I'm drifting through this bizarro Scrooge and Marley world, and it's getting to me. It's backwards and no one sees it. Mobs of competing Scrooges roam the streets, statehouses, newsrooms and vestries, looking for some remaining opposition Tiny Tim, to yank the crutch from his arm and smash it because the store he bought it in wasn't unionized and the greeter didn't have acupuncture with no co-pay included on their medical. Or maybe Tim's in a union and we can't have that. They're pulling the drumstick from Fezziwig's mouth because he's a fattie and it's dark meat filled with transfats and they're under interdict. The one coal in the grate Bob Cratchit warms himself by is stamped out because it emits too much carbon, while they tell his wife maybe she shouldn't have so many kids and then she could feed them. People with trustfunds or sinecures stand around in a chorus and talk about how some misery might build a little character in that Cratchit clan.

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour.

To the ill-considered hopes of the last two centuries, which have reduced us to insignificance and brought us to the brink of nuclear and non-nuclear death, we can propose only a determined quest for the warm hand of God, which we have so rashly and self-confidently spurned. Only in this way can our eyes be opened to the errors of this unfortunate twentieth century and our bands be directed to setting them right. There is nothing else to cling to in the landslide: the combined vision of all the thinkers of the Enlightenment amounts to nothing.

Our five continents are caught in a whirlwind. But it is during trials such as these that the highest gifts of the human spirit are manifested. If we perish and lose this world, the fault will be ours alone.

My period had come for Prayer --
No other Art -- would do --
My Tactics missed a rudiment --
Creator -- Was it you?

The Silence condescended --
Creation stopped -- for Me --
But awed beyond my errand --
I worshipped -- did not "pray" --

Emily Dickenson VIA: Novalis

Oh Holy Night VIA: Maggie's Farm.