Uphill idealist

The greatest of the four weeks of Advent into Christmas is here: love. With all the hope waking, peace-making and joy breaking, We need the glue of love to make this stick. Please stick. More than paper on packages with packing tape, But something that goes beyond the surface of things  And fills the darkest corners of us with lasting love. I don't want these gifts of hope, peace, joy and love to disappear like grandma's frosted sugar cookies. But if they had to be consumed, hope, peace, joy and love would empower us to live out actions …like the making of many snow angels; when we abandon everything else  and surrender to love that stays. Please stay love,  I don't want you to melt like snow drifts above 35 degrees.... be crumpled like old gift wrapping... or abandoned on the curb like a used Christmas tree. Christ’s light has grown. Five candles are lit. Illuminating  our way with hope, peace, joy and the greatest: Love. One candle for hope...

John 14: 15-21[Jesus said to the disciples:] “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.   “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” I have been a writer since about the fourth grade, when my teacher Mrs. H taught me about “creative writing” – and particularly poetry. For years after that I used the practice of writing for my own journal, for college and seminary and fo...