"What a curious life we have found here tonight there is music that sounds from the street."

"And so this is Christmas."

Last night was the long, lively chain of Christmas Eve services, the finale of which commenced at 11 o'clock in the evening, ending with a royal "Joy to the World" at approximately midnight, making it Christmas day.

The auditorium was packed. Sitting in the front, between my mother and the mother of my best friend, I stood just before the service started and gazed back across the tops of everybody's heads, picking out those that I knew and recognizing with tangible evidence just how God has blessed my life through the people he has placed in the path he has for me.

My spirit soared, gaining new heights of levity that it has not known for sometime. A meal for my soul? A buffet of joy and love, and I took my absolute fill. Biting into the softer meat of substance, I laughed and let the juices drip out the corners of my mouth and down my chin. It was so good to be alive - to know how much I love and am loved - the kicker of "It's a Wonderful Life" - You and you and you and YOU and you too!

Our world is so broken, so tragically broken in so many ways. We are in such need of saving, so incapable of self rescue. Advent and Christmas celebrate the duality of these ideas. The pining wait for a savior and the uninhibited joy celebrating the memory of his arrival.

In a way, the Christmas eve service and the weeks preceding it served as a miniature Advent and Christmas on a personal level. A few weeks filled with a sense of isolation; of occasional sensations of helplessness and fleeting moments of despair, followed by the sudden re-realization of happiness, love, and unity with all those around me.

The loud, musical reminder of my own need for a savior and the fact that I already have him.
What a fitting thing to relearn less than a week before a new year dawns.

If one were to remember how they are loved all the year round, they would truly be blessed indeed. Loved by God and man both -so utterly blessed.

"What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all 'round the sun.
And when we meet on a cloud, I'll be laughing out loud-
I'll be laughing with everyone I see.
Can't believe,
How strange it is to be anything at all."

The Aura Unexplained

I once met a kid who said he could sense other people's auras -the color their soul (essence, personality, identity) gave off. By looking closely he could tell what the quality of your heart was -the ultimate, irrefutable personality test that smells strongly of the spiritual world.

I do not know how much you believe in Angels, Demons, or the roles they play in our lives, but what this guy picked up was closely akin to that. In some, he could sense evil or Godliness. He could feel the negative dark around those who had surrounded themselves with the bad. He told a few of the people we were with about themselves, and accurately.

I did not ask who he perceived me to be -which was odd looking back, considering my struggle to find identity at the time. I would have liked him to tell me who I was -so that I would have some sort of idea at all.

But daily I am figuring out who I am, and aptly.

Would you like to know?
Camus said "No man dares describe himself as he truly is."
Maybe I am as diluted as all that...

None the less,

I know in my core I was destined for something larger than nine to fiveing, paying my pension plan and retiring in Florida. But how many other believers can say the same?

Sometimes I feel strength in my hands that shocks me -the power to change much and many.
Other times I wallow in the mire of despondency, indulge my insecurities, let the moody blues drag me deep, fuel my anger's fire.


I just want to be extraordinary.