- Our ‘All Hands on Deck’ Moment is Here - January 15, 2026
- No Resolutions … Just the Work of Christmas. - December 31, 2025
- When the Darkness Around Us is Deepest - December 22, 2025
and We’re Waiting for the Light to Return … Love the monsters breeding / in every corner of the city and suburb, / all throughout the soil of the countryside. / Love the monster breeding inside you / and slaughter him / with love. (from “Beatitude” by John Keene)
With so much happening everywhere all at once, my plans for an early December post quickly kaleidoscoped into something else. If you look back through the archives, you’ll see that this is becoming a habit. Time flies by, the nights got longer, the days got shorter, and darker, and heavier. I finally succumbed to ‘overwhelm’’ (something you might also be familiar with) and realized I was trying to cover way too much for a single post. So, with a new year just around the corner, I decided to hold off and present instead, some of the meanderings that keep me going. I hope you will find them moving and inspirational … quotes, visual images, musical offerings. Let’s start with this image (featured in my post from March 5, 2025) accompanied by words of wisdom from Marcel Proust & Henry David Thoreau.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes” (MP) & “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” (HDT)
I see that crack in everything … the one that lets in the light; the one that the immortal Leonard Cohen reminds us of when he sings “Ring the bells that still can ring.”
And just to further ‘round out’ our senses and remind us of what “welcoming the stranger” is all about during this season of kindness and generosity … I invite you to join me in experiencing a most beautiful rendition of “A Safe Place to Land” from Sara Bareilles & John Legend.
In addition to Solstice, December also brings us Hannukah, Advent, and Christmas. Here’s what Rabbi Sandra Lawson has to say about the religion she is called to represent. “Being Am Yisrael,” she says, “means that wrestling is a sign of faith. Faith that the world can be repaired. Faith that we are accountable to each other. Faith that liberation is always a collective project … Recently, a friend said to me that, sadly, many in our community are dealing with the sin of certainty rather than the struggle, or what it means to stay in the struggle and talk across difference.” Ahh yes, the sin of certainty … definitely not limited to our Jewish neighbors. I found the rabbi’s reflection enlightening.
“May we have the courage to wrestle. May we have the humility to learn. And may we keep crossing the river toward each other, again and again, refusing to give up”
—Rabbi Sandra Lawson
In Unitarian Universalist communities, December is a very busy month in which there is a tendency to celebrate all the traditional faith holidays. In Christianity, the first weeks of December are considered Advent … a time devoted to preparing for the birth of Jesus. In UUism, not so much. One of my favorite UU commentators is the Rev Kimberley Debus, whose Substack blog is titled “Hold My Chalice”, In her post of December 3rd, she offers a reflection called “Bringing Tenderness”, in which she says, in part …
There’s a lot of holiness and magic and family and snow shoveling and decorating and cooking and shopping and anxiety and anticipation … Unfortunately, that rush and anxiety can show up in Unitarian Universalist congregations especially as wanting to not actually talk about Jesus on Christmas Eve.
Note to Readers outside of UUism … it’s true. Despite our foundational theologies being Christian, and despite our value of pluralism which means that we affirm we “are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology,” practically every religious professional in our faith will hear from someone that there’s “too much Jesus” or “can we not sing traditional carols on Christmas eve” or just flat out refuse to come to anything in December because they might get a little Jesus on them.
The fiercely honest and hard-working reverend goes on to say … That beloved community we talk about? That was the core of Jesus’s message … Inclusivity, grace, and a call to draw the circle wide? Check out Jesus’s sermon on the mount … Overthrowing empire, patriarchy, greed, and corruption? That’s Jesus too. I say You Go, Rev!!
It wasn’t until I asked the all-knowing Google, that I learned more than two billion people all over the world celebrate Christmas in some form. The exchanging of gifts is generally involved in keeping with the local culture, such as the exchange between Christians and Muslims in Gaza’s little town of Bethlehem, the actual birthplace of the blessed baby who was to become the Christ. For the past two years, as we all know, there has been no Joy in Bethlehem and although there is once again a lighted tree in Manger Square, there are reports of infants freezing to death. It feels far from joyous. Last Christmas Day, December 25, 2024, the Palestinian journalist Mohammed Mohisen wrote in a Christmas Letter from Gaza to the World: Every year, we celebrated with our Christian neighbors. We helped them decorate their Christmas trees, shared in their joy, and savored the sweet chocolates they gifted us with so much love. Now, the streets that once brimmed with the warmth of Christmas are cold and lifeless. The trees are gone. The chocolates are dust. The laughter has been replaced by the sounds of explosions and the wails of mourning. For two years now, we have been robbed of sharing their holidays, just as they have been robbed of ours. There are no celebrations anymore only memories of a time when we could dream together, laugh together, live together.
Here is my favorite image of the baby Jesus all grown up and ministering to his fellow Beings. I can’t help but think it is this Jesus that the 26th Avenue Poet, Elizabeth Nelson, had in mind when she wrote “Return” in 1997, a poem about the other Advent story.
RETURN
It’s true, he’s back. I saw him
yesterday, on the crosstown bus. Not so much
like the pictures; he’d shaved (a day or two ago
at least) and pulled his hair back with
a rubber band — ratty Giants sweatshirt,
old Levis, and sandals that he could
have worn the last time, I guess. The face
was the same, though — you knew it when
you watched him laughing with the boombox kids
in the back seat, flirting with a solemn baby
until its mother’s thin brown cheeks shone pink;
chatting up the Mormon twins who cruised
the aisle in cheap black suits and earnest smiles,
shaking hands again with the loud guy
in the smelly coat, answering his random questions
in a way that gave them sense; gazing back
at a manicured man wrapped in the Wall Street Journal,
until the manicured stare crumpled like newsprint,
smudged into a little-boy grin. A slow ride, but he seemed
in no hurry — I heard him ask the driver
where to transfer for the veteran’s hospital,
and when he pulled the cord and swung
down the steps and out the opening door,
the boombox kids followed him
and the guy in the smelly coat
and the man with the Wall Street Journal.
The baby started crying
the Mormon twins wiped their noses
and for a minute all of us looked at each other
the way you never do on the crosstown bus,
searching hard in her face my face your face
for something we had seen in his.
And just one more thing … a quick read and watch, please. On Sunday mornings, my favorite GenZ Newscaster, Aaron Parnas (The Parnas Perspective) reports only Good News. Here is one segment from the 21st. With this kind of action, HOPE is, indeed, more than just another four-letter word.
In war-darkened Odesa, a community-driven effort, led by an uncle of mine in Ukraine, delivered 40 generators during Hanukkah—restoring light to families, synagogues, churches, police, and children’s homes—and culminated in an unscripted second “miracle” when a volunteer, moved by instinct, crossed the street to a powerless church and discovered the congregation had already built and prayed over an empty spot for a generator, which he was able to provide, turning faith-in-action into literal light amid devastation.
So, until next year … may we all take time to breathe, to rest, try a little kindness, sing and dance a little every day and especially … to Love. And let’s do get together again in 2026.
Feliz Navidad & Happy Kwanzaa.
Buying me an occasional coffee helps me keep these stories coming … and gives me one less reason to cross my fingers when my Social Security payment is due!