We are halfway along our journey through the 12 days of Christmas with theologians Bruce Epperly and Howard Thurman.  Or, if you prefer, we are on the “seven swans a-swimming” verse of the old song.  It is also, for many of us, New Year’s Eve, that time when we kiss (or kick) the old year into history and welcome our perception of a new slate of living, where we will be more responsible, more fit, thinner, and all-around-better-off.

So I am not surprised to find that Epperly has chosen a passage for reflection that reminds us of the every day things in the story we are telling, in particular, the every day people of our story — a mother, a father, and a newborn child.   Most of us have these characters in our own story — either as major players or as absent or offstage roles in our drama.  Some of us mourn the casting we were offered and some of us have embraced it.  And, in the case of children, some have been unable or unwilling to include them in the circle.  Life does not always follow the script we pick.

For whatever reason, because of whatever choices or events beyond our control, very few of us would say that we have a perfect cast in our play.  And that lack of perfection, all the ways that we see that we do not measure up to the picture of the “primary family unit,” as Thurman calls it,  makes it hard for many to relate to this nativity story.  We do not feel a connection with Mary, the mother, or Joseph, the earthly father, or even the innocent, fragile child.   Instead, we create theological coping methods to get past the birth story moment into the rest of the play, or we simply walk away and rebuff the Christian faith altogether, maybe not even knowing why.

My point?  There is a lot of pain for many in this simple birth narrative.  Perspective, however, is everything.  And Thurman is correct:  one of the great lessons of Christmas is that we cannot experience the grace of Christmas without first focusing on the child, but the question is — which child?  Again, Epperly offers an answer — it is the child within who first needs our attention:

Yet the spirit of Christmas remains dormant until we bless the child within—seeking healing from the trauma of our own childhood—and bless the children around us by our attention, compassion, and active support. When we hear a child wailing, our first response should be to ask, ‘Why is that child crying?’ –and then, ‘How can we ease her or his pain?’ This is also true of the adult child in us and others. We all need God’s healing touch to transform childhood wounds into windows of grace (56-57).

Only when we do this work, when we see that this story, God’s story, is about the healing of all our childhood wounds, only then can we hear Thurman’s words — that all children, even our inner child, deserve the chance to be children (and even if the time of childhood is long past), the chance to experience the “graces of life,” kindness, sympathy, and “the chance to experience their own childhood…There can be no good future for [humankind] if this sensitivity to the birth and meaning of the child that we see in Christmas is ignored (56).”  We all deserve the chance to experience, for ourselves, the grace and peace of those seven swans who swim so without a care.

And yet, most of us will not.  Most of us will need to do some very hard work to experience any moments of peace.  And because we know that, even those of us more devoted to puppies than babies know that the work of Christmas, which is the overall theme of this series of reflections, is more than self-work.  We do this work to be more complete expressions of the God-spirit so that we can then do the work of the world, so that we can tend to our inner-child and every child, so that we can do what we can to live in a world where all children can indeed just be children.

The year is drawing to a close, yes. And so, I leave you on this last day of 2018 with these words of Bruce Epperly, written not as a prayer but offered as one:

The old year is ending and soon we will have a chance to begin again, to dream of becoming new persons; to let go of bad habits, begin new and healthy behaviors, and resolve to live with greater mindfulness and compassion. As we look back on the bygone year, let us release past burdens and painful memories. Let us forgive the sins of others and let go of grievances. Let us begin as new persons for a new year, open to new possibilities, gracefully bestowed upon us by the hand of God (56-57).

The work of Christmas, both the inner- and the outer-work, continues each and every day.  May this be the year that you transform your “wounds into windows.”  And may that help you help others, as well.  A blessed 2019 to you one and all.