Eleven pipers piping

On the eleventh day of Christmas, we yearn even more
for the wonder that's coming, that approaches the door.
We make our hearts ready, and hope we're prepared
for the gifts that the Other again with us shares.

The Christmas season, the time between the years, is a wonderful opportunity that most of us let slip by year after year. It is too easy to get caught up in the hectic, the commercialism, and the celebrating. Let's face it: resisting is practically futile, given that the advertising and marketing assault starts earlier and earlier each year. If there ever was "proof" that we have exchanged our society for an economy, it's Christmas. Of course, it needn't be that way. Oh sure, it takes a good deal of effort, but I'm sure there is not a one of us who has not uttered that plea of desperation: "It just can't go on like this!" at one time or another. But to do that, we are going to have to change and therein lies the rub.

Who wants to change? We think it's great when others do. In fact, we're generally very much in favor of that. One of the points that I've been trying to get across the past two weeks, though, is that we're in this all together, and because we are, each of us has to do our part to make things different. Nothing will ever change if we refuse to change ourselves. And, we can never change ourselves until we change the way we think.

In the English-speaking world, we learn that John the Baptist, the precursor to the one whose birth is the center of the celebrations this time of year, admonished us to repent. What most folks don't know is that in the original Greek text, that's not the word that he used. No, good ol' John was crying metanoeite which means more "change your mind", "change the way you think". Now, as then, we are being called upon to re-evaluate just how it is we are looking at the world around us. We are being asked to re-examine whether what we think is the best we can do. We are being challenged to not just take care of business as usual. No, if we change the way we think, we actually change the world.

I know you have all heard all of this before. I never claimed to be saying anything new. My job, as I understand it, is simply to remind us of what it is we already know and what we may have forgotten in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. And it's because of that turmoil that we should really make the effort, at least once during the year, to stop, look, and listen to what is going on around us, to slow down long enough to engage someone else, to talk, to be together, to reflect, to reconsider, and maybe even re-think a few things. This is what the turn of the year, the end-of-year celebration, should be about.