A Christmas Poem

Plunging from warmth to cold,
seasons turn by the celebration of holidays
Days shorten and as night dominates the cycle of days,
we celebrate the light of our world
Trees covered with netted wire, illuminating like little stars

Contrast is bittersweet
. . . the light of our hearts against the brevity of days
the warmth of our homes against the bitter chill beyond our doors
families brought together against the loneliness of our culture
and I have lost my bearings in this tension

Is light victorious over this darkness?
Does warmth prevail against thie cold?

Or when I lay down at night haunted by cold,
deafened by the lonely silence of my room,
is this the curse for which holidays are merely opiates?

I ask this of God,
and he responds with the subtle swings of emotion that mark our
long strange relationship

I hate him for his mystery, as I hate myself for my own
And, I then realize hate is only the reification of love
. . . love remains itself only in ambiguity
beyond definition, terms, and . . . in terror, beyond expectations

By expectations I am bound
and as expectations defy my best intent at love, I hate
my friends, my self, and God transcending
For love as God's action will never break fidelity to him
to unite with expectancy

Amid the stark contrast of this season
where the crushing sadness of history meets the infant of our hopes
I long for the creative breath to which this disparity cedes
. . . never sensibly, but as paradox and parody . . .
For it seems the breath of God comes as a bellowing laugh
as often as a willful proclamation
Amused perhaps by the absurdity of this quest
an absurdity which is itself the meaning . . .
For my mind seeks to reduce love to a chess piece of interaction
But, love is beyond the mind's possibility of comprehension
beyond our emotion's potential to act

It is more.
and for this its appearance in my actions has always been accidental
even when intended

We speak of love as though we know it
We say it casually regardless of how well we gaurd its sacredness
We kill it by the violence of our expectations
the cruelty of our needs, our desires and plans
is the cross by which love is made a spectacle
while we steal its breath

Every plastic nativity is the contrast of winter
a reminder of God's place in our world
gathering our brokenness arond his humanity
and loving us while we say love in order to hate

I will lay down tonight in the dark
I will sleep alone in the cold of my room
yet tonight is marked by the difference that love is still mysterious
not reduced to vocal precision
its facticity rejects language
its existence remains only as it is lived
and for this we are all just now coming to life



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