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Christmas 2023

My Christmas tree is twinkling, the present list has been ticked off and I’ve just taken my once-a-year fruit cake out of the oven, so it must be nearly Christmas. Somehow 2023 slid past me while I was sitting on the edge, trying to make sense of a world where distant countries were being overtaken by adjoining land and power hungry regions and, our own countries’ refusal to give voice to its First Nation people, climate disasters, housing shortages and supermarket price hikes. And God was there, is there, in the midst of it all.

Somewhere in the sodden, muddy mess the volunteer glimpsed already wrapped Christmas presents. He tried not to look as he threw them into the truck.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

They were a young couple, hovering over a pram, oblivious to the shopping crowds, overcome with the wonder and the responsibility of their first born. 

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

It didn’t look much – a few trees, a nearly dry creek bed, a pile of stones sheltering the remains of a fire. She let out a deep, satisfied breath. This was her country.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

The Vinnie van was bright with Christmas decorations. Surreptitiously he slid a red bauble into his pocket. It reminded him of home; back when he had a home.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

An elderly woman sits in the tumble of stone and brick that used to be her home. It’s cold. A young soldier stands helplessly by.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

He comes with a bunch of flowers and a bottle of wine his yearly contribution to Christmas lunch. Family, what is left of it, is half a world away. Today, this is his family.   

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

The house across the road is lit up with Christmas lights. His wife liked them and he never really understood why. Now she’s gone, and he misses the joy that she brought with her.

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

There was a Christmas tree in the lounge room of their new house and the two girls decorated it with cut-out foil stars while their baby brother and his mother were asleep. “This year,” they said, “there might even be presents on the tree.”   

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

He is their father. He rocks back and forth, lost in grief, as he holds their wrapped bodies close to his heart. Why can’t we keep our children safe?

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

 “The time came for Mary to have her child and she gave birth to a son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn.”  (Luke 2:6,7)

The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John 1:14)

May Peace be your gift this Christmas.  Judith

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I have a dream

“I have a dream”. Abba sang a song about theirs and Martin Luther King prefaced his never-to-be –forgotten address to his listeners using the same four words. I have a dream too – that when my currently-being- edited book is ready for publication you’d be able to buy a copy from any K Mart, Big W, Coles and Woolies.

Regularly I thumb through attractively presented small books and magazines on their shelves and I’m conscious that anything openly religious or pertaining to God is just not there. Magazines like Breathe and Womankind can challenge the reader to reflect on deep personal issues that are common to everyone. Spiritualty, yes, but spirituality with a Christian focus, no.

In 2018 I published a book, A Gentle Unfolding, with the subtitle, Circling and Spiralling into Meaning. It was for sale in a few religious bookshops and on line, sold a few copies and that was that. Except I felt a compulsion to write another book.

Over the next year I wrote a lot but kept getting lost in a muddle of religious history and theology. I felt like a preacher instead of a woman exploring the spirituality that has threaded its way through my life. When a publisher is deciding whether or not to accept a book for publication they ask the writer who might be the targeted readers.

Women and men of all denominations’ probably middle-aged, critiquing the way they are living and looking to fill the gap once filled by church membership.

Prayerful women, many of the grandmothers, caught between the shoulds of institutional religion and their growing need to move away from churchy words into something more relational and quiet.

Then there were the outer suburb mums and dads who year after year filled the school hall four times over to celebrate first communions and confirmations. I wanted to pick up where their religious education classes or Sunday school left off and parish liturgy and homilies have failed to pick up.

Across Australia’s vast distances little communities of Catholics who come together each Sunday for a Liturgy of the Word and Communion – sheep without a shepherd looking for words to link the Gospel with the everyday.

 I wanted to liberate words commonly used about spirituality from inappropriate religious literature, piety, outdated language and outmoded ways of living and the headiness of male and monastic experience. I dreamt of replacing them with language that feels at home at the kitchen table, words and experiences that tapped into the reader’s own. In January 2020 I started again.

Years earlier Karl Rahner had talked about the mysticism of ordinary life. I decided to name my book Everyday Mystics. Three years on and Everyday Mystics has reached the editing stage and in a couple of months I’ll be ready to print out a ‘good’ copy.   What comes next? 

The prophets of the Old Testament were dreamers, doing their creative wordy best to speak God’s truth to a people whose faith and confidence in God was being swallowed up by the immense injustices of their world. Some of them, like Habakkuk, wrote down their messages from God. ‘Then Yahweh said, “Write the vision down, inscribe it on tablets to be easily read, since this vision is for its own time only: eager for its own fulfilment.

I’m not a prophet, but I too have a dream.

Judith judithscully.com.au