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Friday, November 29, 2013

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD CHRISTMAS


In much of America, Christmas shambles along like some zombie, driven forward ever onward but with no life in its eyes.

What did Scrooge say towards the end of THE CHRISTMAS CAROL?

"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirts of all Three shall strive within me."

But is that we and the others around us seem to be saying with our scurryings?

We yearn for tomorrow and the promise that it represents.

But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where are the ghosts of yesterday's promises?

Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been or what we choose to remember of it.

But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, and the present slips through our fingers unlived.  We become hungry ghosts.

Our eyes see more than our minds can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to so much that lies before us.

We yearn for the simple world of childhood, but we live in the complex arena of adulthood,

and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world through filters that make it less frightening. 

Is that what Christmas has become: a comfortable filter of illusion?

For many I fear the answer to that question would be 'yes.'

“The sky is deep, the sky is dark.
The light of the stars is so damn stark
When I look up, I fill with fear,
if all we have is what lies here,
this lonely world, this troubled place,
then cold dead stars and empty space...

I see no reason to persevere,
no reason to laugh or shed a tear,
no reason to sleep and none to wake.
No promises to keep and none to make.

So at night I still raise my eyes
to study the mysterious skies
that arch above us, cold as stone.
Are you there God? Are we alone?” 

- THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS (Dean Koontz)

The answer to Dean's question is Christmas.

For those who despair that their lives are without meaning and without purpose, for those who dwell in a loneliness so terrible that it has withered their hearts,

for those who hate because they have no awareness of the destiny they share with all humanity,

for those who would squander their lives in self-pity and in self-destruction because they have lost the saving wisdom with which they were born,

for all these and many more, hope waits in the dreams of childhood, where the sacred nature of life was lived without the toxic filters of greed, envy and endless fear.

And there is where you go in the Spirit of Christmas:

 In dream woods and fields, along misty shores of dream seas, with reawakened awareness of the joy abiding in all newborn things,

You look up into the magic night of the Nativity with its Star shining bright and what thus far you only dared to hope is true:

that although you have often felt no one loved you, there is One who always has. 

9 comments:

  1. Amen, Roland! He loves all His children, no matter what.
    I live for today while planning for the future. But I don't want it to hurry up and get here. I'm aging fast enough, thank you.

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  2. Indeed, Alex!
    “Act as if everything depended on you. Trust as if everything depended on God.”
    ― St. Ignatius of Loyola

    “To give, and not to count the cost
    to fight, and not to heed the wounds,
    to toil, and not to seek for rest,
    to labor, and not to ask for reward,
    save that of knowing that we do thy will”
    ― St. Ignatius of Loyola

    Have a lovely Christmas season, my friend.

    I am looking forward to our interview this Monday on the A to Z CHALLENGE BLOG. :-)

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  3. We have to live in the moment at least some of the time. Those who don't, arrive at the end of life with many regrets.

    Christmas has many meanings for me, but the best is that I met someone on Christmas Eve who would change my life.

    I look at the stars and wonder - will we ever get there?

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  4. D.G.:
    Captain Sam tells Victor: "You look ahead, and there seems to be a 1000 paths before you. One day, you'll look back, and there'll be only one."

    I'm glad you met your special someone on Christmas Eve -- a great time for it. :-)

    Considering the flawed creature Man is -- perhaps it is for the best if we do not reach the stars in our current condition.

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  5. Good food for thought here. Hopefully we are living enough in the present to appreciate the PRESENT(with just enough of a tinge of our past and future to motivate and illumine us). And YES, the One who loves us is the hope of Christmas indeed!

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  6. Carol:
    To live in the present without being present would be a huge irony, wouldn't it?

    We are rooted in our past. Our branches reach towards the future, but it our trunk (present) that supports us.

    Yes, there are still many empires ruling this world, but the Kingdom is still His. :-)

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  7. hope waits in the dreams of childhood, where the sacred nature of life was lived without the toxic filters of greed, envy and endless fear.

    We do regain a bit of our childhood soul at Christmas, or try to... It would be nice if it stayed with us a while longer...

    But, as for Thanksgiving or Easter or other such holidays, it is most difficult for those alone, for those suffering...

    Past, Present, Future are all entwined in us. We should not forget that...

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  8. Vesper:
    Perhaps having a month where compassion to one another is focused upon heals our peoples a bit.

    Yes: for those alone at Christmas, peace on earth is often non-existent. :-(

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  9. This is the time of year that I get The Charlie Brown Syndrome. This year I am trying hard to find something in each day that makes me feel and know just how much I am truly Blessed. There have been a few days that I find it in the smallest of things. I definitely enjoyed this posting and am saving it to remind me that on those days that I feel alone that there is always One who walks with me daily.


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