Maybe it's the darkening skies - during those morning walks, their slow disappearing allowing me to move straight into the sunrise.
Or maybe it's the beeswax candles, burning slow and spilling silent, fighting against the darkness every evening, bringing light.
Or maybe it's just the cheerfulness of the lady selling me ginger beef and chicken wings who we slow and bring fresh holly to because she "just loves Christmas".
There's these quiet notes in pretty cards arriving by post. And hush-hush secrets as hands are busy and hearts are giving.
Silent night is being hummed and I find myself breathing grateful for the weeks of waiting leading up to Christmas.
~ Hope ~
We find ourselves downtown, not in the glittering streets of festivity, but in the back corner where the forsaken and broken and the forgotten are finding a refuge. We are still a bit awkward there, driving in with a minivan and piling out with brand new winter coats and fashion jeans.
We don't make a difference.
We simply are present, handing out smiles and "Merry Christmases" and socks filled with hygiene products. I've heard it before that it can be the showing up that is the most important. The simple gesture of "I thought of you" or "You are worth my time". We share a laugh, a smile, we make eye contact.
It's nothing at all,
but maybe that moment of connection is the something that changes the both of us. Something that makes Hope happen.
~Peace ~
Waging peace in a world of conflict, not just in the news, but in our neighbourhoods and homes. If humbleness always leads to peace, then this selfish-hearted has a long way to go. The word "peace" is etched on solid rock on the window sill right above the kitchen sink, a self-reminder perhaps, but maybe more so a call for action. Peace is not passive.
It is not something that exists; it is something that is made.
How to be a peace maker while doing life shoulder to shoulder with a world that is noisy and fighting to be heard.
~Joy ~
There's this beauty-full woman who changed her name to Joy just so that everyday when someone calls upon her she's reminded of her calling. To have the fullness of joy, to be joy-full. When the days are hard, joy needs to be fought after harder. It's not an emotion that can fit into a symbol or an emoji, it's a state of being. A defiance against the complaint, a will against the self-pity. It's a choice of contentment, of willingly joining the party just to celebrate all that is good.
~Love ~
At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of the moments given to this one life, perhaps it is every man's wish to have just loved more. To speak love more. To live love more.
If Love came down at Christmas, then where is it now? Is it all still swaddled up neglected and unwrapped? Or has the ribbon been untied and the lid lifted off and has it been passed around the table for all to share?
Maybe it's the darkening skies - during those morning walks, their slow disappearing allowing me to move straight into the sunrise.
Or maybe it's the beeswax candles, burning slow and spilling silent, fighting against the darkness every evening, bringing light.
Or maybe it's just the cheerfulness of the lady selling me ginger beef and chicken wings who we slow and bring fresh holly to because she "just loves Christmas".
