastor Annette.**  I’m from University Baptist.  It’s nice to meet you.  I have lots of pie my car.  Can you tell me where it goes?”
            “Is that your true hair color?” Jacob replied, “Because it is really beautiful.”  
            “Umm, some of it is mine,” I said.
            “Well, I think it is stunning on you, positively a work of art.”  
            “Wow, thanks!”  Truth is, I’m the tiniest bit vain about my hair so I was beaming just a little.  
            He continued, “And also, did you know that dogs and cats have the exact same arrangement of teeth?”  

            And for the millionth time I thought to myself, “Why do we think writing books is hard?  Isn’t it just taking notes?”  So went our Sunday afternoon at Trinity Episcopal, serving Christmas dinner to approximately one hundred guests.  Some live on the street.  Others have places to stay but no family with whom to share the holiday.  Many are mentally ill or struggle with addiction.  Some are rough and some are gentle.  Most are unbelievably poor.  One young woman came in, sat on the floor, leaned on the wall and fell deep asleep in her coat and boots.  She had a terrible cough.  We tried to wake her but she was just too tired.  More tired than hungry.  We kept checking her pulse and forehead as if she were our sleeping baby.  Another guest took off her own sweatshirt and tucked it around her legs.  Everyone ate and ate and ate.  Afterward they got out puzzles and turned on a movie, just like my house on Christmas afternoon.

            The Episcopalians and the Baptists got on like family in the kitchen and the serving line.  Deacon Connie is the Episcopalian minister in charge of the community meal.  As best I can tell this involves organizing the volunteers, leading the prayer, breaking up the fights and cleaning up the vomit.  She literally outworked me twenty times over.  You know she loves Jesus because she calls an afternoon like this, “just a whole lot of fun!“  She seemed glad we came and is open to us helping more in the future.  

            I’m so grateful to Carl and Nathan for organizing the food UBC contributed.  Thanks to Deborah, Susanne, Janet, Donetta, Bill, Greg, Jen, Heidi, Asher, Tate, Tucker and Etheridge for cooking, transporting, serving and cleaning up.  Thanks to Don and June for providing food and supplies.  Thanks to Fan for the 50 sweet scarf/gift packages she made for the guests.  Thanks to anyone else I’ve inadvertently left out.  I love, love, love when Christmas Day falls on Sunday.  You all made it just a whole lot of fun!  

*Not his real name
**My real name

Beloved:

1997 was my one-armed Christmas.

That whole season long
    other people cut my food, tied my shoes,
    and wrapped my children’s presents.

I might have learned of grace
    but didn’t.  

I said thank-you all the time
    but was less grateful than embarrassed.    
Still so sure I need less
    than those I meant to serve.

I might have found the gospel’s heart,
    but didn’t,
    haven’t,
    except as sight unseen.

A misty place where all are waiting . . . . aching . . . . .
    for bread to fill us up.

Bread which does not sell for money
    or any tender, human-held.

Each of us one-armed somehow,
    but none of us embarrassed.
Only glad to be in line
     at so glorious a meal.   

Beloved:

    Big fat snowflakes rush past my study window.  The dogs are back inside, exhausted and wet from plowing the skim of snow already on the ground.  My favorite kind of winter day, so beautiful and quiet outside, so warm and cozy inside.  I’d be perfectly happy to stay home in my flannel pajamas taking commentary notes all day.  But alas and just as joyfully, there are students to check on as they power through their final exams.  I’ve oodles of editing to do on the choir cantata narration for this weekend and all those pages are at the church.  Since we vote on the 2017 budget this weekend you’ll need your giving pledge cards on Sunday too.  Meaning I need to find the original, white-out 2016, and type in 2017.  After Global Women’s Gathering clean-up and a hospital visit I’m back home to my sheep pajamas, a fire in fireplace and supper ~ in that exact order.  The most ordinary of days in a life richer than I would ever think to ask for.
 
    But always, I find its edge as well:  the sharp spot of knowing such wealth is so thinly spread across this world.  Reports from Aleppo now include words like carnage and unaccompanied children trapped in a building under fire.  “We can no longer give a body count anymore,” said a member of the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue organization.  Yemen is on the brink of famine due to civil war and this fall South Sudan joined an exclusive club that includes only Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia, by producing more than one million refugees.  Places of daily, unimaginable horror as ordinary as the snow outside my window.  

    How shall I carry both without dismissing the truth of either?  Am I allowed to enjoy this beauty while others suffer so?  I think so.  But only so long as I never imagine beauty as a blessing meant for me instead of them.  The notion “I am blessed to have this life” makes me really itchy. I need another word and I think it might be privilege.  I am privileged rings far truer to me than I am blessed.  Privilege suggests responsibility I don’t hear in blessing.  Blessing carries deservedness privilege cannot claim.  Yes, it is a privilege to live in this particular house and neighborhood, this particular city, state and country.  A privilege one ought not sit with lightly nor ever hoard to herself.  A privilege with the spending power to change the lives of people living in the thin places of this world – if that is how I choose to live.  I am grateful for the likes of you as we share the journey.

Beloved:

   I always giggle a little at the Christmas carols which note Jesus’s birth as silent and sweet, calm and mild.  I’ve been company to many births and they were definitely not calm, mild, sweet or silent.  They were busy, protracted, painful, scary, loud and messy.  They were also exciting, happy and sacred.

   We like imagining the birth of Jesus as picture perfect.  And that’s okay, so long as we don’t slip into thinking that which is holy is necessarily also orderly and beautiful, calm and bright.  

   I expect Jesus was born the usual way with plenty of tears and towels.  I expect it was noisy and frustrating and anxious . . .  and shimmering with holiness – the palpable sensation of being in the presence of the miraculous.   

  One gift of Christmas is the reminder that Jesus is always with us, however frustrating and messy life seems.  We only need to lean into it to be overwhelmed by it.  

  In these days of anticipation and preparation, I pray that we might all dwell in the joyful, shimmering, if somewhat messy, holiness all around us.  
​
Merry Christmas!