So this is Christmas...

Christmas is coming but it doesn't feel at all like that time of year, at least how I remember it. It's an angry time in the world, a time of power, of ambition, of people each seeking the most for themselves without regard for the other and no moral problem with the idea of violence as the means.

At times I feel the anger as well. I even participate in it. From the thoughts that run through my mind when I see crazy things and people on the TV to the words that sometimes slip out of my mouth when the traffic runs foul I swim in this crazed sea and find myself struggling just to stay afloat. There are moments when I would relish being dictator of the world for just one day with the power to set the world in my image and secure harsh justice by the power of my word.

Some of that is natural, the world seems crazy and sane people will think insane thoughts just to have some sense of order in their world, some sense of being secure and in control of the ride. People voted Hitler into power and there are still folks who have sentimental thoughts about Stalin. Although most of me is repulsed to the core by the thought of it I can see, in that dark angry part of me, why that would make sense to a generation feeling lost and out of control and willing to take the risk of totalitarian rule to make it all go away. I suppose it could happen here as well, why should we be immune to the seductions of such ideas?

And though I sometimes come close to the edge I do not want to give in to the will to power, the angry mind, the treating of the other as an object of my will, to hate, and the rampaging emotions of our times. I am aware of these days and part of me wants to run away and hide and another part wants to engage the game by the rules that seem to be presently in play but the end of both is futility.

There is another way, a way often drowned out by the voices of a sad and broken world but still the way things must be if we are not to extinguish ourselves. It is the way of the child of Bethlehem, the One who came into this world to bring light and peace and a taste of heaven here and its fullness in the time to come. Some feeble poor number of us have to hold out for it, as tainted as we are, and risk being called naive, idealistic, or insane. Some few lights need to shine like candles in a great dark wind and take the risk of being snuffed out as the cost of knowing what light is, even for a moment.

What a task for imperfect people, for sinners, to assume yet how much more is its undertaking required when the world seem so crazy and the order of things struggles like a wounded animal. But to know this is to understand Christmas, the time of nativity, in its most basic and primal truth and the hope of the angel's song on that long ago night.