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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Thursday, December 25, 2025

In spite of reality

“Hope is living the reality and yet investing in a different one.”

          Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes

 

____________________________

 

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.”

(Hamilton Wright Mabie)

 

Or maybe not

 

Merry Christmas to all, including the scum and sleazebags  (DJT)

 

It was not exactly a season of peace, love, and joy

With rumors of wars

And military strikes in Nigeria orchestrated to salvage a ravaged ego

And keep a hate-filled base titillated.

 

Our reality is a thing of horror

As the foul beast that is MAGA

Slouches toward the future

 

Ready to destroy and devour

 

Tragedies about

In Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, Nigeria

Tragedies manufactured by people

obsessed with power, and themselves

 

people who are literally

the horsemen of the apocalypse

 

They are our harbingers of destruction,

division

violence

economic collapse,

and mass death.

 

This is what we face, even as we face our own

personal tragedies and struggles

 

One wants to quit

 

We mourn the losses (such as my wonderful dog, Finn)

and the injustice

the manufactured violence

We feel the pain

 

and it feels like a conspiracy of hate, not a conspiracy of love

 

And yet

Christmas calls us to one thing.

 

To hope

 

We can think of that baby,

That strange gift, that met such a devastating end

But came to teach us to love

 

To love despite it all

To heal, despite it all

To welcome, and give, and forgive

 

In the face of the worst the world can do

 

To live in this world,

But to invest in a different reality

 

Hope, as the Palestinians say

Is not something you feel

It is something you do

 

So let’s “do hope”

Let’s stay engaged

Let us never tire of doing good

 

For who knows what will happen

If we don’t give up

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