Have yourself a merry little...

[tabaqui]

I'm not actually, by inclination or practice, xian. At all. But i love this poem, and i think i love it because what it describes is so...correct. When all the hoopla of 'the season' is beating us over the head, i like to think about when it was all *nothing*. When it was simply a strange blip in the day-to-day, and the world went on turning, much as it has always done.

I think, basically, what it means mostly to me is that it's all in your head. You give things power by *giving* the power - and you can take it away, too. I don't believe in a living divinity walking the earth as a child and then a man, but i *do* believe that the message was good: love, over everything and above all things. Love. It's all you need.

*sends it out*


This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

BC:AD by U.A. Fanthorpe

Comments

[anelith.livejournal.com]

You really touched me with this because I had a moment a couple of days before Christmas, when listening to some carols on CD, that tears came to my eyes. While not a Christian either I have always held Christmas dear to my heart as a symbol of renewal, second chances, spiritual hope. This year it felt like that hopeful spiritual sense had been pretty much taken away from me by all the ugliness of some people on fundamentalist political right, using the Christian religion for their own nasty purposes. I think I've been turned against the Christian religion so much because of them that I've let it color my feelings against any good thing I've ever felt about it. And that hurts because there are some deeper meanings behind Christmas that I think go beyond the organized Christian church. It makes me cry again just thinking about it because it hurts me to lose that feeling that I can't even put into words, about Christmas and what it meant to me, but I am so repulsed by these awful people... I just can't even explain how torn I am.

I will read this poem again in hopes of regaining something of that feeling.

[tabaqui]

I know exactly what you mean. I haven't been a 'christian' for a long time, and will never be again, but i loathe what these zealots are doing to the message, and the message is and always was 'love'. All they have is hate.

I'm glad this made you feel good, even if you cried - i think you simply have to reclaim what *you* believe to be your religion, spirituality, whatever and ignore the haters and the crazies who make it so ugly.
*hugs*

I hope you have a good new year.