Yesterday, on Facebook, I reposted a meme (see below) that called into question the religious right’s war on “the war on Christmas.” At the time, I simply posted it because I resonated with sentiment and want to share it. But as I thought about it some more after posting it, I decided that I would make this the crux of my Advent practice this year—an attempt to concentrate on what it means to keep Christ not in Christmas but in Christianity. This is something that I am become more and more dismayed about as I watch the religious right align with worldly powers and attempt to legitimize them by wrapping them in the cloak of Christianity.
If you have followed me at all on Facebook or have seen some of my answers/comments on Quora you know that my views on Christianity are far from those of the religious right. I dare say that my views may be very different from most folks who identify as Christian. I try to be an online presence that serves as a constant reminder that not all Christians are of a like mind. There are those of us who are not bogged down in the supernatural aspects of faith. There are those of us who focus on voice of radical change that is Jesus’s teachings. There are this of us who believe that above all, the essence of being a Christian is to meet hate and fear with love and hope. Please note that I am NOT saying that I have achieved any sort of plane of existence that models this with any sort of perfection. I recognize this as an ideal for which Christians should strive to attain, knowing all along that we will most likely fall short.
This year, a small group of friends will be meeting weekly to share our reflections on the book, “Keep Watch with Me,” by Claire Brown and Michael T. McRay. Today’s reading was on hope. This is a subject I have found myself struggling with since (coincidence?) November 2016. There was a line in the reading for today that grabbed my attention. I’m paraphrasing here, but in its essence it said, “we can choose to hope or we can choose to embrace a life of death.” This nicely mirrors what I have come to see about hope over the last couple years of struggling with it. Hope isn’t always rational. Hope doesn’t always lead to the desired outcome. Hope shapes how we live in the moment. Hope must be a conscious decision. Hope is work. But it sure beats the alternative.
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