Christmas, 2016

Perspectives

An earnest journey of hard-knock-life, the kind of life that is perceived as true mediocre—

Under-published, under-celebrated, unappreciated by the Big People—

Is a set of small connecting steps, shared sorrows and joys and the patting of dogs along the way.

This time-journey of earning a living and ageing is at least as grueling a journey as trekking the Himalayas, and just as precarious in its purpose and passion-wrenching sand storms.

Yet these earnest day by day lives seem so easily obliterated by shifting sands.

Each small footprint, converging with other small steps, filled in and covered over, as society prepares a pristine passageway fit for Protocol and Profit.

Perspectives can be chilling, odious things.

I see the displaced people held hostage to priced-out political persuasion, no matter the nation for which they stand;

I read the slanted memes and shoddy ‘post-truth’ news stories shattering reputations and carefully built lives;

I hear the silent majority praying for peace, a quiet road where deep passion and purpose can flourish in the humble connections of family and community.

And there they are: the quintessential travelers-three we walk beside in our world, our time.

Yet it is Advent, and we are called to Bethlehem, where incongruence and harmony live side by side:

Shepherds hunkered by the herd hearing angels; a virgin birthing; Christ choosing the hay and harmony of animals over a golden courtyard.

What about another three—those intrepid we-three-kings who take up a journey to reach for a star?

How do you see them?

As wise ones? Fools on a fool’s errand? Mediocre scholars with limited insight and biased peer review? Or simply an allegory of an impossible reach for Messiah?

Me? I close my eyes against the grit of sand, feel the chill night wind cut my face, my stiffening joints surrounding the warm girth of my steed. I smell the pungent odor of animal and earth crushed by hooves and resilient as love. I see thin light cutting through the inky night, forming a path discernible only to connected heart-mind-spirit.

The mediocre; the magnificent.

I see Gloria.