For some of us, home is a place of peace and tranquility where we are surrounded by tradition and love. For others, home is a more elusive concept. During this holy season, we pray that all our neighbors, across the street or across the globe, find in their hearts the hope and peace we all seek, for ourselves and for each other.
For this Christmas of 2022, I am inspired to share with you the offering of Anthony Esolen called “The House of Christmas.” Esolen is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts in N.H., and I believe his imagination captures that feeling of awe and wonder... that feeling of home.
And so, as I share his message with you, I wish you and
your loved ones a wonderful, holy and glorious Season of Hope.
"The House of Christmas" by Anthony Esolen
It’s one of the great paradoxes of human life that we so often find ourselves strangers in a strange land. “Bury me not on the lone prairie,” begs the dying lad in the old cowboy song, as he longs to be laid beside his father, far away. But though they are friendly to him, they do not heed his request. The patriarch Joseph, as he lay dying, made his countrymen promise that they would not leave his bones behind in Egypt — the land where his word was law; it was not to be their home. The soldier will never again see his true love on “the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond.”
Yet even when we are at home, we are not quite at home. When I was a boy, I was often lonely as I gazed from a hilltop over my town spread out far below and across the valley, and felt that it was not my home. Yet I miss that hilltop, though I know if I were to stand upon it today, I would miss even more; for the town has changed, and many a homely thing I took for granted and in a strange way even cherished is no longer there. Blaise Pascal once said that man’s chief trouble is that he cannot sit quiet in his room. For he feels somehow that it is not his room after all; it isn’t where he ultimately belongs. But where does he belong? He cannot say.
Chesterton says it for us. We
belong, we can be home, only in the place where a mother who had no home had to
give birth to her child. It was a “crazy stable,” he says, meaning that its
timbers were cracked and tilted and its thatch was caving in, but this place
was stronger and more permanent “than the square stones of Rome.” We have lost
our hearts, he says, and where did we lose them? You cannot find the place on a
map. No star-chart and no compass will take you to the lost Eden. And
everywhere else is a foreign land to us, even if we but walk a few blocks from
work to the houses we live in, and we lay our heads peacefully in bed at night.
That’s not to say that these foreign lands are poor and paltry things. Not at
all! Here we have “chance and honor and high surprise,” in the daily battle of
human life, but our homes are “under miraculous skies, / Where the yule tale
was begun.”
Rome may be tall, but this place is
taller. Eden may be old, but this place is older — or rather it never has grown
old, because it is the place of the eternal Son, the same who was born in a stable
in Bethlehem and laid to sleep in a manger, whose hands played with the stars.
We say, in the season of Advent, “Come to us!” And He replies, “Yes, I have
come — and I am calling you home.”
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting
sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and
stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a
foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing
eyes,
And chance and honor and high
surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous
skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads
that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long
ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can
show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wives'
tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is
enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the
fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible
things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable
wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the
wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and
that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Thank you, Alexis. Very nice.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing with me. There’s so much to try to digest. You first paragraph is a powerful reminder that the love with share with others at Christmas is really intended as a yearly long, lifetime goal. I love you!
ReplyDeleteThis is beautiful and a wonderful reminder that “God has set eternity in the hearts of man.”
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. I’ve missed your thought provoking blogs. Love you!
Thanks for the lovely thoughts. Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.
ReplyDeleteThank you, very beautiful. May we all find and feel safe and loved this year in our Christmas Home.
ReplyDelete. Very nice thoughts here. And I want to wish you a happy and VERY healthy New Year!
ReplyDeleteVery touching. Merry Christmas my dear friend.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this.
ReplyDeleteThis made me sigh and made my heart melt. Thank you, thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteIt is always a pleasure, to see your name in my inbox. I hope that you are doing well, and the pandemic did not disrupt your life to a great degree.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your Blogposts. I have to mention, that you were always an eloquent speaker, and your missives are no less impressive.
May your Christmas be blessed, with loved ones surrounding you, and in the New Year, may peace and happiness always find a way to your door. May the Divine Assistance always be with you.
Hi Lucky! Hope all is well with you. It's been too many decades since we connected. Trying to contact you and cannot find any other way. Could you please ping my email at bob.vachon@gmail.com? Thanks!
ReplyDelete