The ancient story retold again and again and again through the centuries, conveyed via comic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeVDOu2_Fuc) and cosmos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMkWvGz9jI and https://www.actionnewsnow.com/content/links/Watch-Live-See-the-Great-Conjunction-Christmas-Star-of-2020-573451941.html), enlivens us anew THIS Christmas Day, 2020!
The very energy that stirred people over 2000 years ago to travel to see and celebrate the radiant birth of Jesus still fascinates and animates us today. As the story goes, we are invited, as theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin noted, to continue to “Christify” the cosmos in and through our very presence. We celebrate today as we, individually and collectively, birth and embody Jesus’ ever-deepening spiritual knowledge, forgiveness, service, sacrifice, kindness, compassion, laughter and love.
We offer you the following prayer that we might sense the new birth within us and our world.
The Point of the Process
Luke 2:7Now, O Holy One,
we enter sacred time,
time suspended,
when history surrenders to mystery,
and we ourselves are taken in,
and taken up,
by a love story.For this, the universe bursts into being.
For this, the galaxies shine—
lights strung upon a Christmas cosmos.
For this, supernovas make sacrifice
and our sun pours itself out
in the service of life.
For this, the march of life on Earth
makes its exuberant procession—
now present in lowing cattle,
in a single shining star,
in shepherds and angels,
and in proud parents—
to a Bethlehem stable.And on this holy night,
no less,
does the cosmos coalesce in us
as we take our place
on the stage of sacred mystery
to celebrate the point of it all—
that you come to us
in self-emptying love
the moment we enter
the mystery of this Christmas birth.
Amen.—Bruce Sanguin, If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics
We celebrate with you and wish you a very Merry Christmas!
—Ann Jackson, PBVM, Prairiewoods spiritual services coordinator