Christmas

Twice already today I've started to write a Christmas post, but it's not coming out.

I had a fun post in my head about the Missa in nocte last night: the beautiful homily from the Minister General, the friars singing Tu scendi dalle stelle as a Twitter friend told me to hope for, the Nativity Scene with the slightly-too-glamorous looking Blessed Mother and the baby Jesus with a touch of the jaundice, the 'agape' afterwards and how it made clear to me a certain saying of Abba John the Dwarf.

I had a dreadfully serious post in my head too, all about our world's desperate need for the real good news of Christmas.

Perhaps I find myself, as I often do on Christmas, taken up inside by the anniversary of my departure from the novitiate of the OFM, still easily the most difficult but ultimately fruitful event of my Christianity.

But I guess none of it feels like expressing itself today; not my awful solemnity, not my goofy pieties, not even my pet archaeologies. After all, it's all straw before the mystery at hand. But the newborn Lord wills to rest on straw, and that, precisely that, is our hope.