Christmastide

Sometimes I question the efficacy of prayer. Not that I'm especially worthy of having my prayers answered, but often feel as if I am. And why not? Why delay? Why must everything be submitted, not only to God's will and time, but also to the caprice of mankind? Of course I am thinking of things I've asked for myself, but also of things I've asked for others, whether it be the conversion of a soul, or the finding of a job, or some other request. I'm impatient. Why can't the conversion happen within a few days or weeks after I start praying... or will it ever happen? Why must we suffer loneliness, or bad jobs, or fear?

I know the answers. I know about St. Monica. I know all the examples. Still I wonder, will anything I have asked ever be granted, or am I perhaps asking wrongly? But I do not ask for a Porsche, or a movie-star bride, or for my friend to be made King of Europe. So does what I ask ever mean anything?

December 26th, the Feast of St. Stephen, who, dying, prayed for his murderers - prayed for Saul. And God heard his prayer. From the Office of Readings for Dec. 26th:

Love led [Stephen] to pray for those who stoned him, to save them from punishment. Strengthened by the power of his love, he overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won his persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his holy and tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition.

I'm no Stephen, but it's comforting to know that even the most seemingly hopeless of prayers can have an effect. I just need to learn patience, even to the end of time.

Tomorrow, the Holy Innocents. Two thousand years have passed, and time has folded upon itself, and in the quest to destroy Christ, the State has blood on its hands once more. We idolize the unknown soldier, whose lifeblood is spilled for the preservation of the State. Sad that his life is claimed by others, that it is not his own to give, but the State's to take, that the State may live. Sadder still that that unknown soldier's blood was spillt for those whose devouring maw we worship, we who have forgotten the unknown children, though we remember the soldiers who defend the State that takes their lives. Blood, oh such blood, that the blood of innocents and the blood of the simple should flow rivers, all in the name of the holy State, whose power we must not question. Blood, oh such blood.

Tomorrow, the Holy Innocents. Yesterday, St. Stephen. Martyrs and blood, the cradle and the cross.

And today, the Holy Family, a ray of hope, if we accept the sacrifice. Mary, mother of God and mother of the Church, pray for us. St. Joseph, terror of demons, intercede for us.

St. Stephen and St. Paul...

...pray for us.

The Poet's Gone from Me

Welcome back, I say to myself. I apologize for my absence. I have enjoyed not having constant access to a computer, though I really do intend to fix mine when I return from vacation. I'm setting out with the goal of writing a poem or a song lyric. I have doubts about my ability. Mainly, I find all my ideas to be ripoffs of Hendrix, Fogelberg, Van Gogh/Don McClain, Dickens and (worst of all) myself.

So what do I write about on Christmas Night? Do I slip precariously into attempts at beauty, at awe with a theological bent to it? Or should I let the nostalgia wash over me and consume me? Nostalgia's so tiresome. I've been here before, yada-yada. I can't convince myself to feel the deep welling up of memories. Perhaps I have learned not to grasp too firmly the ghost of Christmas past, but to let him slide between my fingers, elusive, fading in and out, and then suddenly all there, as clear as ever. Perhaps I am now content to observe. Or at least, I am more content.

Of course, I still enjoy the glimpses: old faces at midnight Mass, seeing A Christmas Carol and replacing faces with the ones I know, seeing Belle and Little Fan and Martha and Old Joe and Young Scrooge as I remember them. The kids that played Want and Ignorance are in highschool now. How weird is that? They were just little sprats bouncing on the couch, faces dirtied by the makeup artists... only yesterday. Martha's in college now. She was only eleven the night she auditioned the first year. That was for a different role, and we all knew she had it, right off the bat, but she'll always be my Martha (sorry Caylyn).

Right... I was gonna skip the nostalgia, sorry.

...

...No, I can't skip it. It's not a sad nostalgia anymore, unless it's sorrow to see a childhood friend turned roughly away from the way I knew him, or sorrow that one of the girls, who will in my mind always be a sweet child, might ever make the mistakes I don't want her to. I hope my Cratchit children turn out all right. I haven't seen any of them in so long...

If you've made it this far, then I owe you a good ending, don't I? If you've put up with me all this time, I owe you my best. Sometimes I think I spent it all. Other times, I think that's not such a bad thing. If I've spent my best, then the only way to go is to ask for help. I can't believe the year I've had. I'm excited, and a little anxious, about the one ahead. Though so many old faces have passed into ghosts that pop up now and again when I am home, I have those around me who are not ghosts, those whom I see more than once a year for a memory trip, those who pray for me, or read what I write, or share a drink with me, or dance with me.

We drink and dance and live and love together, 'cause that's what life is. Now, with the hope of new life born into the world, we grab our partners and lift our glasses. With a whispered prayer on our lips and a word of thanks in our hearts, we turn to our families and friends, hand in hand as the curtain rises on a new year. We bow to the past that was kind to us. We bow to the King who was humbled for us. We bow to the cast of our life. And when we slip on the ice... well, we get up and do it again.