Dear Reader:

This is the season where I find myself longing to re-read Madeleine L’Engle’s thoughts and prose on the meaning of Christmas. Such thoughts as:

“Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for you?” –Madeleine L’Engle

Christmas makes me believe in a moment of the deepest calm, an overwhelming sense of peace engulfed in the most silent frozen element of time. It might sound strange…but whenever I mentally picture the Nativity scene…it is as if I am far above looking down …like what the angels would have seen that night…and everything is fixed in time.

I don’t expect to hear conversation between Mary and Joseph or the shepherds…nor will I hear an infant cry, or the animals bellowing…it is like a scene where time has stood still…for thousands of years now.

I live by the impossible… How dull the world would be if we limited ourselves to the possible. Madeleine L’Engle

How revealing that quotation by L’Engle is…Christmas must be lived by the impossible made possible by our Creator. Think about if Joseph and Mary had lived only by the “possible” restrictions of social norms and earthly limitations ….neither one would have been able to accept the birth of Jesus as the Son of God.

The shepherds would not have been able to accept the possibility of angels revealing the future king to them in open fields on a normal evening like any other.

The wise men would have thought that the star they saw on the night of Jesus’s birth was possibly a planet never seen before or some other celestial object but certainly not a sign of a foregone prophesied king…a ruler who would change the world.

Christmas is a time when the our rational thought must turn to irrationality…faith at its most trusting. Perhaps this short piece of prose by Madeleine L’Engle is my Christmas favorite.

And how grateful we ought to be, that such an accepting spirit pervaded in Mary’s heart and mind as well…

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d had been no room for the child.

So until tomorrow …Christianity is all about impossibilities made possible by God… and Christmas is the apex of what can happen when we have trust and faith in our Creator and what He will do for us….out of love. Christmas is pure, untainted love at its best…a peek into what love is all about…an insight into a love beyond our limited comprehension.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*What a messy, rainy day yesterday was! It not only was raining ‘cats and dogs’ but I think a few chickens and pigs too. It poured on Anne and me all the way to Mt. Pleasant for my doctor’s appointment.

*We had to laugh at the irony, however, that we got there faster yesterday (even stopping by John and Mandy’s to drop off something) with no traffic delays. It was much better than we have done on regular sunny mornings. Go figure!

*Doodle…the lemon squares were the hit of the morning! The nurses and doctor kept running back and forth to grab another lemon square! And I got great news! I go back next Friday and I might or might not have one more “Affinity” treatment…the skin inside the wound is almost level now with the rest of the skin area….”All I want for Christmas” just might be coming true!

* The hardest part of the journey yesterday for Anne was getting to my house from her house…someone’s car had gone in the ditch on Old Orangeburg road and had traffic tied up while some wonderful folks helped the woman inside get the car back out.

I waited on the porch for Anne so I would be right ready…and the beauty of the poinsettias (with rain drops glistening off of them) just filled me with joy…a sign it was going to be a good day! And it was! A day of both possibilities and impossibilities!