Holiday Reflections

I love the holiday season. 

Sure, it has its craziness—putting up decorations, buying gifts, arranging holiday meals—you know the drill. Yet, having been raised in a Christian family, the traditions of Christmas are deeply rooted in my soul. 

My elder years invite reflection at Christmas time—another year is coming to a close, and a new one is soon to begin. Where have I been? Where am I going? Our family faced difficult changes this year. Change is often hard, and yet, it’s constant. I’m trying to keep that in perspective.  

Thinking back to my early teens, I remember idle hours in junior high staring out classroom windows across busy Kirkwood Road to Manor Grove…the old folks’ home. The two-story red brick building rises from a stately green lawn shaded by towering oaks. The inmates were rarely seen,…so distant from my life as not to be real, until Mom and Dad ended up there. 

The forestry department of the University of Missouri took a core sample of an oak tree at Manor Grove and dated it back to Galileo’s lifetime.  My parents are gone now, but I visited that tree the last time I was home. I stood under it, trying to imagine its life in a quiet forest where it stood for 200 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Did it shade anyone during all those years? The forest is gone now. Today, the tree stands in a commercial lot in suburban St. Louis, and cheeky junior high school kids stomp out cigarette butts at its base. 

Life is change.

I recently read an article about Homo Neanderthalensis footprints found in proximity to what the authors believed were Homo Sapien footprints. They speculated that the individuals leaving those footprints may have been contemporaries. This is bolstered by the fact that people of Northern European descent have 1-2% Neanderthal DNA. Neanderthals witnessed change that ultimately led to their disappearance. Yet, part of them is carried forward in us. 

Life is change.

It’s easy to feel that life revolves around us. But there is only so much we control. Life, not us, drives the bus. Sometimes, the road is bumpy. The weight of life’s losses is often felt more acutely during the holidays. That, too, should be kept in perspective as painful losses are often the other side of blessings received. Life is a “whole meal deal.”

I recently re-read a meditation offered by the Franciscan Friar Richard Rohr, in which he proposed a notion of God not as an independent being but rather as being—a verb, so to speak, rather than a noun. 

I resonate with that. Life is sacred and mysterious; its origin and destination are unknown. Yet, we are carried forward in its flow. I find comfort in being reminded that life isn’t about me; we are about life. Joy and peace are found not in selfhood but in the flow of life and our experience of togetherness.

This is what makes the holiday season special. 

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My first book, Towards A Life Well-Lived, can be purchased by clicking this link. Proceeds from sales are donated to Peace In Schools, a Portland, Oregon-based organization supporting mindfulness training in high schools.