Back to business

Christmas is over and Business is Business 

            Franklin Pierce Adams, For the Other 365 Days

 

 

 

 

 

Litany: The Work of Christmas

When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.

                    Howard Thurman

 

 

 

 

 

Nativity

Our Druidic ancestors welcomed every child with the words:

                    Here comes God again.
 

                                  Fr. John Cullen, letter July 14, 2016

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: Holidays

The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a fairy tale
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.

                    Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Theft

It came without ribbons.
It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes, or bags.
Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store.
Maybe Christmas means a little bit more.

            Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

Recognition as the beginning of everything

No magic can change something into something that it is not;
the imaginative transformation at the heart of magic is recognition, not creation.

                Susan Palwick, The Last Unicorn: Magic as Metaphor 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter solstice

Let's go and get drunk on light again –                                 

        it has the power to console.

                                Georges Seurat