A vision of something more…isn’t that what this gift of Christmas is all about?  Today, as Bruce Epperly again tackles the meaning of the Christmas season through the words of theologian Howard Thurman and his work The Mood of Christmas,  that is what we consider.  Thurman calls us to stand on “the growing edge” of our lives:

Look well to the growing edge!  All around us worlds are dying and new worlds are being born; all around us life is dying and life is being born. The fruit ripens on the tree; the roots are silently at work in the darkness of the earth against a time when there shall be new leaves, fresh blossoms, green fruit. Such is the growing edge!  It is the extra breath from the exhausted lung, the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life when weariness closes in on all endeavor. This is the basis of hope in moments of despair, the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint and [people] have lost their reason, the source of confidence when worlds crash and dreams whiten into ash.

As someone who companions others on their spiritual/life journeys, I relate to this idea of the growing edge.  In fact, I have probably used the words a time or two or three.  And it is a term common in modern counseling practice, even outside the world of faith and spirit journeys.  In those disciplines, and frankly, in my own thought until now, though, the idea of “the growing edge” represented something to be, well, broken down, crossed, eliminated.  In Thurman’s words, however, I see a different meaning.

Thurman’s picture is different.  Thurman’s growing edge is forever…it is a way of living, a way of understanding life. It contains in it the passing of the seasons, the cycles of growth and death, and most of all, the power of faith.  So it is no wonder that Epperly chooses on of the versions of the Magnificat as the companion text for this particular reflection
(Luke 1:31-38).  That was a growing edge, indeed — a moment in the life of young woman that required the utmost in hope, the ability to imagine some greater vision than she could see, a greater vision of something more than she thought possible.

And that, my friends, is what we are called to do each and every day.  We must get up each morning, in the face of a world that says be afraid, hold on to what you have, defend your life against the forces of the world, and in the face of all that, we must, must imagine something greater than what we see.  That is what it means to let Christmas live in us.  In Epperly’s own words:

Christmas is the impossible dream of what could be and is not yet achieved. It is the dream of the lion and the lamb as playmates, of swords beaten into gardening tools, of the wealthy sacrificing for the poor, and the powerful initiating policies for the well-being of today’s children and children unborn to the seventh generation (79).

That, my friends, is the dream of Christmas writ large.  But on an individual basis, for me and maybe for some of you, this growing edge of which we speak is just this:  it is living, really living, living fully, engaging all the synapses in our magnificent God-created incarnated brain.  It means never settling for what the pundits tell us is true, not even settling for what our eyes can see or our ears can hear.

Living on the growing edge means spending each and every moment that we can aware of problems and the possibilities.  Call it mindfulness if that helps, call it presence to the moment if that works too.  Call it communion with the Holy Spirit, or living in the Tao.  Or, call it Christmas.  Whatever you call it, know that there is more — more within you, more in the world, more that we cannot even imagine.

Today I leave you with words from a popular Christmas choral piece, one that I have had the pleasure of singing many times.  The Dream Isaiah Saw, by Glenn L. Rudolph to lyrics by Thomas H. Troeger,  permanently imprinted on my soul that vision of something more of which Thurman speaks:

Little child whose bed is straw,
Take new lodgings in my heart.
Bring the dream Isaiah saw:
Knowledge, wisdom, worship, awe.

Merry, merry Christmas. Go out today, and look at the world with wisdom, worship, and awe.  Feel your growing edge. Stand in it, and look through those eyes.  What does that vision tell you about the impossibilities that you see?  How can they be just a little more possible?  Those are the eyes of Christmas.