“From a distance I just cannot comprehend, what all this fighting’s for”
If you’re reading this odds are you are safe and warm wherever you are. Even if like you aren’t a person of faith you still appreciate the holiday season. I know every year Christmas makes me think of hope, and reminds me that even in the smallest of ways both now and throughout the year we can bring a bit of hope and help to others. Sometimes a smile can make another person’s day. Just being nice. Maybe making them feel like for all their troubles some stranger being, however briefly nice to them gives them enough strength to carry on. In a few instances I’ve learned years, even decades later I managed to inject something positive into someone’s life. Something they carried forward and built on.
I’m not saying tonight that we should feel guilty about being safe, warm, or that we aren’t hungry. Or other blessings in our lives we too often take for granted. I will however say we should keep in mind all those who are suffering through circumstances the average person can never understand without having lived it. As I write this, there are people including children starving around the world. Without shelter. Or clean water to drink. And as you know two major countries that are allies are at war. One against itself.
And as in all wars while combatants are fighting, suffering and dying far more civilians are experiencing the same. Including children. So, at the very least even if you’re not a person of faith and have a deity you pray to give thanks every day and night that “it’s them instead of you.” If you’re able, find some way to help if you can. Even the smallest things, and not just a five or ten dollar donation to a reputable aid organization matter. Collectively they can matter a great deal.
There are two songs/videos that come to mind for me sometimes but especially this time of year. The first is from 1984 and it was from this song I drew the title of this piece. While the issue of the time was drought and famine in Africa, those same problems exist there and elsewhere. And as I said two major wars and other conflicts are causing immeasurable suffering for people, even children who have the misfortune to live in a war zone. Or even if evacuated to (relative) safety are living in miserable conditions in encampments. Do THEY know it’s Christmas?
The second is a song that also deeply affects me. I’ve heard it dismissed as cheesy but don’t care if it is. On Christmas Eve part of my routine is to watch the Apollo 8 episode from the 1998 mini series From the Earth To the Moon. I’m old enough to recall that telecast from lunar orbit on Christmas Eve. It was only after the spacecraft safely returned to earth that the famous picture of the first “Earth Rise” came out. It inspired the first Earth Day. Our beautiful blue and white ball hanging there, standing out in the blackness of space. From there one would never guess the strife and turmoil taking place at that very moment. Or before. Or since. But we should dream impossible things. Of a world where beauty in human conduct in our families, communities, our entire country and between nations matches that of the image of our world from outer space.
“From a distance…” it is a beautiful world and again, while we should strive to make it so up close on the surface year round at this time of year it’s a good time to be reminded of the need for us to try.
Peace, love, joy, faith, hope, kindness, gentleness, patience, goodness, perseverance and self contol…the fruits of the spirit. I say them to myself daily in the effort to be a better person today than I was yesterday. Thanks for a heartfelt reminder of the forgotten, the outcasts, the persecuted, and the victims of war, especially the children and the innocent. May all of our hearts grow larger as we travel in our lives to an unknown destination.
Well said Denis and Scott. Respect.
So many do so much, and try so hard to help others, to put into practice the lesson Jesus taught in the gospels of helping those less fortunate. And so many do not, even as they proclaim their love of Jesus and will sit in their churches this year on Dec. 24 both in the morning for regular Sunday service and this evening for Christmave Eve service/mass. Yet will pass right by a homeless person or someone else who is cold with a threadbare coat and so on. And ignore them, even harbor ill feelings of a person(s) “infringing” on their holiday spirit. As Bob Dylan put it in song “How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn’t see?” I was still a person of faith when I got Jethro Tull’s album Aqualung, and was stunned at the bible style verse on the back. I became agnostic decades ago but if anything find it more powerful:
1 In the beginning Man created God;
and in the image of Man
created him.
2 And Man gave unto God a multitude of
names, that he might be Lord of all
the earth when it was suited to Man.
3 And on the seven millionth
day Man rested and did lean
heavily on his God and saw that
it was good.
4 And Man formed Aqualung of
the dust of the ground, and a
host of others likened unto his kind.
5 And these lesser men were cast into the
void; And some were burned, and some were
put apart from their kind.
6 And Man became the God that he had
created and with his miracles did
rule over all the earth.
7 But as all these things
came to pass, the Spirit that did
cause man to create his God
lived on within all men: even
within Aqualung.
8 And man saw it not.
9 But for Christ’s sake he’d
better start looking.
We have free will to choose whether to see, or not. And, more importantly to either care, or not. Even if a person is unable to take some direct action to help we can at the very least care. And keep caring so that should the time come when we can take actual action we readily do so.
That to me is part of the hope Christmas represents. That we not only feel it for ourselves, but want others to feel it and our commitment to when we can providing it is renewed.