Someone I love scurries around the house, wrapping and baking and hiding offerings of love in some closet or even, cleverly, in plain sight. There is hustle and bustle...
And music playing...Still, Still, Still
or
I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas.
Stories and music - spun sound and silences
a tapestry that is Christmas.
As I peer about the house I see childhood phantoms
in the glitter of lights and the sparkle of ornaments.
Santa Claus has a prominent place on our tree.
So, too, do pixies and sprites
handblown glass, and Wonder Woman
and memories...always memories.
You would think that all the ditractions of the Holiday
would keep the memories at bay, would give even them something else
to do for a while.
But no.
The more decorations
The more chocolate and spice
and especially the music
The greater the memories.
They flood back with a life all their own.
Sometimes cheeful,
Sometimes fearful,
Sometimes...just memories.
I even have memories
that belong to others
at my house.
My father tells a story of he
and his brother careening down the stairs
only to find coal and switches...
and how he and his little
brother bawled...and their parents
panicked, quickly opening the doors
to the parlor of that big
old house to reveal a tree
and gifts from Santa.
"Maybe Christmas is not the time
for practical jokes."
My father laughs now.
I remember the fur coat my mother got one year...
she was seventeen.
I love that coat...even though I've
never seen it. The world was set right
with that coat. You may know the one.
Memories have a love all their own at Christmas.
the good, the bad
And maybe they should.
Maybe it is right that they do.
Because maybe their foolish honesty
inspires us to find God anew.
Tonight there is a memory among us.
And, like the other it too has a life
of its own...perhaps more than others.
No.
This is the memory that gives life to all others...
the memory of a child born
of a young mother
the very first memory the world
ever had was so strong
was so alive,
"In the beginning was the Word."
That it was "made flesh."
"For unto us a child was born!"
For unto us a memory came alive, was born among us...
walked among us
lived and died with us
and rose again, as memories do...
a Holy Memory.
And from that memory, ideas were born...handed down,
passed from generation to generation and more memories
came to be...
They are preserved in our poetry and stained glass
our songs and candle light
our relationships.
These are the brothers, sisters and children of
that first memory. Some of them it seems
have inherited its power.
And they have changed the world.
God bless our memories...
We need the memories
We need the ideas
the fruit and fodder
of the imagination.
May God bless our old memories
the ones wandering freely in our
homes our kitchens
in this sanctuary.
Amd may God be born in
our new ideas, crafting new memories,
making them Holy.
Grace,
peace,
and all good things
this eve and every eve.
Amen.