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Blog 505 – 12.25.2016
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Since Judy Garland first sang that song in the movie “Meet Me In St. Louis” it has been a holiday favorite. I hope each and everyone of you “Feels the connection” this Christmas. Some might think that I am “alone” this Christmas in Wisconsin but nothing could be further from the truth. And, no, Charles Dickens fans, I was not visited overnight by the specters of the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. But I am not “all on my own” or alone (the shorter version.) What I am, in fact what we all are, whether we realize it or not is, “at one”, one with everyone and everything, the Universe, God if you will.

A very dear and beloved friend of mine has for many years been diagnosed as bi-polar, manic-depressive, schizophrenic. If you saw the movie, “Beautiful Mind” with Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly you have some idea of what it must be like to see people around you that others do not see. You may like many others think that is kind of crazy but actually thinking you are alone, separated, isolated, all on your own is the really crazy thought. In our more lucid  moments we know better, we feel our connection. In another of my favorite Christmas songs, “Home For The Holidays”  It says, “”Let’s turn every love light on in the place…sing me home.” Love is the light that shows us the way home, that shows us even in our darkest hour that we are surrounded by our family and that is home.

Forty eight years ago on January 10th I boarded a plane at Travis Airforce Base near San Francisco with about two hundred and fifty of my green clad brothers, only one of whom I knew very well. We flew twenty one hours stopping briefly for fuel in Honolulu, Wake Island, and Okinawa, on our way to South Vietnam. Was I scared? Heaven, yes! But I was not alone and a song lyric that I had learned in church as a boy was running through my head: “Whether I live or die, whether I wake or sleep, whether upon the land, or on the stormy deep. When ’tis serene and calm or when the wild winds blow, I shall not be afraid. I am the LORD’s I know.” Knowing Whose you are is a great comfort and leads to knowing Who you are.

You and I belong to a great big family. We did not join it we were born into it. And though this might ruffle some of my Christian friends feelings we don’t have to be “born again” to be a part of it. Oh, we can try to act like prodigals and try to run away from home. But even that is an illusion. You cannot change Who you truly are or run away from Whose you truly are. So how about we just wake up a little bit this Christmas and have ourselves a merry little Christmas in the knowledge that we are forever surrounded in the circle of Family, the circle of love. The line of huggers just waiting a turn at you is so long it reaches to eternity. And that grinning guy near the front of the line is me…

Your friend and fellow traveler,
Like my red suit?
David White