On the First Day of Christmas...

Sitting around your table
As we did, able
To laugh, argue, share

Bread and wine and companionship, care

About what someone else was saying, even

If we disagreed passionately: Heaven

We're told is not unlike this, the banquet celestial,

Eternal convivium. So this praegustum terrestrium*

Partakes – for me, at least – of sacrament.

(Whereas the devil, ever intent

on competition, created the cocktail party where

One becomes un-named, un-manned, de-personned.) Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest. 

 *Foretatse of the land {The new earth, perhaps?)

~ The Irrational Season (pp 158-159)

Madeleine L'Engle wrote the above poem at a friend's home one evening... I wish she had written it at my home. Partly because I have learned so much from her over the years, but also because I want my home to be like that. 

I want meals over my table and tea with friends in the living room to be the soul-ish bread and wine that strengthen the inner man. I want my cottage to be a home, not merely a shelter from the rain or biting winds. I want my little 'Hobbit hole' to be cosy and cheery and uplifting as soon as someone steps inside... Because it is comfort, warmth (both literal and figurative), and personal attention that create a safe place to share one's soul, to be vulnerable, open, and free. It is a warm mug of tea and a listening heart that the Holy Spirit uses to bless both the speaker and listener. This is is feeding the hungry – both in body and in spirit. This is hospitality. This is friendship. 

This is the incarnation... Because when God came to us, He sat at table with sinners and tax collectors. He saw the multitudes and had compassion on them. He felt the touch of one desperate woman in a throng of persons. When God became man He spoke to women, had time for children, and built men up in their masculinity. The man who was God became rightly angry over apathy, avarice, and arrogance against God. He cared so much that He flipped over tables in defense of God's Holiness. And He still cares to the point of action. He cares enough to die for us. Enough to walk with us through our sorrows and longings. Enough to chasten those who are His children. Enough to keep reaching out His arms to a stiff-necked and disobedient people - again and again. Enough to let persons taste the consequences of their sins - because redemption's price is high.

We see what God in flesh is like when we turn the leaves of the New Testament, and we have the great gift of knowing the Messiah has come. We have the communion of saints round the table, walking through life together.  

Dare 

We come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?

Yes! Around your table we

Knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless

The food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.  

May this be said of me, and you, and every other Christian... That we are marked by the Love of God, for the world to see. May the Holy Spirit walk with us and amongst us always, making us more and more like the Son of Man, Jesus Christ.

Merry Christmas!

~ Johanna