Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 126

TO SHARE LOVE_HAPPY BOXING DAY!

One of the great things about love ...

is that it grows in ever larger ripples when shared.

One shares with another, 

then that heart touched by love shares, too.

One becomes two. Two becomes four. And four becomes eight.

Not every heart which receives, gives, of course.

Who of us has not received compassion and felt the better for it?

We are let into a busy traffic line, and we wave thanks.

But do we give it? 

Do we let another in somewhere else down the line?

Or do we just go on our way, too much in a hurry to return the favor to a stranger?

Have we received compassion, wisdom, kindness repeatedly from a friend, 

but then have been hurt by that same friend?

Can we find it in ourselves, that after taken so much, to give one thing ...

the benefit of the doubt,

to trust in the past acts of friendship to give ...

forgiveness?


That is the secret of Boxing Day, 

still celebrated in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom ...


(though not as widespread as it once was --
like many customs of kindness and compassion)

to give from the surplus that we have received on Christmas Day.

One of the clues to Boxing Day's origins can be found in the Christmas Carol, "Good King Wenceslas."

Wenceslas, who was Duke of Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen's Day — Dec. 26 —

when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. 

Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine

and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant's door.

Christmas love and magic is better when shared. 

Just like laughter is somehow more than doubled when the joke or 

the funny movie is shared with a friend.

What is more beautiful than a unicorn in the snow?

Two unicorns racing through the flurry of snowflakes together.
***

MERRY CHRISTMAS NIGHT!

MERRY CHRISTMAS with a STAR WARS ending!

Merry Christmas to all my friends!


Christmas' present to all of us

is the subtle messages underneath the obvious ones:


1.) Love comes unexpectedly.

2.) You find love in surprising places.

3.) Love comes at its own season, in its own unique way, wearing a face you weren't looking for.

 
But then, we can be forgiven for not hearing those messages. After all, none of us is perfect. Well, there was that one.

 
But we killed Him.

 
Or did we? 


I choose to think not. I know His message and the messages of this day are not dead.

Love never quite dies. 

It stays in the sparkle in the eyes of each passing generation of children.

The best Christmas stories, in both movies and books, remind us that love always seems to find a way,

though it comes to us in unexpected ways, shining in the eyes of those we might have overlooked in the past.

 
The Jews were expecting a king.  

They never got one because they were looking in the wrong places for the wrong faces.

A manger contained the prince of peace in its straw. Few were even aware of His arrival.

Only those who were not too proud to stop and consider love might come unexpectedly 

and from a source we would never have suspected of containing it. 


And only to those who had kept looking up.

 
Christmas teaches us to keep the child's sense of awe, of wonder, and of the willingness to believe ...

in the possibilities of miracles,

of the soft whisper of magic in the air if you but listen,

and in the healing power of love.

Like young Kevin in HOME ALONE, 

it is up to us alone to protect the home of our hearts from being robbed of their innocence and love. 


Sometimes we do not see unicorns in the snow because we have stopped looking for them.

 
Continue to look. 

Continue to hold gently to the possibility of a miracle waiting for you just around the next corner or the one after that.

 
Excuse me. I think I hear a strange whinnying outside my door.

 
I'll open it to have a look. 

My unicorn may be out there below my terrace right now waiting for me to go for a ride in the moonlight.

You never know.

Keep looking and believing, Roland
***

CHRISTMAS EVE, THE MAGIC OF THE THRESHOLD

There are moments that happen that change how you look on life and on what is and is not possible.    You are never the same afterwards.  
 The Nativity was one of those times.

 There is even a word for this situation: “Liminality.” 
“Liminality” is the word for the threshold moment: 
from the Latin root limin, meaning the centerline of the doorway.
  Liminality is the moment of crossing over. 

It describes the transitional phase of personal change, 
where one is neither in an old state of being nor a new, 
and not quite aware of the implications of the event. 
All the stages of life include liminality. 

Life is nothing but moments of crossing over. 

Liminality is why we celebrate Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve but not other holidays’ eves.



We celebrate Christmas Eve 


because Jesus is traditionally thought to have been born at midnight.  



And we celebrate New Year’s Eve because midnight is when the year changes. 




Christmas Eve is a threshold moment.




We can choose to stay on the other side of the moment, 


refusing to enter and accept what gifts await us.



After all, for most of the world there is still no room in the Inn for He who breathed the world into existence.



Christmas Eve is the time to reflect on what awaits us beyond whatever threshold we choose to cross ...


to reflect on what thresholds we thought would always be there but now are gone, 


along with the mortal hearts that waited for us beyond them.



