I wrote this meditation a few years ago. It's included in Words for Winter.

Trees suddenly grow indoors, decorated with memories, bearing the fruits of love and time. Gilded and ribboned packages magically appear under these incongruous evergreens – expectations and dreams captured in cardboard boxes.
At night, the air aglow with star shine on the snow, wisps of angel songs drift white and pure straight into our hearts. We gather inside our homes around hearths ablaze, warmed by goodwill and God’s grace. On the mantel, the story of Christ’s birth is played out in a motionless menagerie, objects of simplicity and awe.
Through eyes of innocence, we look past the nascent Nativity, just beyond the horizon of the season, where the new year waits poised with promise. The Message of the season fells fear of the future as the immanence of Christ’s presence is again heralded by the world.
Childlike, we are reborn, our voices and souls caroling the Gift of the Ages, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. It’s Christmas. Emmanuel is come. Maranatha!
=======

Christmas morning breakfast in front of a cardboard-type fireplace (just used at Christmas) with my father on special small-sized china plates. Do I still have them I wonder? Not often it was just my father and me. Always an orange in the toe of the stocking.
ReplyDeleteWe had one of those cardboard fireplaces for awhile when I was a kid.
DeleteLike the Words for Winter book cover. Location?
ReplyDeleteBack yard.
Delete