The Birth of Radical Hope
Christmas is the day that calls on us to look beyond ourselves, to get past the selfishness that seems to be the trademark of humanity, and understand that it's not about me. It's about us, and not just the obvious us, within our family or within our tribe (whatever that tribe may be) but a much more radical us: Everybody who has ever lived, and (more to the point) everybody who will ever live.
Part of getting beyond ourselves requires an interesting and very contrarian insight: That each of us makes a difference to the state of the future, whether we realize it (or admit it) or not. A small kindness to a troubled person at just the right moment can change that person's life, and echo down the decades and the centuries in ways that no one can predict. More than once I've gotten short notes from people who bought my books, saying things like, "I was failing CS101. I just didn't get it. Then somebody loaned me your assembly book and I read the first couple of chapters and it just clicked. Damn, you saved my life." I don't think he meant that I literally saved his life. But I'll bet that I changed it some.
You don't have to be an author to make a difference to someone. I've told the story about how a ten-year-old girl that I didn't even know recognized my sadness and gave me a quick hug over the back of a pew in church. I doubt she even remembers the incident today, but that doesn't matter. She reinforced my hope for the future, and every time I think about it, I still glow a little.
Held back by centuries of confusion and heresy, our theologians dance around the truth without being able to seize upon it. Sometimes they come close: As the author of Five Great Catholic Ideas wrote, "We are saved in community." Close, close, but the truth is even more radical: We are saved as community, from the deadly selfishness that only destroys the individuality it claims to serve. This is the central message of Jesus Christ: Love your neighbor as yourself, and make that the starting point for the far greater project of creating a human community within which each person strives with one eye on all the other strivers, so that no one is crushed, no one is abandoned, and no one is lost.
The birth of Christ is in fact the birth of Radical Hope: That ultimately all brokenness will be repaired, and in ways that we cannot yet understand, all will be put right. To predict a loss when the game has only begun is just cowardice. Screw that. None of us can see the end, and all of us can make a difference in the way the future unfolds. Radical Hope tells us that we can do itso let's stop dithering and arguing and just do it.
Carol and I wish all of you a happy and blessed Christmas. Thanks for reading what I post here, and don't lose touch.