Sunday, December 18, 2011

Christmas memories

Some time ago, I went to Radio City Musical Hall’s Christmas Spectacular in New York City – and spectacular it was.  The Rockettes danced with precision, grace and rhythm.  The scenes of the child dreaming under the tree, of opening enormous gifts each with a dancing bears or rabbits or other adorable and marvelously costumed creatures, and Santa's workshop dazzled the audience.  The ice skaters emerged from the orchestra pit on an ice rink even!  Production numbers and stage effects drew continued audience responses of awe.
At the beginning of the show a stern voice warned the audience that pictures were not to be taken.  For the most part this was observed until Santa left the North Pole, the curtain came down and after a brief silence the orchestra began to play softly and reverently "O Little Town of Bethlehem," and a narrator reminded us all that the origin of our festivities was the birth in Bethlehem of the one called “Prince of Peace,” a child born during a journey by his parents to fulfill legal requirements of the time. 
What can only be described as a procession followed.  The actors in the tabloid moved with deliberate reverence to the scene of the birth of Jesus.  As Mary and Joseph and the shepherds gathered signaling the birth with the background music, "Angels we Have Heard on High," you couldn’t count the number of flash bulbs that went off.  It was as if the audience couldn’t get enough of this magnificent and simple scene.
As I saw this and felt my own heart moved once again; I realized that there was a real need on the part of those people flashing pictures and perhaps on those without cameras to freeze this moment in time.  It was as if the theater erupted in a moment of recognition that "the Word became flesh and lived among us," and at that moment the audience glimpsed his glory, "the glory as of a Father's only Son, full of grace and truth."
Everyone in that theater had become a child and through this extraordinary presentation of the nativity we experienced the profound invitation to become a child of God and the real power of this invitation to transform the complicated maze of life into meaning. 
The gift of this blessed season is the hope we give one another as we listen to the Word of God.  In places we least expect it, the divine presence breaks into our life.  May you and yours have a blessed celebration of Christmas as we remember the birthday of Jesus again this year.  Merry Christmas to you all.

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