But Christmas Day is for poems. The attempt to say something true about a thing we’ve only seen in glimpses, to describe a reality that can’t be put under a microscope. Christmas Day is a singing revolution, the peaceful overthrow of a tedious regime by musicians and mystics and poets.
God is hidden in plain sight, on the streets of Chicago and Jerusalem, suffering with humanity — crying that it hurts all over. We, like the shepherds, have stopped working, have allowed the rhythms of ordinary time to be interrupted, have lit our torches and brought our gifts. All of us together, caring for the fearful and the fragile, creating a circle of light in the darkness.
There is waiting, and then there is waiting. There is anticipation, and then there is despair — the name we give to our fear of the future when we cannot imagine it could be any different from our present.
By Proclamation 