as preached at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston, December 24, 2022 Joy to the world! Can you feel it? Bright lights against the unanticipated cold. Festive songs, flickering candles, cider, cookies, stories of miracles and poems that attend to “[t]he starry form of love”… Christmas and the winter holidays are here. Joy to the world! Christmas and the winter holidays are a...
In this homily I asks "how are we celebrating this strange holly day? What of our customs we have managed to retain amid the heartache and horror?"
This past Friday the Washington Post journalist Robert Samuels put out a simple eleven-word tweet. Over an image of the Post, he wrote, “Have mercy. Every story in this front page made m[e] gasp.” The articles offered a litany of woes: “Trump suggests delaying election;” “U.S. economy contracts at record rate;” “Mail backlog raises fears of delays in ballot delivery;” “DHS gathers ‘intelligence’...