Whatever you believe, 


it can be a healing thing to take Christmas Eve to reflect on all the gifts given to you this past year


and on what needs exist in your surroundings that you can be an agent of healing by meeting. 



Christmas Eve revives the wonder of childhood 


where snowflakes sing on their way down to the ground, 


where faeries ice skate on bird baths, 


and magic waits for us to open the door of our hearts to let it in.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE, MY FRIENDS!

NATIVITY SCENES

I drove past a Catholic Hospital on my way to work this morning, and I saw a lovingly crafted Nativity Scene.




I felt a bit more in the Christmas mood just seeing it since you do not see them very often anymore.


After all this is the Age of Enlightenment, of Sophistication, of Religious Tolerance ...




Unless you are a Christian ...


then, keep your beliefs to yourself, thank you very much!


Kindly stay hidden




and do not bother us with your world-view ...

though you are a lout if you do not give us the freedom of expression to beat you over the head with our beliefs.


But that is fitting in an odd way actually ...






The first Christians in the Roman Empire were hunted and persecuted.


Say at an inn, you sat across from a traveler and wondered from his words if he were a fellow believer,


you took your finger and drew the top swirl of the fish image from the condensation of your drink ...


If he completed the bottom image of the crude fish with his own finger, 

you knew you were in the company of a fellow believer.




The Greek word for fish is "ichthys."


 As early as the first century, Christians made an acrostic from this word: 

Iesous Christos Theou Yios Soter, i.e. Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.


The fish has plenty of other theological overtones as well, for Christ fed the 5,000 with 2 fishes and 5 loaves.




So if we are now once again cordoned off because of our beliefs, we are in good company.




But we can still reach out quietly in Christian Love, 

giving comfort and compassion during this season, silently living the world-view in which we believe.


Once again, I end with Alan Paton's wise words:

“There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.”


Now, for a bit of Christmas cheer:

SINS OF CHRISTMAS

{Courtesy Steve Z Photography}
“No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused”
- Charles Dickens, A CHRISTMAS CAROL


So many different kinds of death hunted us this Christmas Eve all through the French Quarter, I would’ve gotten a headache trying to count them all –

If I already hadn’t had one – to go along with the broken ribs, fingers, and nose. 




I looked over at Alice, my ghoul friend. The very sight of her made me smile sadly. The night was somehow better. 

Oh, the fear was still there.

We were going to die.

But seeing her love for me in her eerie eyes said the impossible was possible.

Her ability to turn to mist had been ripped from her by DayStar – but not her love for me or mine for her.

There were some things Darkness could not steal from you -- you had to throw them away yourself.

And I was holding onto her love with both bruised hands.


She sobbed softly, "Our first Christmas together is our last."

I had taken as many blows for her as I could. Wasn’t that what Love did? Sacrifice for the one loved?

My heart ached at the thought of all Alice meant to me, and I knew that love did more, was more.

Love was a magic garment, spun of a fabric so thin that it couldn't be seen, 

yet so strong that even my mother, Death, could not tear it,

A cloak that could not be frayed by use, that brought warmth into what is often an unbearably cold world - 

but at times love could also be as heavy as chain mail.

Bearing the mantle of love on those occasions, when it was a sacred weight, 

made it more precious. While in better times, it caught the wind in its sleeves like wings and lifted you. 




Murmuring a prayer for forgiveness, Alice had buried the statue of the Madonna and taken its shawl. 

I had done the same with the statue of Joseph, taking its robe and hood.

We kneeled beside the wooden manger in the St. Louis Cathedral’s courtyard Nativity Scene.

Right in plain sight of the slowly sniffing and scouting horrors prowling for us.

I didn’t even know some of the monsters hunting us. I knew enough to know Alice and I were goners.

Winged Gahe. Starved Amal. Scaled Soyoko. 

And the ghosts, given flesh, fangs, and claws by DayStar, of all the people Alice had eaten and I had killed in self-defense over the years.

I stiffened at the tolling in the distance. I heard the bells, ringing their familiar, mocking refrain:


PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN.


In despair, I bowed my head.

‘There is no peace on earth! God is only a ghost wind tonight. Hate is god now, and the strong worship at its feet. The innocent die. The helpless cry out. Does anybody hear them?’

The night winds became soft words:  

‘You kneel on holy ground and dare to ask that? And you, of all living, should know the reality of ghosts.'

I felt my hair ruffled by icy fingers.   

'Besides, you heard the cries.  You helped. Have you ever considered what Power brought you where Need existed?'

I looked up. A stern priest, a book of prayers or some such in his hands. Alice went as pale as I had ever seen her.

"Pere Antoine!"

