I would love to be able to write an inspiring message for
the holiday season. I don’t know if I
even have it in me. I am not a holiday
person. I am actually one of those “blue”
people who find the holidays to be overwhelming and only serve to remind me of
difficult Christmases past.
It hasn’t always been that way. I used to be the one who loved to string
popcorn and cranberries for the tree and set up the crèche in a prominent
spot. I loved to sing Christmas carols
at the top of my lungs, albeit slightly off key. Then things happened. Choices were made. Some out of my control, some just seemed to
be the least of all the evils. And I
stopped believing.
Somewhere along the line I stopped believing that there is a
God out there who takes a personal interest in my activities. Oddly, it happened around the same time that
I stopped doing the things that I would rather not have God witness. It’s not that I don’t believe in God. I just got tired of everyone claiming to have
his ear, or his righteousness, or that God was on “our” side or that God has a
reason for everything and it is not our job to question. I prefer to believe that if there is any
divinity it exists within each of us and most of us are able to touch it now
and then and be better for it. It is
that piece of divinity that connects us to each other.
I guess I see that when everyone has tried to define who or
what they think God is, it has ended up separating us even more. I don’t think God is definable. I don’t think God is a he, a she, or an
it. I think as long as we continue to
try to define God we are in danger of making God in our own image and forgetting
that there is that piece that we can’t define that connects us rather than that
definition we have created that separates us.
Christmas has become another way to separate us. It brings together like-minded people who
celebrate together within their agreed upon definition. Some folks argue every year that there is a
war on Christmas, or that we need to put the Christ back in Christmas, and
whenever I hear that I feel that those people don’t want me to be a part of
their celebrations so I back away and I feel separated. I wish there was a holiday that everyone
could celebrate that would bring us all together in peace and harmony, no
matter our beliefs, no matter what we believed our relationship is to that we
call God.
These past few weeks have only reinforced that sense of
separation I feel exists in the world.
There are people who are afraid of mentally ill people with guns who
want more people to have more guns. I
don’t know anymore. There are already so
many guns out there that I don’t know if there is an answer. I also know that people on both sides
strongly believe that God is with them.
I think some people may have gotten the Ten Commandments and the Constitution
and all its amendments confused. At
times they seem to contradict each other.
I just don’t know. What I know is
that I don’t want any more babies to die and I don’t want children growing up
in a world where everyone they know is wearing a gun because there are other
people with guns who are dangerous. How
do we know who is dangerous at this point?
I also know that I am dealing with vicarious trauma. I hear stories every day of awful things that
people do to people that they claim to love.
It’s not necessarily the strangers with the guns who scare me. As I well know, it could be the person
sitting across the table from you at breakfast that could be the one who
decides that your presence is an inconvenience, an annoyance, or that the
coffee just wasn’t the right temperature.
Yes, I am not the person who decorates three or more trees,
throws a party, wears that Santa hat for the month of December, and makes bags
of reindeer food. There have been people
who felt they had to lure me into their Christmas cheer, but, as much as I
dearly love and miss those people, it didn’t really didn’t do anything but
reinforce my sense that there of more us who would prefer to drink our nog
alone than with others because that much jolly is best taken in small
doses. I always say I have about four
hours of holiday cheer and I save that for my grandchildren. Any more than that would just be me faking it
and that would be cruel for all of us.
I will, however, look out the window tomorrow
and hope to see snow. I will look up at
the sky tonight and think about all those children who are looking at the same
sky in hopes of seeing the red flashing nose of a reindeer and I will think
about those children who are not. I will
miss my grandchildren but also be grateful that they had the opportunity to go
to Disney this year leaving me to spend the week with the granddogs who
probably have more of the Divine in them than most people. As much as I would like to believe that
this is the holiday of peace and love, things will continue pretty much the
same. I may pray, but that is only to
change me, not to change the mind or gain the favor of an entity. I pray in order to have inner peace because
that may be the only place I will be able to find it.
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