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Dear
Friends,
Global warming is not very Christmassy, is it ? Even
the youngest of us (if the Christmas Card designs that the
children of St. James' School produced are anything to
go by) tend to picture Christmas with snow and snowmen - yet
very few of us have actually seen a white Christmas, and I
cannot remember a single one [though I can remember a
white Easter !] But what global warming seems to
portend is warmer, wetter and windier Christmasses - not the
stuff of greetings cards at all...
We seem to picture - or at least, idealise - Christmas as
snug and warm inside, and cold and crisp outside. Just
the opposite of baked Alaska, come to think of it, which shows
which way my mind is turning, because that's the other
thing that we tend to associate Christmas with (and again,
many of the children's designs bear this out) is lots
of food !
And that's the winter festive season in a nutshell (pun
intended): we want warm feelings, of all sorts, at a time
when the world around us is anything but warm or welcoming.
Even the story, of the birth of Jesus, gets suitably sanitized
and wrapped up, in order to give us the requisite `feel-good
factor`. Yes, the real kernel of the story is `feel-good`
- God takes human form to heal the rift caused by our pride
and greed, etc. - but the details of it, the circumstances
of his birth and childhood, are anything but `feel-good`:
far from home and family, draughty stable, vengeful infanticidal
tyrant, refugee in foreign land.
There's always something. There's always a war
(or two) going on somewhere; there's always a natural
disaster in the news; there are always corrupt governments;
always evil, dangerous men and women out there somewhere.
Ever-changing details, same general picture. So the
background to Christmas doesn't change much, really.
It's often bleak out there, even if it is getting warmer
- and if the scientists are right, not least because it's
getting warmer.
But in our hearts and minds (not un-naturally) we crave the
antidote. Picture-postcard scenes; plenty of good food
and drink; presents and good company. And it's there,
if we don't stifle it with the trimmings. The antidote
to the world's woes, the kernel of Christmas truth, is
that wonderful, mysterious, infinitely touching notion that
God - who is so far beyond our human comprehension that most
of us don't actually bother to try to fathom what `God`
truly means - could somehow appear in a human form, a real
person; beginning, as we all must, by being born a `helpless
babe`. Vulnerable, in so many ways, yet supremely
precious (and not just to his parents, despite being so far
from home).
Christmas bids us ponder the ineffable mysteries of God and,
at the same time, rejoice in the awesome possibilities (of
triumph and disaster, hope and tragedy, good and evil) of
every new birth. It is a time to reconnect with the
`child` in all of us, in order to try to `plug
in` to those awesome possibilities afresh; a time to step
outside the treadmill of the every-day and re-connect with
Love - our love for one another, and God's infinitely
patient love for us, shown in the gift of his Son. May
that story be globally warming again this Christmas !
William
Lang.
Christmas can also mean Pantomime, and this year our young
people are putting on
"Babes in the Wood" - and it should
be our best yet !
Performances at 3 pm & 7 pm on Friday 4th and
Saturday 5th January at St. James' School
Tickets - £4 / £2 for children - available from: Elstead
Rectory 703251
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