Summary: tomorrow is Christmas day. As I've done for most of the 31 years that I have been admitted to the practice of law, I will spend at least a part of Christmas Day in my office, were at least briefly I can find refuge from the stress and anguish that always seems to happen on Christmas Day. In my office, in the silence of the day, surrounded by books and other tools of the trade of a lawyer, I can find, no matter how briefly, a sense of peace that may enable me to get through the day.
Cathedral City – December 25, 2020. For me, there is no Christmas this year. No Christmas cards, no presents, no family gatherings, no friends. No parents. I knew it was going to be a tough Christmas when my mother passed away in January of this year. I knew that Christmas would be even tougher when I lost my best friend in this desert to what appears to of been a thoracic aneurysm two days before my birthday. Add to that the fact that most of my family seems to have turned its back on me, and it may be understandable that my reaction to Christmas, 2020 is an unfootnoted "bah, humbug."
Today, as at every Christmas for the last 20 years, while I was out and about, I saw one of the Coachella Valley's population of homeless people, this one walking along Highway 111 in front of the shopping center at the corner of Date Palm Drive, pushing a shopping cart with the kind of weary dignity that seems to be the hallmark of every un-housed person one sees at this time of year.
There, but for the grace of God, go I.
And so I say, again, "Bah, humbug."
I cannot know why this year should have been so un-footnotedly awful. All of us have had to live with the unfortunate reality of the worst pandemic in our lifetimes, made even more so by the feckless, incompetent, unhinged, well-nigh-treasonable "leadership" of Donald Trump. Never has a president so merited arrest, trial, conviction, forfeiture, and imprisonment as this one.
We can but hope that the incoming administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will not be moved by fear of the Trump base, but will be attentive, rather, to the anger of the large majority of Americans and of our allies who are clamoring to see Trump and his enablers held accountable for their manifest crimes and iniquities against the United States and against our allies.
But, more to the point, we, particularly those of us who are Conformist in our Religion, should always remember that ultimately, man proposes and God disposes. The ultimate answer to all our prayers is either "yes," "no," or, "wait." Now it may seem that an acknowledgment that God is in control is nothing more than a copout, an easy, fatalistic, abdication of our personal responsibility.
Yet, as we come into this Incarnation season, when, on the morrow, we commemorate the Incarnation of God Godself in the flesh of Jesus Christ our Savior, we must acknowledge, that, as difficult as it may seem, the Incarnation is the passionate reaching out of God to the People of God. God's passionate love for us is passionately expressed in the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of He Who bears us all in His pierced hands.
Yet still, faced with all that one has gone through this year, one still may be excused for saying "Bah, humbug," while paradoxically saying, as it is quoted in the Gospel according to St. Matthew, "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me," if it be God's will. Matt. 26:39.
Merry Christmas to you all.
