Amidst Darkness

I so deeply appreciated this morning's advent devotional reading from Richard Rohr:

Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us.


If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we are not seeing clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are apart from the darkness.

Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness—while never doubting the Light that God always is—and that we are too (Matthew 5:14). That is the narrow birth canal of God into the world—through the darkness and into an ever greater Light.

Adapted from Preparing for Christmas with Richard Rohr, pp. 23-24

Opening Day

An hour and a half from now, our first client is scheduled to arrive to "shop" for Christmas gifts for their children.

A month of preparation, and it seems a bit crazy to recognize that this day is actually here.

I fully expect the day to be full of joyful chaos.  And I'm planning to soak it in.