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  Christmas 2010  


The lines below speak of age-old themes with startling currency and invite reflection on the meaning of the Incarnation in the midst of our anxious, troubled times. May they speak a word of hope to you as Christians everywhere begin the celebration of the Feast of the Nativity.

 

And may the joy of Christ's coming fill and sustain you. The board of The Ekklesia Project is thankful for each of you and for your friendship in Christ.

 

 

Emmanuel.

God is with us. 

 

 

  

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

 

The innocent in gaols [jails]
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

 

History says, don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

 

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells.

 

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

 

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.

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From The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney, his translation of Sophocles's play Philoctetes.