limping like a prodigal son

i’m gonna make it through this year if it kills me

“I am convinced that God is love, this thought has for me a primitive lyrical validity. When it is present to me, I am unspeakably blissful, when it is absent, I long for it more vehemently than does the lover for his object; but I do not believe, this courage I lack. For me the love of God is, both in a direct and in an inverse sense, incommensurable with the whole of reality.”

Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.

“Christmas is, for those who wish to follow the way of Jesus, an invitation to accept into our comfortable and safe lives those who come to us from far away, who seem ragged, marginal, in transition. This is how God finds us, at this very dark time of the year, the winter solstice, when the daylight hours have shrunk to their minimal light. He comes knocking at the door, looking for a haven, for a place to rest and recover.”

“The winter leaves crumble between my hands, December leaves. How is it we can’t accept this, that all trees were holy once, That all light is altar light, And floods us, day by day, and bids us, the air sheet lightning around us, To sit still and say nothing, here under the latches of Paradise?”