The Home Altar

For Christians, today is the 6th day of Christmas, which puts us halfway through the celebration of the Incarnation. Beginning on the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th and ending with 12th Night. I came to a much deeper appreciation of this short season in 2020, when a worldwide pandemic had people isolated in their homes for Christmas. Something about the inability to travel and the long cold nights inspired a more thoughtful move through the season. With the help of friends and colleagues, I was able to produce a short devotional film, highlighting the themes, festival days, and various ways to celebrate Incarnation that the 12 days offer. It’s more than just the story of an unusual birthday, even if that’s how it starts. If you appreciate the low budget, on-the-fly style of 2020 digital media, you can watch it here!

While it feels like the world has changed many times over since December of 2020 and January of 2021, the lessons of this particular Christmastide have continued to bear fruit in my own spiritual journey. For one, I no longer feel the rush to treat December 25th as a deadline, but rather I can engage with it as a starting point. It’s okay if I’m still visiting people, listening to Christmas hymns, savoring the decorations and nativities, giving alms, engaging in charity, and distributing gifts right up to January 5th.

Making the time more spacious allows for moving more slowly through travels, visits, devotions, and worship. All of this helps to cultivate a sense of wonder at just how much of a gift genuine presence is. Not only the Divine presence we celebrate in the Incarnation, but the ongoing presence of the Indwelling, and the ubiquitous of the Creator in every growing edge of the universe.

Not only the divine presence, but our own presence, in the moment that matters, the current one. It remains the only time and space which we actually occupy, no matter how much our preoccupation with memories or imagined futures might be. We can actually miss the entire celebration by not showing up, mercifully and lovingly present in each moment of it.

One way we savor this time at St. Clare House is to engage in service projects and generosity that specifically take place on or about January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany. Remembering this occasion of wise strangers giving gifts to honor the Christ child, we look for ways to bring the season to a close with a lot of love. Whether that looks like boots and toe warmers for the day shelter where we live, or bringing the final platters of cookies, fruit, and cheese to the day shelter where I serve. We remember how the Holy One sneaked into the world and tented among us, noticed only by outcasts at first, much like the shelter guests we are trying to help this year.

I have come to cherish this less anxious way to embrace the holidays and the holy days of this season, and I hope it gives you some thoughts about what you might do differently next year, or even in the 6 days that remain. What love might you experience just by being fully present in these sacred moments?

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Blessed Epiphany.

Be gentle with yourself, you are worth it.

Peace and Everything Good,

The Rev. JM Longworth, OEF Spiritual Direction and Trauma Care

https://www.sdicompanions.org/sdi-profile/GreenMtFriarOEF/ To book an appointment: https://calendly.com/greenmtfriaroef