CHRISTMAS_SUNDAY_SLEEP_GOD'S PARENTHESES

God (or the Great Mystery as the Lakota call Him) is wise.

Have you ever had a bruising day?

An event or events so traumatic that they drew blood both emotional or physical or both?

Of course you have. Me, too. Just yesterday in fact (but that is besides the point).


* Punctuation note for those of you who puzzle over such things :

Periods go inside parentheses only if an entire sentence is inside the parentheses.

EXAMPLE :
Please read the analysis. (I enclosed it as Attachment A.)
OR
Please read the analysis (Attachment A).


But I was talking about terrible days. You have them. I have them.

God is wise. He gives us sleep. A terrible day has a night's sleep on either side like prarentheses.

Upon awakening, we feel a bit removed from the sharp sting of the trauma of the day before. And every passing night of sleep buffers the sting a bit more. Sleep is God's gauze for the bleeding heart.


Sundays are like that too. God gave us a day of rest because he knew the human heart and human greed. He knew we would work ourselves and others to death if He didn't put the brakes on us in some way.

No farmer plants the same lot of ground over and over. It would leach all the nutrients out of it, leaving it lifeless. The farmer lets the lot lie fallow for a season.

And if dirt needs a rest, how much more does the human heart and mind.


Which brings us to God's gift of Christmas :

We all know of the straightforward gift of Christmas : Jesus coming here to save us from ourselves.

But I believe there was also the reason of the parentheses :

Christmas brackets one year from the next in a month of remembering the message of "Peace On Earth. Good Will To Man."

It brings to remembrance the innocence and dreams of childhood that the other eleven months have hammered out of us. We become childlike, in the best sense of the term, again.

We hold back bitter words a bit more. We help up a fellow man fallen by the wayside when we might not have another month. We remember those around us who hurt and think of ways to ease the pain.

New Year celebrations blow out the year. The month of Christmas heals a bit the wounds of the past year.

I don't know about you, but I would rather heal than blow out.

The Great Mystery is wise and loving to give us the circle of seasons to be healed by Christmas, Sunday, and sleep.

May the healing of this Christmas week extend all month and into the New Year for you, Roland
***

WHAT IS THE COLOR OF LOVE?

For Jenn's Haiku blogfest : http://youknowthatblog.com/

Winds sing soft at night,
Stars blink in listening sky,
Christmas magic lives.




Have you noticed ...

love?

Christmas is the season of compassionate love.

It is an endangered emotion. The world preys on the compassionate.

Yet, it endures.

What is the color of love?

On the streets of New Orleans, I saw that one of the colors of love was ... blood.

A man stood in front of his wife as she was suddenly attacked. She survived. He did not.

Calvary showed us the same color of love, and its seed was planted in a manger in Bethleham.

In the post-Katrina chaos in front of the Convention Center, I saw the color of love was ... tears.

In the early days of Katrina, medical assistance for the homeless was almost non-existent.

Lost in the midst of mass suffering, a mother held her dead baby, rocking back and forth.

Everyone was consumed by their own griefs. She sat alone on the concrete, ignored in the back of the crowd of survivors, each caught up in their own personal hells.

With no cell phone that worked, no words that would mean anything, I sat down beside her. After some minutes, I gently squeezed her arm, then her shoulders.

After a half hour of rocking in silent tears, she looked at me and husked, "Why?"

I said, "I asked the same question by the bedsides of my mother and my fiancee when they both died."

"No. I meant 'Why you stop and try to help a crying stranger?' Now, I know."

She went back to her rocking, and I was pulled away by the needs of my blood center, blinking back the tears and feeling so useless.

Love.

We need it. We need to receive it. We need to give it. The difference between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea is one both takes and gives. The other only takes.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg proposed a triangular theory of love

that suggests that there are three components of love:

intimacy, passion, and commitment.

Different combinations of these three components result in different types of love.

For example, a combination of intimacy and commitment results in compassionate love,

while a combination of passion and intimacy leads to passionate love.

According to Sternberg, relationships built on two or more elements are more enduring that those based upon a single component.

Sternberg uses the term consummate love to describe a combination of intimacy, passion, and commitment.

While this type of love is the strongest and most enduring, Sternberg suggests that this type of love is rare.

That is why Christmas is important : its message is that love came down to us so that we could share it.

And each year we watch movies, sing carols, and send cards, reinforcing the images of friendship, giving, joy, and the magic of selfless love.

No matter your faith, Christmas teaches us that it is possible for one day to look at one another with the thought of building up and not tearing down or taking advantage.

And if we can do that for one day, then why not try doing it each day for as long as we can?





What is your Christmas Star that guides you?
***