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A Christmas Story: 2020

Ran out the door of the studio last night as all of our staff was celebrating, and the last of the Christmas clientele were departing. There was a young man standing on the steps outside trying to read all the signage we have up, which in spite of 4 pages of copy, pretty much says “We cannot and will not make you do anything, but our lovely Govt has other plans. Welcome to our studio”. I looked at him and asked if I could help him. Him: “I was just wondering if it was alright if I could come in?”

The Significance of Santa Claus(e)

My Christmas morning began as they all seem to have, today. Being beckoned from sleep, I pulled on sweat pants and sweater and wandered out into the dark at 4 am on what in California was a clear, cold morning. The cold earth against feet which only a few moments ago had been under the covers, sharpened my senses, and bending back I looked up to see the matrix of lights strung out within the dome of a multi hued, dark firmament. I then let it all flow through me from ground to sky and back. And I thank God

Holy Water: A Christmas History

Christmas began for me around 6 am on Dec 25th in 1955, when I was born. My Mother had been on her way to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve in Milwaukee Wisconsin. She had stumbled on the steps leading up to the church and labor began. I like to think it was me who pushed her. That somehow, I knew Christmas and I, we would need to become acquainted. “Let me out!” I can imagine the look on my Mom’s face as she realized she would not be in church that day, Catholicism being what it was at that

Christmas Sonnet

This Song from John Lennon resonates with me. But not for the reasons one may at first surmise. For me the challenge is contained in the lyrics “So what have you done?” Doing, going, is what matters. A young woman making her way up the stairs of a very old Catholic Church in the cold of a Milwaukee Wisconsin night, tripped. It was Christmas Eve. She had been on her way to Midnight Mass, as was the tradition for many Catholics of the time. I was born sometime around 6 am the next morning. People always ask me if I

American Christmas

We have a problem residing in our country this Christmas. “Which one?” you might jump to respond. The problem of which I write is one of recall, memory. Memory is a fundamental component in establishing progress for a vast array of reasons. But where our communities are concerned, it is even more pertinent. I believe that we as a Country have forgotten what it means to be American. I really do. We had grown fat and insular the past several decades. The affect was pinged out and the world responded to this, as an opportunity to parasitize this Country, to

The Gift

It is Christmas Eve 2009. Christmas means a lot of different things to many people. The transformative and renewing aspects of the holiday have always struck me with the most repetitive sort of impact. Each year it is the same, yet different. This season was a case in point along that theorem. I pondered that earlier this evening as my girlfriend Donna and I hummed along upcoast in our little Mazdaspeed, under the fading amber afterglow of a brilliant day, this eve before Christmas. The Channel Islands stood in purple shadow relief, as bright streaks of warm color stroked the

Repose

Our lives are a lot like that of a wave, in how we roll through the sea of life, in an ocean of existence, headed for some place. But unlike a wave, we have choices we can make that determine our final destiny. Those choices determine who, and what we are, because we learn from them. Hopefully making for a somehow “better” you and I. The ability to choose is what makes us human. The desire to select by principle, can make us something else. In the Gospel there is a key saying that has always spurred me when I

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