The work of Christmas begins

Last Saturday, when the return jet lag summoned me awake at 4:00 a.m.-ish, I worked on addressing Christmas cards and envelopes. That was a great way to use that pre-dawn time. I addressed about 90 cards between Saturday morning and Monday morning's early rising. But I realized how many of my friends did not have their "snail mail" address in my address book. In the interest of sending as many greetings as possible, I will copy my letter here for the blog-reading public.


December 19, 2009

Dear friends near and far,

This morning I landed in the United States for two weeks visiting friends and family! I decided to get right at the business of Christmas and get out some cards. Just the quick work of addressing envelopes helps me get back into the rhythms of life here in the United States and reflect on this third year teaching and working and living in Jordan.

This summer when I was doing some cleaning in my old bedroom at my parent’s house in Cincinnati, I discovered a stack of old magazines and newspaper clippings someone had stashed under my bed. Of course more time was spent investigating these new treasures (if you have ever visited our house on Montana Avenue you know we do a lot of saving and savoring of such old treasures!) than on the actual purging of ancient artifacts. But as I heaved a stack of 1970s issues of McCall’s and TAB—The American Baptist toward the trash can, a yellowed clipping slipped out onto the floor. The first thing I noticed about it was my mother’s handwriting, dating it from December, 1973. At the bottom of the poem was her charge to herself: “Remember!” The poem reads:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the king and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among people,
To make music in the heart.

I have seen the first half of the poem before, but not the second. I know why my mother loved this poem—she loved work! She loved the abstract thought of what the “work of Christmas” might mean, and she also loved making lists, setting goals, and rolling up her sleeves and doing hard, invigorating work. Of course finding the clipping makes me reflect on the “work” we all do. What is the “work” that consumes us? How does that work define us? Fulfill us? Exhaust us?

I am in my third year at King’s Academy in Jordan, and it is hard work. Fulfilling work. Exhausting work. If you are interested in reading more about my experiences there in the last 30 months, please check out the blog address at the top of the previous page. I will be publishing my 200th blog entry this week!One of the parents I most enjoy seeing at King’s Academy is Dr. Hamati. He relayed a story to me recently that I appreciated. He said that this woman he knew had never cooked a Christmas meal. And so she gathered her son and her husband into a room, and she told them this was the first Christmas meal she would prepare and she didn’t want any comment from them. She said that she was going to make the meal, and they were going to sit down and receive it, and if it wasn’t any good, then they would, without comment, put on their hats and coats and scarves and they would get up from the table, walk downtown to a fancy American chain hotel, and eat there. So her husband and her young son, without comment, nodded, and they left the room as she began to prepare the meal. Well, the time came to eat. And the young son and the husband walked into the room and waited. In came the proud mother, carrying her food, and as she looked up, she noticed that her husband and her young son were quietly at their seats, wearing their coats, hats, and scarves. Her son and her husband, they were expecting the worst. Indeed, many people in our world expect the worst. Have you read the headlines???

We teach a World Religions class at King’s Academy. Some time ago I started asking the various teachers, privately, for an uncomplicated explanation of their idea of the purpose and aim of a spiritual life (what a task!!). One of my favorite answers went, “All I want to say to you is, ‘You are the Beloved.’” He went on to say that “from the moment we claim the truth of being the Beloved, we are faced with the call to become who we are. Becoming the Beloved is the great spiritual journey we have to make.”

I think this is what Christmas is all about—receiving the gift of love that makes us know that we are the beloved, and from that place, we go about bringing that love to others. I think that is the point of a life of faith: not who lives most exemplarily in and unto themselves, but who lives most fully and effectively and selflessly for the sake of others. So to be about the work of Christmas is to bring this love we have received into our homes, our cities, our worlds, and especially to all those who have come to expect the worst. And in this pursuit, we unleash the full potential of the gift of Christmas—the potential for good, for joy, for peace, for healing, for reconciliation, for transformation, especially to those who have come to expect the worst.

In the footsteps of Christmas, when love comes into the world in the vulnerability of a child, when light pierces the darkness, and hope is born, when you think about it, as that poet wrote, the work of Christmas has only just begun. There is always that danger to sentimentalize the cuteness of the newborn child in that manger, rather than focus on the awesome mystery of the incarnation. When we look to the incarnation of God and the profound mystery of the birth of love into the world, then we can begin to change from expecting the worst to working toward something good. So from our kneeling place beside the manger, we slowly rise to our feet, and the miracle of this birth and the glow of this gift of love stay with us, lie within us, even as we slowly step back toward that cowshed door and out into the cold January air and to the world from which we came. We begin again in this new year with courage and joy and love to set about doing the work of Christmas in all the far away and forgotten places of our lives and in the world where people expect the worst.