Savior       by Steve Garnaas Holmes           To you is born this day           in the city of David           a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Holy One.                        —Luke 2.11 On a cold night, bundled in our fears, tired from taking care of ourselves, we come, curious: maybe there's something here for us. Angels promised a savior, but this is no one who could bail us out: a mere infant, who could never fight for us, or overwhelm our enemies, sneak us out of the trouble we're in or take for us the lashes we have coming. This is no one who could strike a bargain for us. How could this one save us from the failure of the lives we were meant to live? He gazes up at us serenely with utter trust, ...

  So Soon  An hour after we light the tree, it’s hard to remember how the room used to be — so soon we relax into radiance. It makes me want to whisper luminous words, string kindnesses together like twinkling garlands, hang them wherever it’s dim. If we all spoke in light, imagine that glow — how quickly even the darkest spaces inside and between us could become welcoming, warm, even, imagine, incandescent.               Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer While the proem above’s point of reference is a tree lighting, I am wondering, as I sit here on Christmas eve in a darkness interrupted by a radiance human made and divine, whether it is also a metaphor for the birth of light and love. After a long Advent sprinkled with tiny points of light in a darkness of violence and deceit, fear and random cruelty, “it’s hard to remember how the room used to be.” From wilderness to cave we emerge witnesses to a magnanimous glow -“so soon we relax into radia...

    Be ready by Steve Garnaas Holmes               You must be ready,              for the Human One is coming              at an hour you do not expect.                                —Matthew 24.44 Grace flits in, a butterfly in winter. Forgiveness dismantles gallows. A child, frightened, stands anyway. The minds of the dulled are on other things. Heaven passes unnoticed. The naive keep waiting for the white horse, the sword. Foggy opera glasses. Cynics, fearing the mystery, can always prove otherwise. The lock snaps shut. The faithful are not sure but open, watching for the luminous. A spirit, wholly given, emerges like a song...