Feel good or factual?  This has been my dilemma over the past week or so as I've prepared for this morning's worship.  In the end I think, hope, pray, I have found a middle way that will carry honest hope into a weary world.

For so many this will be a difficult Christmas - floods and power cuts; sickness, bereavement and tragedy; poverty and debt... the list grows and grows, both in the braodcast news and in our private spheres.

So, I sit safe and warm in my third floor flat, power supply secure, breakfasted, parcels unwrapped and count my blessings...

Then, soon, I will head churchwards to celebrate the birth of Christ, the baby who bore hope into the world and, as a man, would bear despair out of it.  We will sip coffee and nibble treats round the table beautifully set in readiness for our annual Community Lunch, to which people of all types and conditions will be drawn (and, if true to form, some surprise and surprising guests).  And after the festive feast, I will slip on my clerical collar and head to the nearest hospital to see a couple of folk spending the holiday season there.  It all meets and muddles or melds - that's the reality I strive to express.

Whatever you day brings, whatever the circumstances in which you spend it, may you be blessed with moments of unbridalled joy and renewed hope for whatever the future holds.

BC:AD

by U A Fanthorpe

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

Messy Watchnight

Families Watchnight

Whatever description you prefer, it was a wonderful afternoon with around 20 children aged zero to ten years of age, parents and grandparents.

After devouring Christmas tree pizza, haribo cakes and other assorted treats they busily deocarted angel biscuits, made gift boxes and angel decorations before hearing the story of Harold, the angel who could not sing.

A wonderful way to spend a wet, windy and raw cold afternoon, and seems to have been much appreciated by those who came.

Thanks to the angels A, B, G, M and M whose efforts made it all possible.

Now I am relaxing at home ahead of tomorrow's festivities.

In the days of Caesar

By Waldo Williams tr. Rowan Williams

In the days of Caesar, when his subjects went to be reckoned,

There was a poem mad, too dark for him (naïve with power)

to read

It was a bunch of shepherds who discovered

in Bethlehem of Judah, the great music beyond reason and

reckoning:

shepherds, the sort of folk who leave the ninety-nine behind

so as to bring the stray back home, dawning toward cock-crow,

the birthday of the Lamb of God, shepherd of mortals.

Well, little people, and my nation, can you see

The secret buried in you, that no Caesar ever captures in his lists?

Will not the shepherd come to fetch us in our desert,

Gathering us in to give us birth again, weaving us into one

In a song heard in the sky over Bethlehem?

He seeks us out as wordhoard for his workmanship, the laureate

of heaven

Today's 'Haphazrd by Starlight' poem, which I loved, stirred memories of this poem I encountered in one of the 'anthologies for schools' we had back in the 1970s.  I had some fun and games with the formatting, but the font that shows seems very approrpiate - reminding me of the old teletype character sets

jollymerry 
hollyberry 
jollyberry 
merryholly 
happyjolly 
jollyjelly 
jellybelly 
bellymerry 
hollyheppy 
jollyMolly 
marryJerry 
merryHarry 
happyBarry 
heppyJarry 
bobbyheppy 
berryjorry 
jorryjolly 
moppyjelly 
Mollymerry 
Jerryjolly 
bellyboppy 
jorryhoppy 
hollymoppy 
Barrymerry 
Jarryhappy 
happyboppy 
boppyjolly 
jollymerry 
merrymerry 
merrymerry 
merryChris 
ammerryasa 
Chrismerry 
asMERRYCHR 
YSANTHEMUM