The Dark Side of Christmas

I know this is a time of year when many people become contemplative--about peace, and meaning, giving, and life in general. And I join that flow of thought--really questioning things that don't seem to synch up--the way things should be.. and the way things currently are. Maybe its something deeper?? Maybe we're supposed to be drastically different than what we are now?? I have such huge questions...

I re-stumbled on a beautiful thought today. It seemed relevant...

"Just for the moment iteself, of Christmas, there can be only silence as something comes to life, some spirit, some hope; as something is born again into the world that is so strange and new and precious that not even a cynic can laugh, although he might be tempted to weep.

The child born in the night among beasts.
The sweet breath and steaming dung of beasts.
And nothing is ever the same again.

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If holiness and the awful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too.

And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him, that he comes most fully.

For those who believe in God, it means, this birth,
that God himself is never safe from us,
and maybe that is the dark side of Christmas,
the terror of the silence.
He comes in such a way that we can always turn him down..."

-Frederick Buechner (The Hungering Dark)