Christmas

OK, it isn't really Christmas yet.  We've got a good three weeks to go.  But since Rita and I leave for Brazil on Sunday, my parents came to Santa Fe this week to celebrate an early Christmas with us and Helena Iara.  It was splendid, with everything one could possibly want from a holiday: great food, presents, laughs with friends and family...


But since Christmas came early, I felt like I had to explain a little bit of the holiday to Helena.  I told her of a people who had been oppressed and abused by everyone, by the Egyptians and the Persians and the Babelonians and the Romans, and who dreamed of a savior, someone who would free them from oppression and slavery.  They imagined some great warrior, some heir of the fabulous David, who would throw the Romans into the sea with swords and fire... and they got a little baby.  Tiny, weak, and happy.  One who would soon have to flee into Egypt in fear of those some Romans.

Some savior!  But, as I explained to Helena Iara, I think that was the point.  A savior saves us, and we don't have to do anything.  A baby, on the other hand, acts by turning us into actors, makes us into agents.  We want to help, care, be kind, love the little baby.  And that was, after all, the goal of Jesus's ministry, later, too.  To help people to love each other, to do justice not only on the political level (he was pretty weak as a revolutionary leader), but especially on the personal one.  To do justice, to love one another, and to walk humbly with your God, as the prophet put it.

And babies, I have learned over the last several months, do that pretty well!