MERRY CHRISTMAS?

Read the latest chapter in LOVE IN THE TIME OF THE UNDEAD:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/117957888/Chapter-Three-love-in-the-Time-of-the-Undead

 

I was Christmas shopping

and ran into a guy on the street.

I noticed his watch and said that it ran slow.

He said, "So does the guy I stole it from."

 

{Hey, the joke was free at least.}

 

 

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 

Everyone you meet tells you that.

But they don't tell you how to accomplish that sometimes Herculean task.

 

In this chaotic, stress-crazed, unpredictable world,

staying sane is hard, much less staying cheerful.

 

Still, the mind becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts

 

So

 

since our thoughts are one of the few things over we have control

we should take care to herd those critters where we want them.

 

I remember when

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a cloak.

 

But it warmed more than your body.

It warmed your heart...filled it, too,

with a melody that seemed like

it would last forever.

 

Somehow it never did.

The world is too much with us.

 

But until one feels the spirit of Christmas, there is no Christmas.

All else is outward display,

 

so much tinsel and decorations.

For it isn't the holly, it isn't the snow.

It isn't the tree nor its twinkling lights.

 

It's the warmth that comes to the heart

when we remember why we celebrate Christmas

in the first place.

 

I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day.

We try to crowd into it the long unpaid debts

 of kindness and compassion of the whole year.

 

I like to take my Christmas a little at a time,

all through the year.

 

And so

 

 I drift along into the holidays,

let them overtake me unexpectedly,

 

waking up some fine morning and suddenly saying to myself:

"Why this is Christmas Day!"

 

So today 

it is Christmas!

 

Let me leave you with two prayers:

 

"Father, teach us

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 we do Thy Will.

― St. Ignatius of Loyola

 

“Father, may those who love us love us,
           and those who do not love us,
           may You turn their hearts,
           and if You cannot turn their hearts
           may You turn their ankles
          that we may know them by their limping.”
         ~ Prayer of Victor Standish.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/117957888/Chapter-Three-love-in-the-Time-of-the-Undead