A Christmas Day Blessing

Happy holidays. Jason and I have made use of our guest bedroom this week as my parents drove up from Texas to bring childhood memories and family heirlooms. From watching Luna take in the Nutcracker for the first time and lots of baking it’s been a joyful Christmas. I even managed an asthma flare up with more awareness and grace than usual. We didn’t send holiday greeting card so may this blessing I shared around our table today reach you and yours with love.

Let us pray.

Dear God. Dear Universe. Dear Light.
On this Christmas Day we pause with full hearts and soft spirit to give blessings.

Blessings to the creators who brought us the beauty and the hard of our Christmas story. To Mary, to Joseph, to baby Jesus and the guiding North Star.

Blessings to the people of the Piscataway and Anacostan tribes whose land we have made our home today.

Blessings to the enslaved people who built the White House and the U.S. Capitol, and to their descendants who carried a culture of freedom forward in our Capitol City even as we didn't earn it.

Blessings to our flawed Founding Fathers who wrote down the structure of this democracy that we continue to strive for.

On this Christmas Day, I look to the past. I see how very muddled and problematic the story has been. And I see the light that has wound its way to this day.

On this Christmas Day, blessings to the eight of us gathered around to share a meal. How lucky I am to sit with my little nuclear family, and to be joined by our parents that raised us to get here.

ln a present that is plagued and yet as I look closely is still thread with love and tenderness, I am so thankful to share this life.

Blessings to humankind, that we may remember our story and continue to thread the lessons and the light towards the future.

Amen.