On Christmas Eve, I come bearing gifts. I did not pay for any of them.
First is a delectable confection, the gingerbread house by Laura Morrissette (at right in Carla DeFord photo). This season it attracted customers to the window at Artful Heart on Medford Street before its artistry moved to the Boys & Girls Club.
This image is the vision of Christmas Past, and it draws you into the seasonal spirit. But what exactly is that spirit? The joy of giving — and receiving — are part of it.
It is deeper.
Its basis is Christian, but I no longer follow the religion into which I was born (Methodism). Amid the smiles as presents open, I struggle. The next two gifts, both poems, show that.
Reflect on T.S. Eliot’s “The Journey of the Magi.”
Read all the way to these lines — and past them: “… were we led all that way for Birth or Death?”
Then, if you can bear it, move on to W.B. Yeats’s “The Second Coming.”
It’s easy for me to apply its final line to the presidential depredations endured during 2017.
And you?
This viewpoint was published Sunday, Dec. 24, 2017. You may comment in the window at the bottom of this page.