He spoke in razored whispers. 

"For my sins in the Inquisition I am bound to this plane. So Friar Antonio de Sedella is now who I am."

I saw the self-hate in his eyes. I saw the same look in Alice's.

The world is filled with broken people.

The tragedy wasn't that people were broken. 

The world breaks most of us. 

The tragedy was that so few were mended. 

But if we are loved, we become stronger at the broken places.

I looked to the horrors so near. Though Pere Antoine and Alice had spoken low, the creatures had stiffened. To speak again would be to bring them to us.

None of us can ever save himself. 

We are the means of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others can we lift ourselves out of the darkness into the light.

Why not die, letting Pere Antoine know that I believed in him even when he no longer could?

I shook my head and whispered back. "No, before Katrina, you helped me. You’ve helped others before and since."

The winged Gahe spun at my words, and I blurted out, 

"With my last words, I say you don’t deserve to be bound here. You are Pere Antoine!"


So many horrors rushed us that I got sick to my stomach. I edged in front of Alice to take the brunt of the charge. This was going to hurt so bad.

Pere Antoine’s ghost eyes grew wet, and he cocked his head as if listening to words only he could hear, and he gestured, speaking loud:

"This is Holy Ground!"


The Shadowlanders must’ve forgotten that in their lust for our deaths. It bought them their own.

Pere Antoine, the prayer book tumbling to the grass, slapped both hands on the shoulders of Alice and me.
A warm tingle cascaded through me. Reality smeared in spirals of fiery, golden stardust as if God were wiping clean a chalkboard.

Sand not grass was suddenly beneath our knees. Cutting through me was a cold wind that can only be birthed in the desert.
The manger scene was now real.
A young man and a younger woman were looking sheer love at the cooing baby. 

Outside the stable, high in the night sky, rippled sounds that only angels could sing.
My bones were transformed into trilling tuning forks.

Pere Antoine kneeled beside me.

"God is not dead, nor does He sleep. No matter how dark, He always sees you. You are a part of His Heart and thus never alone. Because of their very natures, the wrong shall fail, and those who trust prevail."

The baby locked eyes with mine. 

Eyes clear and echoing with strange wisdom and delight, murmuring that while most of my life I had felt loved by no one, there had been One who always had.

Pere Antoine whispered.

"He wanted you and Alice to have a ‘down home’ Christmas."

The baby laughed a chiming sound of icicles dancing.

Alice reached over and squeezed my hand. "I was wrong, Victor. Our first Christmas together is THE first Christmas."

And impossible thought it was, the French Quarter bells rang all around us:


PEACE ON EARTH. GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN.
***If you enjoyed this Christmas tale, you can buy the audiobook of BRING ME THE HEAD OF McCORD:
http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Bring-Me-the-Head-of-McCord-Audiobook/B00NHUX5KM/

You can listen to it plus 6 other tales of mine, including a chapter from HIBBS, THE CUB WITH NO CLUE!

The ROGUE ONE that wasn't

Thanks to  http://lrmonline.com/news/five-reasons-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-is-more-important-than-the-force-awakens
Remember last year's A FAMILIAR HOPE? 

 Oh, I mean THE FORCE AWAKENS with the same plot points of EPISODE 4.

ROGUE ONE is a great film, perhaps the best STAR WARS movie of the last four 

and on par with THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.

It just isn't the one promised in the first three trailers and featurettes.  

There are so many scenes and bits of dialogue in those trailers, 

hinting at a different story, that are just not in the final movie.

It makes me wonder what kind of movie the original cut would have been.

Have you seen ROGUE ONE?  What did you think of it?

SPOILERS ALERT! 
Here is a fun explanation and review 
of the final version of ROGUE ONE

THREADS OF TIME ...

FABRIC OF THE SOUL:



The Christmas Spirit seems a thing of the past  does it not?
There are no simple solutions to the problems facing city fathers I know.  
Still, cruelty seems a poor solution here where temperatures will go below zero in the days to come. 
Cruelty seems to be written into the code of Man's DNA.  
That is why compassion is so rare.  
It must overcome the inertia of Man's natural inclination.

“There is only one way in which one can endure man's inhumanity to man and that is to try, in one's own life, to exemplify man's humanity to man.” - Alan Paton (South African author and anti-apartheid activist)
To end on a lighter note (for those who enjoyed ROGUE ONE):

ORSON SCOTT CARD

 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0765385872/
When you read that name, you most likely think of ENDER'S GAME 

and the subsequent novels in the series.

You know me:  

I write alternate historical fantasy with a slight poetic flair ...

