My Christmas Wish to You

Hello Friends!

I had a rude awakening this morning around 5:30 a.m. when Mum came to my bedroom door. I was awake and out of bed in an instant to find out what was wrong, but it was only Mum, bless her, wanting to know if I was asleep or not. Is the irony of this lost on anyone?

So, tucking Mum back in her bed for a few more hours, back to bed I went ~~~ although the bed was warm and comforting I found I was failing miserably at regaining the cosy dream through which I was previously wandering, that was when the words started to bat around in my head.  A Christmas wish from me to you. I tried to compose it but at 5:30 a.m. words trundle merrily along the route~less thoroughfare of my brain and leave at the nearest junction never to be seen again ~~~

Eventually, the alarm sounded and I shivered in the cold of my unheated room, a cold that I had not noticed in the urgency of my early wake up call. As my day began, sitting, sipping my coffee, I found a little gift in my reading list, a new entry by Susan Branch {my happy place} and there I read a lovely verse that she had shared which pretty much sums up, succinctly, what I was trying to compose in lengthy prose,

1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love”

Later, an email arrived in my inbox with a very similar message, taken from an early 16th century writing by Fra Giovanni Giocondo (c.1435–1515) a Franciscan friar.  I quote:

“I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep.  There is nothing I can give you which you have not. But there is much, very much, that, while I cannot give it, you can take. No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today. Take heaven! No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

Take peace! The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in darkness, could we but see.  And to see, we have only to look. I beseech you to look!

Life is so generous a giver. But we, judging its gifts by their covering, cast them away as ugly or heavy or hard. Remove the covering, and you will find beneath it a living splendor, woven of love by wisdom, with power. Welcome it, grasp it, and you touch the angel’s hand that brings it to you.

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel’s hand is there. The gift is there and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Your joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering, that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it; that is all! But courage you have, and the knowledge that we are pilgrims together, wending through unknown country home.”

So, my friends, whether you celebrate Christmas or any of the other number of feasts at this time of year, these words are my Christmas gift to you, to keep and to hold in your hearts all year long, to live and abide by the true meaning of Christmas all year long.  The times in which we live are bleak so we must hold faith and hope dear, and remember that LOVE is the greatest gift of all ~~~

Nadolig Llawen
Deborah xoxo