So Christmas has been and is now gone.

This year I have been struck by the people who received the message of the birth of Jesus – the shepherd. Alone, in the silence, in the wilderness, they receive the message of the angel that the Saviour is born. Away from everyday business, in the darkness, they are confronted by the reality that God’s love is embodied in the Baby.

We sing about it! But until this year I never really thought about the context. The shepherds, in the desert, are a precursor for the contemplative. In the silence of the wilderness of “me”, the contemplative meets a person – the embodied love of God! Like Jacob, the contemplative does not wrestle with God until they are alone with God.

So I have been thinking about various things in my life. I would like to create a context for contemplation. A context for Jesus alone. I struggle with an imperative to share the fruits of that contemplation – is it real? I have also been reading a book about the Brethren of the Common Life and a different book on Thomas à Kempis. Is there an imperative for inwardness that I have been called to within an “unusual framework”?

Anyway, I pray you have had a blessed Nativity of Our Lord.