So it is no surprise that I am quite delighted to have discovered the ALVIN MAKER series 

through the stellar audiobook productions of them.

It is  an unforgettable story about young Alvin Maker: 

the seventh son of a seventh son. 

Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard and folk magic is real, 

Alvin is gifted with the Power. 

He must learn to use his gift wisely. 

But dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him.


“A tribute to the art of storytelling. . . highly recommended.”  
―Library Journal

“Card has uncovered a rich vein of folklore and magic here, to which his assured handling of old time religion 

and manifest love of children is admirably suited: an appealing and intriguing effort.”  
―Kirkus Reviews

“A beguiling book. . . robust but reflective blend of folktale, history, parable and personal testimony, pioneer narrative. 

The series promises to be a story of deep delight.” 
―Publishers Weekly

Do yourself a favor and try this series.  You won't be disappointed.

GOD CAN'T BREATHE

Ten days before a Katrina-bruised Christmas, 

and here I was out on the streets once more.  Alice had told me she never wanted to see me again.

Don't ask why.  

I'm Victor Standish. 

I always find a way to snatch defeat out of the mouth of victory.  It is my curse to be always alone.




It was night and cold for once in New Orleans.  A little black and white puppy, starved down to a walking set of ribs, shivered in the alley to my right.




I took the stale croissant from my lips.  I bent down and held it out to the poor little guy.  

"C'mon, Lucky. Good groceries."

I jerked as a black man appeared as if out of nowhere.  "You call him Lucky?"

"Yeah," I smiled.  "He's got a new friend ... me."

I petted Lucky's tiny head. "And he'll never be hungry or alone again."

The man looked ripped as if he pumped iron, and he laughed at me. 

"Not iron ... wood.  Plane a tree into planks, and it builds muscle."

He sighed as he saw Lucky hesitantly nuzzle my hand. 

 “No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, 

to be stunned by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.”

He squeezed my shoulder.  "Name's Joshua.  Yours?"

"Victor.  Victor Standish."

"Heard of you."

"I'm nobody.  Just a street punk living out another nothing day."

Joshua shook his head.   

“No day is without profound meaning, no matter how nothing it might seem, no matter whether you are a street kid or a movie star."

He nodded to Lucky.  

"Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others. 

Each smallest act of kindness reverberates across great distances and spans of time, 

affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, 

because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, 

until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away."

As Lucky ducked back into the alley, Joshua looked at a roving band of police heading our way, malice in their eyes and guns on their hips. 

(A really sucky combination.)

" Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act,  

can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, 

poisoning people whom you have never met and never will."

Joshua pushed me behind him and into the alley with Lucky.  

"All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—

that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands."

 As the cops spotted Joshua and started to laugh like wolves, he said softly, 

"Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world 

that great days and thrilling possibilities are combined in this precious gift called the present.” 



He slipped to his knees, putting his hands atop his head.  It wouldn't do him any good.  

What few cops were left in New Orleans were pretty much stressed-out, walking time bombs.  

I faded into the shadows.  Not that I was deserting Joshua.  My name wasn't Peter.  

You never leave a friend behind.  Friends are the only true wealth you can expect in this life and the only treasure you can hope to find in the next.

Lucky growled as the bully boys whacked Joshua with their night sticks to get him back on his feet.

"Hey!" yelled one.  "He's attacking!"

Another grabbed Joshua by the throat, fingers closing in on his wind-pipe.  

"Can't ... breathe," Joshua gasped out.

"Hey, Ass-Wipes!" I snarled with five ball bearings between the fingers of each hand.  "God can't breathe!"

"What?" snarled the closest to me.

I said low, "In as much as you did it unto the least of these, you have done it unto Me."

"Knee cap him, Jim!" spat the officer to his right.

I slung two ball bearings each into their open mouths.  

Suddenly, they were the ones on the ground not being able to breathe. 

Joshua got up.  "How did you know?"

With His words giving proof to my guess, I felt a great weight lift off my chest.  

While all these rough years I felt as if no one saw, no one cared.


Someone always had. 

"Well, you replied to my thought about you being pumped.  And I read a lot.  Jesus is just Greek for Joshua.  And it is your time of the year."

Joshua shook his head at me.  

"Every day is my time of the year.  Now, come help me with these officers."

"Aw, man!  I am not gonna do mouth-to-mouth on them.  I mean I might kiss a ghoul, and all, but even I have standards!"

"Victor!"

"Uh, can we at least wait until they're deprived of oxygen long enough to be brain-damaged?"

"Victor!!"

"Oh, yeah, that would be kinda redundant, wouldn't it?"

But it wasn't a total loss. Lucky peed on them.