Christmas gathering 15 December 2024 – an informal bring and share of matters to do with Christmas and hope

For our Christmas gathering this year we chose a less formal format.  After we had done the most important thing — switching on the heating of the Meeting House — we got our hot drinks to start with, instead of doing that at the end.

Then, settling down with our drinks and the chalice candle lit, Christmas music playing quietly in the background, in a circle we sat down to catch up and chat about what Christmas holds for us and our families.  As the session went on we gradually lit candles for issues on our minds and hearts.

We heard the pleasure in the voice of one of our number who is currently reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, of which it has been said that "It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Covenant_of_Water

After a while it seemed to be the time to play Do You Hear What I Hear?, sung by Bing Crosby.  Usually played at Christmas, Do You Hear What I Hear? was written in October 1962 by Gloria Shayne and Noël Regney during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other over the placement of Soviet missiles in newly Communist Cuba. Do You Hear What I Hear? was written by Shayne and Regney as a plea for peace.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloria_Shayne_Baker  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs9FPx3_Slk

Then we had an intriguing discussion about the theodical teasers — philosophical puzzles about the nature of God given the presence of evil— set out by Lance Morrow.  In 1976, Morrow became a regular writer of Time magazine's back page essay. He won the National Magazine Award for his Time essays in 1981, and was a finalist for that award in 1991 (for that essay on the subject of evil).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Morrow. The three proposals that Morrow examines together in that essay on evil were remembered today as being “That God is all goodness”, “That God is all powerful”, and “Terrible things happen to people (both good and bad)”.  If our blog reader manages to work out a world view that makes sense of these three propositions and can hold them all at once together, perhaps they could write in to us and explain — because like elders before us, we were not able to make them all work at once.

Next we had a request for the poem by Emily Dickinson Hope is the thing with feathers which we heard read out first, before hearing it also set to music by Christopher Tin   https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42889/hope-is-the-thing-with-feathers-314

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGrLL3T0ozE

Following this we began to home in on what Christmas is all about.  To challenge our thinking, we heard a reading by Unitarian Universalist Minister Richard M Woodman (1930-2020) https://www.uua.org/files/2021-06/memorial_book_slt_ga_2021.pdf  The key to Christmas as described by Woodman was new to us, yet seemed to resonate strongly with us.

We beg the pardon of anyone imposed upon, as we set out in full below the Woodman piece that we heard.  (For full apology and an edit of this blogpost for rectification purposes, please email lucyunbox.ringwood@btinternet.com) 

“It is that season of the year again. That eminently impossible yet joyously wonderful season of Christmas. “Christmas impossible?” you ask. The supreme truth and message of Christmas is indeed its seeming objective impossibility.

“We live in a world gone mad. Each hour compiles new proof of strife and tension; of crime and misery; of wars seemingly inevitable; of hunger and cold; of hate and fear. 

“The living reality of our days is not peace on earth, goodwill to all. It is, rather, strife around us and everywhere despair. Such is the world we know too well. Yet it is wise for us to remember that such also is the world our forebears knew before us. Into such a world Christmas comes — as it has come for 2000 years — and into such a world the same spirit, by different names, has come to those of other faiths.

“We who view the Christmas story from a naturalistic perspective easily read the impossible into the attendant notice of miraculous events: chorus of angels, virgin birth and the strange star.  Yet isn’t the miracle only embroidered with these tales?  The impossible event is that in times of deepest despair, visions and inspirations of hope, of peace, of love come to all.

“The real Christmas is the message and miracle that people still hope! 

It is that they still keep alive the poetry of love and peace and goodwill, even when life seems to dim all prospect of such a vision. 

“The impossibility of Christmas is that it comes. 

“Its coming is more than an event on the calendar. Its coming is a revitalisation of the spirit – where people still hope, still see the visions of peace, love, and fellowship. The impossible becomes plausible and life takes on a dimension richer than the obvious.   

“Come, Christmas! 

“Let us warm our spirits by its eternal light. Let us live again in the hope better than we know. Perhaps in living awhile by that faith, we can more fully be what we would be, and can erase the darkness that seems to be.”

We then heard that wonderful metaphor for the spiritual journey and the pain that accompanies the acquiring of a whole new outlook — the poem The Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot https://poetryarchive.org/poem/journey-magi/ was read beautifully.  It never fails to impress.

Our last music was sing-along to a Unitarian poem by Rev Edmund Sears set to the tune Noël by Arthur Sullivan, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_Upon_the_Midnight_Clear  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U_Dzovu1XA  So many traditional Christians sing this carol year after year without knowing it comes from a minister to a dissenting congregation.

Coming to the end of our happy time together, we closed with an energetic, pulpit-style reading of Christmas Credo by Rev Cliff Reed, which sets out several points of belief in free verse (for full version see  https://www.unitarian.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2002_Spirit_Time_Place.pdf  and scroll down to the image of page 68). We remembered the generations of Unitarians who had sat in that selfsame Meeting House since 1727 at the Christmas time of year, whom we hope might have shared Cliff Reed's viewpoint:

“I believe that there is light in darkness.

I believe there is truth in myth.

I believe that there is divinity in every birth........

“I believe we must admit that Herod is real ....... and can be defeated, that Scrooge can be healed .... that this is the meaning of Christmas.”