Let us speak now to the silence that arrives when the bells have stopped ringing. Let us speak to the world as it is, stripped of the tinsel and the wrapping paper, waiting for the sun to rise on an ordinary day.
We have spent this season looking for a star. We have gathered around mangers, around menorahs, around fires, and around tables, seeking a warmth that can push back the long, cold shadow of the winter. We have called this time by many names—Christmas, Hanukkah, Solstice, Yule, Kwanzaa—each a different language for the same desperate, beautiful prayer: Please, let us not be alone in the dark. We have lit candles against the encroaching night, not just to see, but to be seen; to signal to the vast, indifferent universe that we are here, that we are breathing, and that we matter. Now, the wax has hardened, the feast is eaten, and the guests have gone home. The magic that felt so tangible in the candlelight now threatens to dissolve in the gray light of dawn. But this is not the end of the story; it is the beginning of the truth.
Let us confess the deepest truth of all: The light does not belong to one tribe. It does not belong to one creed, one book, or one nation. The hunger for kindness is not Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Buddhist, or secular. It is human. It is the marrow of our bones and the salt in our blood. The need to be seen, to be held, to be fed, and to be forgiven is the common currency of every soul that has ever walked this earth. Whether we kneel on a rug, sit in a pew, or stand in a forest, the ache in the chest when we are lonely feels exactly the same. The tears of a mother watching over a sick child are the same temperature in every hemisphere. The laughter of lovers reunited defies translation because it needs none. We are united not by the answers we claim to possess, but by the fragile, burning questions that keep us awake at night.
We are taught that we are different. We are taught that our prayers rise to different skies, that our borders are real lines carved into the earth rather than ink drawn on paper, and that our brothers and sisters across the ocean are strangers to be feared. We are schooled in the history of our divisions, memorizing the grievances of our ancestors until they become our own. But when the night is at its coldest, we all shiver in the same language. When the hunger bites, we all ache in the same place. And when a hand reaches out to pull us from the water, we do not ask for its pedigree or its politics; we only grasp it, and in that frantic, life-affirming grasp, we are one. In the face of the storm, the earthquake, and the long night of the soul, the artificial walls we build crumble, revealing the terrifying and wonderful truth that we are all sharing the same small, fragile raft.
Let us ask for the courage to carry the feast into the famine. To realize that the spirit we felt in these stories—the spirit of the open door, the broken bread, the shared song—was not a magic trick performed by a date on the calendar. It was us. It was the best part of us, waking up for a few short weeks. It was the version of humanity we are capable of being when we decide that love is more important than efficiency, and that people are more important than possessions. We proved to ourselves that we can be generous, that we can be patient, that we can be kind.
And if we can be that kind for a day, we can be that kind for a lifetime.
May we refuse to pack our humanity away in boxes to be stored in the attic until next year. May we refuse to let the compassion fade like the needles of a dry pine tree, swept away with the dust of the holiday. Let us not treat our goodness like a seasonal decoration, something to be displayed only when the mood is right. Instead, let us wear it like a second skin. Let it be the coat we put on when we face the Monday morning commute, the patience we bring to the grocery line, the grace we offer in the heat of an argument. May we be brave enough to be the “Christmas” for someone who has never heard the word, and for whom the word means nothing, but for whom the act of love means everything.
Let us go forth from this season not as tourists returning to a cynical world, but as pilgrims who have seen the possibility of a better one. A tourist visits a beautiful place, takes a picture, and leaves unchanged. A pilgrim travels to the source, drinks from the well, and is transformed forever. Let us be pilgrims of the light. Let us believe that the impossible things we read about—the soldier lowering the rifle, the neighbor unlocking the door, the stranger becoming the savior—are not fables. They are blueprints. They are instructions for how to build a habitable world.
Let us look at the world—broken, messy, beautiful, and wild—and see it not as a place to be conquered, but as a family to be reunited. We do not need more conquerors. We do not need more critics. We need menders. We need weavers. We need those who are willing to pick up the threads of connection that have been severed and tie them back together, knot by stubborn knot. Let the light we kindled here be the fire that warms the rest of the year. Let it burn in the fluorescence of the office, in the noise of the subway, in the silence of the hospital waiting room, and in the quiet, unobserved corners of our own homes.
For the night is over. The morning has come. The bells have faded, but the echo remains in our hands. The holiday is finished, but the work of love has just begun.
We are the light. We are the hope. We are the answer to our own prayers. Go in peace, to love and serve the world.
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