Readings
And we call it Christmas
And we call it Christmas yet where is Christ?
So we have no workhouses, let’s take homelessness and food banks.
So we have freedom of expression and thought, let’s take mental and sexual and psychological torment.
So we have this fabulous increase in wealth, let’s take a local inequality and make it a global inequality
Confront darkness at winter solstice
This originally appeared in The Inquirer, Issue 8001
https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/
The winter solstice, a celebration of the shortest day, when the suns seems to be standing still over the Tropic of Capricorn before turning to push its light and warmth back towards the north. It was a time for lighting fires to encourage the sun to
Blue Christmas
This originally appeared in The Inquirer, Issue 8001
https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/
The stories rarely mention anymore
how badly Mary missed her Dad,
how as she trudged through Bethlehem she yearned
to hear his voice, which she knew –
it made her chuckle just
to think of it! – would be raised in fury
at the faceless innkeepers,
Holiday wish list
This originally appeared in The Inquirer, Issue 8025
https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/
Like a child before the presents are opened,
Like a man on his first bite of beef stew,
My spirit is everything-greedy,
I want holidays – and Holy Days, too.
Give me a hustle and bustle in the kitchen,
Where loved ones cook for each other,
Christmas will come
This first appeared in The Inquirer, Issue 8049
https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/
Christmas will come.
When the nights are so long that even the day is dark,
and the world’s balloon is a fugitive from the sky,
when hope seeps out of our collective life like breath,
like the wind punched from a downed fighter,
Christmas will come.
Christmas
May God’s home be in the arms…
This originally appeared as the ‘Inquiring Words’ in The Inquirer, Issue 8049
https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/
May God’s home be in the arms
of the homeless and the refugee,
may God’s ceremony be justice,
may God’s tribute be surrender.
May God’s righteousness be the poor, confirmed,
and may God’s river be the very stream
where she is taking
Humanity still hopes at Christmas
This reading originally appeared in The Inquirer, Issue 8001, https://www.inquirer.org.uk/pages/