Greetings!

Spoiler Alert: Today’s offering will be a theme-less ramble; so much is going on! There’s a cloudy kind of numbness, seeping into my mind; my heart has not yet caught up and by God’s grace, it won’t but yeah…there’s a great cloud hovering that cannot be ignored.  

My daughter’s son, having shared information with her that was of great import to his five-year-old mind, could not fathom the lack of verbal or even bodily response that would suggest she understood what he had so eloquently expressed and so, in a last-ditch attempt to aid her understanding, turned to her and asked… “Mom, do you feel me?”  Bless his little heart!  You may not necessarily identify with every word or image shared today, but I do hope that on some level at least, you will…feel me.

Have you ever noticed that once Christmas day has passed [though the season is twelve days long] there is a sudden change in the atmosphere…a sense of foreboding? I thought it was only me, until I heard Fred Hammond’s Christmas song titled Christmas Everyday. In it he croons a soliloquy…“Why does this feeling [of euphoria*] have to go away…I wish that Christmas could be everyday…” Well, so do I Fred, so do I. The feelings of wellbeing seem to have been gathered up with fragments of so much more than loaves and fishes…to be thrown out, as reality barrels its way into our minds and lives, with not a care about anything save that of gratifying itself.

This morning, as I read and meditated…or at least tried to do so, the weight of all that is waiting to be done and accomplished in the coming days, weeks and months, had me feeling like a near relative of the Greek mythological titan… Atlas! Here we go again, after the Advent/Christmas respite, back into the world of muchness and manyness, a world I have no wish to be in, but…how? The answer lays perhaps, in an archaic yet loaded word, heard in a number of the old carols, hymns and scriptural readings; it is the word…Hark!

According to the Cambridge dictionary, Hark is another way of saying Harken, in other words…pay close/strict attention! You get the feeling, from the several contexts in which it is used, that the call to hark, transcends mere auditory acuity; there is a very real sense in which it speaks of body, mind and spirit, given to the discipline of mindfulness. In that regard, one is not only conscious of external movements but is also and perhaps more so, attuned to internal soundings that for the discerning, is an indicator of divine in-breaking.

When my sister-friend, now in retirement called this morning to catch up, declaring in her unique, no holds barred style that this year, I am to look out for me…I was for a while speechless. She further explained [and here I am interpreting what I heard/received] that she was not advocating laxity about the things for which I am responsible within the context of my work, but opined that I should also consider the greater vocation, the one from which every other is an offshoot: that of being true to the me that God created and not the me that others want or expect me to be…

Hark! Listen up Grace…what is God saying about how to live with joy-filled passion amidst the brevity and uncertainty that is life? Can Fred Hammond’s longing become a reality…can the euphoria of Christmas be an everyday experience? Dare I listen to the soundings within and, as my sister-friend enjoined, look out for me and so embrace a greater vocation? Might that not be construed as…selfish? I am hearing in my head, Mark Lowry’s and Buddy Green’s song Mary Did You Know; the truth is I don’t think the Blessed Mother knew the answers to any of those questions raised in the song, in making her response [Luke 1: 38]. What I believe she knew however, that is instructive for me and you, was that if God was calling her to something…leading her along a particular path, to choose not to accept and follow, would not only be to deny her greater calling, but would be tantamount to denying God!

The year of untold grief, pain and uncertainty is drawing to a close; when next I touch bases, we would have begun a new year. I am not making any resolutions except that I want to be able to respond to the voice that has been quietly speaking within me and through those entities by which joy has been made real… “Let it be to me according to Your Word.” In making that response, I know that the way ahead will be fraught with challenges as well as that something…that gift of Holy Spirit that will make the euphoria of Christmas, an everyday experience.

 I did say that this was going to be a ramble; even so…I hope you feel me?                                                                                                                                                              

Grace+
*Italics mine