Mary Oliver writes,
And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?
Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.
This might seem like an awkwardly timed text to consider the week of Christmas. This is the time when we lavish our love on others, after all. And this week is the final countdown! Do we have a present for Aunt Susie? Do we have everything we need before the stores close tomorrow evening? It always feels like I’m forgetting something, or someone, on December 23.
But what if the very thing we are forgetting is ourselves?
Take a moment today to consider how you might prepare yourself to receive the Love of God, coming to be born in you. In your very being.
That is the miracle of Christmas, after all! Not only that God came so long ago to be born in the cold, wet hay of a manger, but that God continues to come, to be born in us, all these years later.
Have you made room in your spirit for the Christ child this year? Have you tended to your own soul, so that it might be ready to receive this tremendous gift? What is it that best creates that sacred space within you?
I’m mindful of the words by Parker Palmer, who teaches us that “self-care is never a selfish act—it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to the true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.”
There is a constant dialogue, an eternal flow between the inner work of spiritual growth and the outer work of love and justice. When we can tend to our spirits, that’s what best equips us to respond to the needs of the world.
Those needs feel especially heavy this year, don’t they? Which means that the need for soul-care is all the more important. Decide now that you will do the hard and holy work of tending to your “tough and tenacious soul” (Palmer) so that you might fully live out your “one wild and precious life” (Oliver) in God’s world.
Prayer: O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
Mary Alice Birdwhistell is the Pastor of Highland Baptist Church and loves sharing life and ministry with this incredible community of faith. She and her husband, Evan, have a cat, Oliver (yes, named after Mary Oliver). Mary Alice loves writing, preaching, taking barre classes, and cheering on the UK Wildcats.