Share The Human Fire

Merry Christmas Eve! Today I depart from my usual format to offer a set of seasonal reflections. Next week I'll bring some year-end thoughts, returning to our series on the Art of Life in the new year.

He was as surprised to see me, there down the path, as I was to see him. But that bushy red tail was unmistakable - a red fox. He looked a little out of place, perhaps on an epic journey that took him through the Little River and its surrounding woods that dwell behind my neighborhood. He looked at me as I stopped to snap a picture. We had a moment there, me and the little red fox, before he darted across the path into the brush and disappeared.

I've walked the path behind our house for more than ten years, and that moment five years ago is the only time I've seen a red fox. Just that once. I treasure that chance encounter, as I don't have any assurances I'll see one here again, this close to the highway, this close to human civilization. He was there, and then he was gone.

How many of our treasured moments are like this - there, and then gone?

The two defining experiences of the past year for me - my son receiving IVIG therapy for PANS, and my mother dying from Alzheimer's - are both wrapped up in a nice big box of "things I didn't choose." Not exactly what you'd hope to find under the tree of life in any year. That two people this close me have suffered from serious illness has occupied a lot of space in my heart over the year.

I don't know if there's any other way to put it, but - one way or another - life compels us to receive what it gives. Both sunshine and rain. Both joy and sorrow. Both health and illness. These are the things that life has to give us.

I'm not always a cheerful receiver of gifts I don't want or choose.

The Christmas story that shapes our winter season and gift-giving has always struck me as deeply subversive. It's not a "Christian" story but a deeply human one, about ordinary people encountering a surprise, a "gift" that wasn't expected. Into the unlikeliest corner of the world comes a promise, a hope that what we have thus far received is not the final gift life gives. That there is more to be given, a gift to come that opens gift after gift after gift, if we simply receive it.

This is my prayer, this season, for myself and for you: help me, help us, receive what is given.

I am so grateful you've been with me this past year. Thank you for reading, thank you for corresponding with me, thank you for supporting me through the ups and downs of 2023. I hope, in some small way, this newsletter has been a gift to you. Merry Christmas to you and yours, as you receive the gifts of this season.

Until next week, I'll see you down the path.

Chad

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