Words of Light and Hope from Jane McLarty

Words of Light and Hope for 29 th December Jane McLarty

Today is an in-between sort of Sunday; Christmas Day is past, New Year’s Day is yet to come. We look back over the last year and we might see in the world and in our own lives cause for joy and thankfulness, and also cause for grief and lament. These words from Charles Handy reflect on how the universe somehow continues to produce life out of apparent chaos:

Charles Handy The Empty Raincoat

The first living cell emerged, some four million years ago, from a primordial soup of simple molecules and amino acids. Nobody knows why or how. Ever since then the universe has had an inexorable tendency to run down, to degenerate into disorder and decay. Yet it has also managed to produce from that disorder an incredible array of living creatures, plants and bacteria, as well as stars and planets. New life is forever springing from the decay and disorder of the old.

Today is only the fifth day of the twelve days of Christmas: and in this turning of the year, U.A. Fanthorpe’s poem about the turning from BC to AD with the birth of Christ seems appropriate. U.A. Fanthorpe BC:AD This was the moment when Before Turned into After, and the future’s Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing Happened. Only dull peace Sprawled boringly over the earth. This was the moment when even energetic Romans Could find nothing better to do Than counting heads in remote provinces. And this was the moment When a few farm workers and three Members of an obscure Persian sect Walked haphazard by starlight straight Into the  kingdom of heaven.