Choose Love, Christmas Eve, 2020
As is our tradition on Christmas Eve, we continue reading from the book of Luke, with his mystical telling of a many layered love story. Mary and Joseph, the couple at its centre, tell us a larger tale of the love between the divine and the human, a sweeping, eternal romance that continues on to this day, reminding us over and over again, that we are not alone in the universe.
We walk hand in hand with some great mystery of love and life that holds us, cares for us, desires our goodness, and the goodness and noble reach of all people without exception. It is the story of a love that cannot be contained by human power or politics. It is a love story that cannot be constrained within any particular doctrine, nor coerced by human bidding, though heaven knows through the ages we continue to try.
On the Mystery of the incarnation, by Denise Levertov
It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
“What they should have sent was poets because I don’t think we captured in its entirety the grandeur of what we had seen.”
Earthrise: Riders on the Earth Together
50 years ago, on Christmas Eve, human beings orbited the moon for the first time. The New York Times published a frontpage essay by the poet Archibald MacLeish the following day, a reflection inspired by the remarkable images from Apollo 8. Chief among them was the now iconic "Earthrise," the first photograph of Earth from space to capture the world's imagination. In this short film, SALT brings MacLeish's words to life, along with voices from Apollo 8, inviting us again to see our home planet as a wondrous, precious treasure, and to see ourselves as life's guardians.
A Variety of Christmas Music to Enjoy on Christmas Eve
O Holy Night from BBC Carols from King's 2017. Broadcast in the UK Kings College Choir.
Little Drummer Boy (African Tribal Version with Alex Boye and the Genesis Choir
Jim Cuddy and Anne Lindsay recorded at York Minister Baptist Church, Toronto, with encouragement to give to local food banks
YoYo Ma and Alison Kauss performing The Wexford Carol - simple, beautiful, and no one sings like Alison
Joy to the World, Bluegrass style with The Petersens