the house of christmas

New Hamburg, ON

Tonight is Christmas eve, and despite my attempts to pay attention to the advent season this year, it still doesn't feel like Christmas to me. It might help if there was some snow on the ground, which is how I grew up knowing Christmas, instead of the green grass the rain has kept well watered. But it's more than that.
When I was younger I remember Christmas having a magical feel to it brought on by the excitement about Santa, and getting free gifts for no apparent reason. But this year I'm not getting much in the line of feeling. If Christmas is supposed to feel a certain way, then I've missed the mark.

This morning in Church Gary, my pastor, made a comment that struck me and served to pat me on the back. He said (my paraphrase) "Jesus came as the great comfort and joy, but also came as many other things", he then went on to discuss the ever increasing economic gap between the rich and poor in this world, and specific to this country of ours. It may have seemed ill-timed to some, talking about poverty at Christmas, but hit what I have been thinking about. After a fall of exposure to much of the brokenness in this country, and as I prepare to head off to South Africa in a few short weeks, his words resonated with what I'm having trouble putting words to in my head and heart. Thinking about baby Jesus meek and mild ought to really be a kick-start to thinking about the same Jesus who urged us to love God and love our neighbours and step out against injustice.

Yesterday I unveiled a hidden jem in a book I found, nestled in with the books in the library at the church where my family had our gathering. The author was a Jew who converted to Christianity, and described her experience as she grew in her understanding of faith in Jesus. She explained how a woman in her church described advent as being the waiting for what comes at easter. Which makes sense to me too. Maybe I was falsely expecting the magical-childish-santa-induced holiday spirit to hit me again this year, but I think that's me missing the point of waiting. And so in part the wait is met with fulfillment, as Jesus enters the scene, and in part it continues on. And it is in this in between state that I live my life, that all of us who seek to follow and live for Jesus live our lives. The constant tensions of the "not yet" and the "now". And I guess that makes sense on many levels to me.

In the Mean time, Merry Christmas to you all!

I found the following poem which spoke to the restless homelessness I've been sensing as I lead a life "on the road"

The House of Christmas

There fared a mother driven fort
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost- how long ago! –
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings,
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome;
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

(G.K. Chesterton 1874-1936, taken from the book The Poets’ Christ: An Anthology of poetry about Jesus).