My heart has been filled of late with the lesson and challenge Howard Thurman offers in his poem “The Work of Christmas”, especially as more recently set to music by Dan Forrest.
https://youtu.be/tbgzMv8lJ0U
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
Our church choir first sang this piece last Christmas eve, our first in our new building and then again yesterday evening, as snow fell softly outside the candle lit sanctuary. The soft blanket of white continued falling throughout the day today, as did the temperature, leaving the neighborhood rather beautiful and “as pure as driven snow”.
In the morning, with the singing of carols long-silenced, while plows, snow-blowers and shovelers will have been out in force, so that workers can trudge back to their jobs and shoppers to their sales. And, all-to-often, the real work of Christmas will be shelved and forgotten for another year. Or, in the words of the late actress, Tallulah Bankhead, the world will become “as pure as the driven slush”.
I pause to wonder how I might incorporate Thurman’s words in the days ahead and recall an observation by one of my fellow choir members during our final rehearsal for the Christmas eve service. She had noted that in Thurman’s original text, the last line read: “To make music IN the heart” while Forrest’s composition instead uses “FROM the heart”.
My thoughts then return to this website’s theme: “Choosing Courageous Well-being: Inside me, with you, among us.” No matter what task or goal or challenge one chooses to pursue, it begins inside—within the heart. Once begun, it can then expand beyond to another—from the heart.
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