Coming Back from Bethlehem

"You sail out across the sea, but it's when you make your return that you

may discover what you have been seeking is in fact inside yourself."

--Erling Kagge

In some way or another I think that may be the core message of Christmas, the core truth of the Incarnation. Each year we travel to Bethlehem pnly to disover that the baby is still in the manger, that God still affirms the basic reality that we hold within this fragile frame called human life the very things we so long for, the peace, hope, joy and love we speak of during Advent.  God, we discover, or rediscover, is with us.  Emmanuel.  God is still saying YES to humanity.

Amazing, isn't it?  After all we have done to ourselves, after all the ways we have allowed hatred, violence, greed and fear to dominate our world, God has not given up on us!  The answer still resides within us!

Ann Weems, in her lovely collection of Christmas-themed poems titled Kneeling in Bethlehem, reminds us that "we've been warned in a dream" when we leave our annual Christmas celebration, our annual jo
urney to Bethlehem, we are "to return another way."

That way, I am convinced, is a way of peace and justice, a way of joy and love, a way of hope--a way that was hidden within us along.

Might we rededicate ourselves to living lives marked by the presence of the Holy.  Might we rededicate ourselves to living out of the human goodness God affirms in the Incarnation.