I just returned home from Lessons and Carols at my parish. The idea that I am supposed to now go to sleep is lost on my psyche that is still back in the pew amongst good, decent people who raised the roof with readings and singing. I tell you it felt as though the child was born right there, right then...somewhere between Dietrich Bonhoeffer's letter to his parents, Go Tell it on the Mountain, Dorothy Day's 1941 essay about the birth of a baby boy at the Catholic Worker on Mott Street, and Laudate Dominum. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin on Jesus being born after already disturbing the universe, might have been the first words the child heard...or perhaps it would have been the medieval English poem that exhorted all to Be Merry! The first lullaby would have been Lo How a Rose...
Oh, yes, there was birth tonight. The birth of joy and praise, song, and thanksgiving. Birth brought forth amidst people gathered in community, praying for the baby, the new life... Indeed, I found the Gaudete I was missing this morning. One of those things that is never really lost...though sometimes hard to find. Faith is what tells us it will again come to pass.
Time for bed.
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