Who knew I still had such tears inside my aging eyes? But they flow, as I listen to Nana Mouskouri singing "Stille Nacht" and read Randi Reitan's Christmas letter to her son:
Maybe that is why it is so hard for me to face Christmas each year and not be able to wrap up the one gift I most want to give you. As a mother, it is such a part of my being to want to nurture and love my children. It is the mother in me that wants to protect and provide for you. It is the mother in me that is hurting so much when I am helpless in being able to give you the one gift I have wanted to give you since the day you told us you were gay.
I want to give you equality. I want to wrap it up in a beautiful box, and I want to put it under our tree right now. I want to see you open it on Christmas Eve and with great joy live with it all your days.
I love you,
Mama
My Christmas prayer: that a few more human beings in our too cold, too cruel world begin to hear with the ears of their hearts, as mothers are capable of doing with their children. And that a few more people begin to recognize the deep pain that injustice inflicts.
And that the leaders of faith communities now gathering to remember the birth of Jesus begin to attend to the voice of the mother inside each of them, inside each of us, whose primary concern is to nurture and love. Not to demonize, demean, and wound.
And grateful thanks, this Christmas eve, to the many wonderful human beings who do care and who have brought such love and joy into Steve's and my life and the lives of many others--several of whom I've met in recent days, after the blogosphere connected us (with more dratted tears as I remember each of these holy folks and their recent kindness to us). Happy Hanukkah, happy winter solstice, happy holy days wherever they are and whoever celebrates them:
Because everyone deserves a place at the table the Divine Mother sets for all.
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