By Michael Gerson for The Washington Post December 24, 2020
“One of the stranger elements of the strange Nativity narrative is the way an angel addresses Mary: “You who are highly favored.” As a teen mother, pregnant before marriage and destined to give birth among barn animals, she might have been forgiven for regarding this as angelic sarcasm. Fast forward three decades, and the most favored one will see her son executed among thieves before a jeering crowd.
“The whole Christmas story is pregnant with enigma and violated expectations. The Creator pulls on a garment of blood and bone. Almighty God is somehow present in a fragile newborn. The deliverer of humankind is delivered, slimy with vernix, in a place smelling of dung. If God can come here, amid the shame and straw, he can come anywhere. If God came here, he has come everywhere.”
The dumpster fire that was 2020 will still spread into 2021. But it will get better. Fighting fires takes a long time.
If vaccination for the COVID-19 virus continues as it has so far, it is projected that it will take 10 YEARS for the entire country [only the US] to be vaccinated. “Operation Warp Speed” has produced the same sort of vaccine results that his administration has accomplished over the last four years. One might be forgiven for thinking that the Keystone Kops have been running the show. Or Larry, Moe and Curly. One doesn’t bankrupt himself five times for being skillful with deadlines or productivity.
How to end this year that has denied so much, and cost so much…
Words from Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM
“The “Christ Mystery” is much bigger than Christianity as an organized religion. If we don’t understand this, Christians will have little ability to make friends with, build bridges to, understand, or respect other religions or the planet. Jesus did not come to create a country club or a tribe of people who could say, “We’re in and you’re out. We’ve got the truth and you don’t.” Jesus came to reveal something that was true everywhere, for everyone, and all the time.
“Many Christians have a very limited understanding of Jesus’ historical or social message, and almost no understanding of the Cosmic Christ—even though it is taught clearly in Scripture (see John 1, Colossians 1, Ephesians 1, 1 John 1, Hebrews 1:1). Christ is often taught at the very beginning of Paul’s and other New Testament authors’ writings, yet we still missed it. But you can’t see what you were never told to look for. Once you do see the shape and meaning of this cosmic mystery of Divine Incarnation, you’ll be able to see that the Presence is everywhere—and the archetypal Jesus will not be such an anomaly, accident, or surprise.
“God is saving everything and everybody, it is all God’s emerging victory, until, as Paul says, “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). If Christ is truly the “savior of the world” (see John 4:42), then God’s shape, form, meaning, and message are all far bigger than any single religion. Talking to the intellectual Athenians, Paul is wise enough to say: “God is not far from any of us. It is in him [sic] that we live and move and have our very being” (Acts 17:28).”
For me, this has been a dismal Christmas season.
Social Distancing and Shelter at Home are my normal life habits. I miss being able to freely see family and friends; but I value these people so highly that I would not dare to infect someone simply because I wanted to see them in person.
A new Variant of CVirus is working its way across the globe. The Variant is significantly more infectious; so far, it does not seem to be any more deadly.
What has made this season so dismal is witnessing the callous disregard that the president and the senate has shown for the people they have sworn to represent. The violence that more-than-I-thought-possible have inflicted upon fellow citizens.
And worst of all, the Evangelical Church’s callous disregard of everything that Jesus taught about loving our neighbor and caring for the poor.
So as not to end this Chronicle on such a sour note, I offer the following illustration of what we need, moving forward:
Remember to hug, physically or symbolically, the ones we love; and carry a stick. My grandson loves sticks. They are useful tools for discovery.
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Tags: depression, faith, freelance illustration, hope, intolerance, material poverty, mental health, Nerve Pain, Neuropathy, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 