Wishing for the Morning Star

 

    I just came home from my local fitness center where women of all ages try to trim the thighs and grab some gossip.  Our trim and thin leader had asked us to share our wishes for the holidays on a blackboard.   This is a place where we go to work off the excesses of the week, not to share feelings, so I was unprepared for the frankness of my neighbors.  The blackboard messages, notes scribbled in by human hearts, struck me as uniquely open and from the heart.

 

     Let me win the Lotto.

    Keep the guys safe in Iraq.

    Let Andre be safe in Iraq. 

    Let Rod's mass be benign.

    Let my grandparents live to see my children. 

    Help Mike get a transplant.

    Thin Thighs. 

 

    My mind began to play games, weaving these messages in with yesterday's visit to my local yarn shop, scene of many misspent dollars.  My friend, Gloria, was putting up Christmas decorations – sparkle strings, pine boughs and big red bows.

 

     My local yarn shop is a warm, accepting place, and Gloria was adding to the ambiance.  "This little Jewish girl just can't get enough of Christmas!" she said.  "You know he [Jesus] was a good guy!"  And she continued to hang stars and spangles from the bins of wool and mohair. 

 

    Over the years our Christmases have been celebrated with family and friends of more than one religious belief.  We celebrate something that we all find hard to name -- to name it might limit it.  Rather than defining the moment, we content ourselves with the joy of being with one another; we celebrate the humanity of us all – lost in our own perishable world, consumed by materialistic dreams and ominous threats to our health and happiness, we hope for a glimpse of something beyond all this.  "The sun is but the morning star," said Thoreau.  And it is the morning star, this glimpse of the timeless, an unspeakable hope that offers food for our souls.   It feeds the child in each of us.

 

    God bless us everyone.