Greetings and welcome to the Advent/Christmas newsletter What’s Love Got To Do With It? – the fourth and last in a series of four. During this session of love I continue to introduce my blog writer website Carolin M. Paradis – Stories that Bridge Heart and Heaven.
Thereafter, regular blog posts will appear on my website once or twice a week. If you would like to follow along please sign up to receive notifications when blogs are posted by visiting the right sidebar to enter your email address. Likewise, to subscribe to occasional newsletters via email you may enter your name and email address under the menu tab “Newsletter.”
As with the previous newsletters this serves to herald the advent of new beginnings where we look towards what we hope for: hope, peace, joy and love.
It Doesn’t Feel Like Love
It didn’t feel like love all warm and fuzzy as we drove to make the Christmas delivery. My vehicle was loaded with all the accouterments for a full-blown Christmas dinner. Piled high were colourful wrapped boxes, overfilled gift bags and the spilled contents of red Christmas stockings.
But I wasn’t thinking about the gifts tucked in the back. I had my eyes fixed on the road. The backstreets weren’t plowed and last night’s snow was still thick and sucking at my tires. In the passenger seat my navigator continued to check her GPS. It looked like we had missed the building and she was redirecting me around the block.
It didn’t feel like love when we turned into the complex and made the delivery. It actually felt kind of sweaty. As my Navigator held the doors I made six arm-laden trips from my parked vehicle to the building lobby. The food boxes were heavy.
It was a relief when the fellow receiving the load assured us he would ferry everything into the elevator and up to his place. I was glad he would manage. We shook his hand and wished him and his family a Merry Christmas.
Returning to home base where the community Christmas program had originated it was clear the brave and industrious organizers weren’t feeling the love either, more like exhaustion by the haggard looks on their faces. For weeks they had planned and organized, corralling all the goods and donations the community had committed to provide. Then the final press at the end – making sure the receiving family’s weren’t missing anything – big job. But the mission was accomplished – all loads delivered. A dozen local families who struggled to make ends meet would have a Christmas.
Loves Got To Do With It
I bet Joseph from the Christmas bible story wasn’t feel the love either. Mary, his fiancée, was expecting and the child wasn’t even his – awkward. But he was a decent man and decided to quietly break things off, that was until a dream changed everything.
Have you ever had a dream that turned your world upside down? Joseph did. In the dream God told Joseph to forget about leaving Mary. Her child was to be the source of change for humankind – revolutionary and radical.
I wondered if love had something to do with it. It seemed God loved Joseph and Mary, and Joseph and Mary loved God.
Yet the birth of the child was ordinary. But there is nothing easy about giving birth on a pile of straw or even in a hospital room for that matter. Bringing life into the world so that things might change and transform isn’t exactly cozy – more like painful and messy.
So Why Do It?
When we do stuff for people aren’t we supposed to feel good and have warm and fuzzy feelings – something that tells us we’ve done the right thing? After all, the feeling good is our reward or why else do it?
Why give birth to change or transform a family’s Christmas through a social program? What’s the point in feeling just ordinary or maybe less than ordinary or even not feel good at all, especially at Christmas with all that joie de vivre going around?
I hadn’t felt particularly happy when delivering the Christmas hamper, not like jolly Santa delivering gifts. Yet my navigator and I had participated in something that was life-giving, like many in the community we came from. Each in our own way, we had decided to do this thing and had made a choice to show love in a practical way.
Like Joseph deciding to stay with Mary and see things through. It was a decision to love.
Like God sending a baby into the world as a herald to hope, peace, joy and love – and to turn the world upside down – the advent of new beginnings.
So that’s why we do it.
Wishing you, dear Reader, all the best during this festive season and time of love.
Carolin M. Paradis – An Everyday Story Teller