Happy St. Nicholas Day!
When it came to other people’s needs, he looked and listened. And said yes. Why? He has taken a long look at Jesus’ way, and saw there the way to life. For all. He said:
“The giver of every good and perfect gift has called upon us to mimic Gods giving, by grace, through faith, and this is not of ourselves.”
~ St. Nicholas of Myra
Trump and Co. Decades of faking it.
Dare to hope.
Daniel Berrigan on hope,
and thus, truly, on Advent …
“You know, I don’t at all hesitate to be a bit utopian about all this because I think hope is itself an act, a very big leap, which in a sense defies the grim facts always about us and opens up new ways of thinking about things.”
~ Daniel Berrigan
Time to flame up this Advent?
“John of the Cross has a similar image: Intimacy with God and with each other will only take place, he says, when we reach a certain kindling temperature. For too much of our lives, he suggests, we lie around as damp, green logs inside the fire of love, waiting to come to flame but never bursting into flame because of our dampness. Before we can burst into flame, we must first dry out and come to kindling temperature. We do that, as does a damp log inside a fire, by first sizzling for a long time in the flames so as to dry out.
“How do we sizzle psychologically and spiritually? For John of the Cross, we do that through the pain of loneliness, restlessness, disquiet, anxiety, frustration, and unrequited desire. In the torment of incompleteness our psychic temperature rises so that eventually we come to kindling temperature and, there, we finally open ourselves to union in new ways. That too is an image for advent.”
~ Ron Rolheiser
Human hope is hardy.
“Once again St. Nicholas Day
Has even come to our hideaway;
It won’t be quite as fun, I fear,
As the happy day we had last year.
Then we were hopeful, no reason to doubt
That optimism would win the bout,
And by the time this year came round,
We’d all be free, and safe and sound.
Still, let’s not forget it’s St. Nicholas Day,
Though we’ve nothing left to give away.
We’ll have to find something else to do:
So everyone please look in their shoe!”
~ Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl”
From a year ago today. It’s still true.
I have cried every day for almost a year.
I do not regret this, but give thanks for it. These tears have saved my humanity.
I weep for personal grief, which feels as terribly heavy today as it did at 3:00 am December 12, 2020.
I weep for the common inhumanity of so many to one another in our day, evidenced in lack of respect, in harsh words, in violent actions.
I weep for the ongoing destruction of our planet, and for our shared inability to take it seriously as the issue of the century, and of every day thereof.
These are things worth lamenting and there are many others. I pray I might cry until they are right, and I am fully human. It is a light price to pay.
JPMcG, 12.6.21
Stay in touch: mcginty@writeme.com
Believe it. 