One of my favorite Christmas reflections is that poem by Unitarian minister Sophia Lyon Fahs.
For so the children come
And so they have been coming.
Always in the same way they come
born of the seed of man and woman.
No angels herald their beginnings.
No prophets predict their future courses.
No wisemen see a star to show where to find the babe
that will save humankind.
Yet each night a child is born is a holy night,
Fathers and mothers —
sitting beside their children’s cribs
feel glory in the sight of a new life beginning.
They ask, “Where and how will this new life end?
Or will it ever end?”
Each night a child is born is a holy night —
A time for singing,
A time for wondering,
A time for worshipping.
I hope we allow ourselves the moment to notice. I believe it is so important. Because, there is a next day…
Howard Thurman is much on my mind. A Baptist minister, sometime dean of the chapel at Boston University, and founding minister of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, he sang to us, all of us, about the mystery of what follows Christmas.
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Of course, for the moment, that is still to come.
Today, we mark the story itself.
Where the poor are raised up, where the lost and forgotten are found and remembered.
And out of that something wondrous can birth. Does birth.
In this world of hurt and longing, a moment to notice the gift of it all. Soon, as blessed Howard sang to us, there is much work.
But, now, in this moment, as the wondrous Sophia sang, a pause, a breath, a birth,
As ordinary as possible,
A miracle.
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