Connecting with Your Community

Dear Friends in Christ,

 

What is the most important thing you have to do before Christmas?

 

If you are like most people (and, to be honest, like me), you jump between any number of frantic answers.  Gifts have to be bought.  Cards have to be sent.  The house has to be cleaned.  Intellectually, I know that none of these things matter in a cosmic sense.  But my cosmos shrinks to the size of my to-do list.

 

In these last days before Christmas, I want to remind you that it is OK to leave tasks undone.  It is OK to be imperfect.

 

The most important thing we have to do is to prepare our hearts for the incarnate Christ.  And we prepare them not through a laundry list of tasks but by cultivating peace.  We prepare them by connecting with one another.

 

Our La Gracia congregation has been a gift to me as I learn how.  They observe the Latin American tradition of Las Posadas, which is an extended devotional prayer.  The community gathers in someone’s home each night during the week preceding Christmas to remember how Mary and Jospeh wandered from inn to inn (the “posadas”) looking for a place to say.  They share worship and they share a meal.

 

We all know that the week preceding Christmas Day is hectic.  And yet during this time, La Gracia chooses not chaos but connection.  They choose one another, and so they choose God in their midst.

 

You may not go to a Posadas service, but I invite you to think about how you might lean into your faith community right now.  Who can you call on the phone or join for a walk or remember in prayer?  What about coming to the Greening of the Church (Sunday at 6:00 p.m.) to work (with a lot of joy and laughter) towards a common goal?

 

Gifts and cards and clean houses never last.  But the our life in God does.  I pray that you will find strength and grace in your community right now.  And I pray that you will be close and kind to one another, and gentle to yourselves.

 

Yours in Christ,

Anne+