Last night I invited a few selected Holly-fans to join me in celebrating her life - a kind of wake/purvey that involved a 'slideshow' of nearly 400 photos, some human-Dreamies, and a toast to her drunk in pink, sparkling grape juice.  Lots of laughter, memories and love.

It was a lovely, gentle evening, giving a sense of closure (to me anyway).

One person gave me this poem, which is rather lovely:

Poem For Cats

And God asked the feline spirit
Are you ready to come home?
Oh, yes, quite so, replied the precious soul
And, as a cat, you know I am most able
To decide anything for myself.

Are you coming then? asked God.
Soon, replied the whiskered angel
But I must come slowly
For my human friends are troubled
For you see, they need me, quite certainly.

But don't they understand? asked God
That you'll never leave them?
That your souls are intertwined. For all eternity?
That nothing is created or destroyed?
It just is....forever and ever and ever.

Eventually they will understand,
Replied the glorious cat
For I will whisper into their hearts
That I am always with them
I just am....forever and ever and ever.

Author Unknown

Every now and then there emerges a preaching-preference about mentioning the cross at Christmas. 

There was a time when, as an over-reaction to saccharine sweet slop, preachers emphasised the inevitable link with the events of Calvary.  In a justified endeavour to move beyond "little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay" who can be boxed up with the tinsel and forgotten about until next year, we pretty much denied the mystery of a helpless baby, totally dependent on human parents for well-being as God's chosen means of incarnation.

More recently, and with chastened cheeriness, the move has been back to letting the story stand on its own, skipping past that nasty Herod stuff, painting over the differences between Luke and Matthew, and somehow cleaning up the messyness of an illegitimate birth, in a back street, in a borrowed room.

Is there no middle ground?

First of the 'cross reference index' hymns for Advent use is BPW 156 (from the Christmas section) Born in the night, Mary's child:

With some key changes (from E flat to G and back again) it's not my faovurite to play as my fingers and brain get confused!  Nonetheless, it is a lovely hymn that holds together the cradle and the cross in a way that is gentle enough not to spoil the fleeting warmth of Christmas without dumbing down the horror of Calvary.

I have vague recollections that once upon a time as well as the line "born in borrowed room" there was a verse that ended "laid in a borrowed tomb" but I can find no evidence of that.

In birth, and in death, 'borrowed rooms' are part of our experience - hospitals, mortuaries, chapels of rest, crematoria... places we visit for a reason as we journey on in our own lives.  Perhaps what this song captures most eloquently is the way in which birth and death, death and birth are intertwined, and find their fullest expression in Mary's child...

Hope of the world, Mary's child

You're coming soon to reign

King of the world, Mary's child

Walk in our streets again.

Amen, let it be so.