Cultural chaos in the name of Jeshua’s birth. Deep soulful tears arise as I annually participate in the chaos, too.

What are we teaching our children and those in less fortunate places on this planet earth?

That physical possessions are the greatest gifts and give to us validation in our lives.

Deepest sighs for where we are.
We MUST change.

Anticipating what Christmas will be like this year helps to set the bar by which it will be reached. Anticipating who and what and how this Christmas will be one to remember, will help it become so. This exercise, like many of the others we suggest now and then, is one which compels us to create the circumstances of a delicious holiday. So, what do you want your Christmas to look like? How do you want to share it? What will be the components to help it come together into a pattern of joy and satisfaction?

Here are a few provocative suggestions which may complement your own:

SHARING: an occasion for including in your own circle, through some means, a time to share with others. Others will include not only family, those nearest and dearest, but those beyond our immediate and intimate circle. It will involve taking the necessary time

The ghastly darkness of the season now invades us all. Pepper spray and the collapse of a shopper, while others go about their merry and indifferent way, as he lies there amidst the tinsel and garland and grasping hands, now haunts us all. They might have turned off the lights and announced the store was closing, for Christmas was, at that moment, really no more. It had ended, if it had ever really started.

And, if it had, it had surely got off to very bad and terrible start. If this were to be Christmas, 2011, something was terribly wrong. If it has been reduced to such ravenous appetites, filled only by the accomplished desire of getting what I want, then the season is little worth having or remembering or commemorating.

Within the last two weeks we have enjoyed over a hundred callers to our home. While we know many of them, they are not coming principally to see or visit us. Most are making the 15 mile trek from our nearby town to see our honored guest. He is my first cousin. He underwent a nine hour surgical procedure about three weeks ago. It was necessitated for the removal of a tumor in his mouth. He was able to leave the hospital, tube free, in just under a week.

Sharon and I returned from our home in Arizona to be ready to care for him in our home in Texas. He has no other close family who could or would have been able to provide the necessary care-taking. The three of us are our family.