Merry Christmas

Once again, it's Christmas. Time to celebrate with good food and lots of fun.

I've always found it easy to think about all the things that are wrong with the world, or with my own life, and think that I should be working on those things. How can I celebrate when there are people elsewhere who are starving? It puts a damper on the mood...

I don't recommend willful blindness to the problems of the world, but I do think it's a genuinely spiritual practice to set aside a time to enjoy the good things we're given in life. A little bit of excess once a year is, honestly, a good thing. It keeps us looking forward to a time when good things will be in true abundance.

I think maybe joy is itself a creative act of the human will. I've noticed that two different people can have very different reactions to the same thing: one can enjoy something that the other does not. Part of that difference is what you're used to. Whatever you take for granted, you sometimes don't enjoy.

But I think that when we look at the blessings we have, and we discipline our hearts and minds to truly understand how blessed we are by them, we are in a sense creating joy. Sometimes our enjoyment doesn't depend on how much stuff is put in front of us, but on how good an imagination we have.

I've certainly enjoyed this past year, and I'm going to very much enjoy this Christmas. Yes, there are many problems in the world that I'll continue to blog about, and there are many problems in my own life that I'll continue to deal with. But Christmas is a time to celebrate, when everything that is wrong with the world is eclipsed by the love shown to us by God.

My prayer for this Christmas is that we may all truly enjoy life. There's nothing hedonistic about this. True enjoyment is what we were made for, I'm convinced of it. So I'll be praying that we all learn to truly enjoy life, and I'll be practicing myself all day long!

Merry Christmas.