Dear Friends, 

One more day in Christmastide to go. Happy 11th Day of Christmas! Area stores slash prices on Christmas goods and empty shelves to fill with heart-shaped chocolate boxes and teddy bears. Valentine’s Day is more than a month away. Trees may be packed away, on our curbs, or well on their way to either destination.

What if we paused each day of the almost two weeks set aside to celebrate that the Christ Child was born? What if we did not look ahead quite yet? There is still time.

There is still time to pause and consider. What does it mean to us as individuals and as community, as Beloved Community, as God’s Beloved, that God came so close to us as to experience embodied, human life?

This past Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Name. It does not often fall on a Sunday. We generally hurridly skip right by it on our way to other things like New Year preparations.

The Feast of the Holy Name is the day that celebrates Jesus being named in community. Eight days after his birth, Mary and Joseph do what is expected of every new parent, they took Jesus to the Temple to be circumcised and named. Only, they did not follow their custom and privilege to name Jesus. They followed God’s direction through an angel’s words. I wonder what would happen if more of us paused to hear and follow God’s direction, particularly if it meant we had to set aside what we are accustomed to having.

If we missed you on Sunday, we talked about names and naming. We have great names and meanings among us! See if you can find out whose name means: “Thunder Bear” or “King” or “Beloved” or “Noble!”

Jesus’ name means “Yawheh Saves.” Maybe God wanted Jesus to remember his purpose. Maybe God wanted and wants us to remember what God’s greatest desire is for us: to save us from the fears that seep in, the energies that tell us we are anything but how God sees us: beautiful, good, desirable, wanted… loved (and fiercely so).

Happy Christmastide, Dear Ones.

In Peace, Dina+