Clarification

Concerning my reflection on December 23 regarding hope, allow me to make a clarification. In my attempt to clarify what hope is and is not, I personified it, but as I reread the piece it seemed unclear and open to misinterpretation. I wrote:

Life is also made difficult for Hope because there are so many imposters out there walking the streets, buying up time on the airwaves. In reality, they are poor imitations, not grounded in an experience of consciously facing and waiting in the dark. These charlatans not only give in to their fear of the dark but flee it in an attempt to outrun it.

My reference to imposters and charlatans “walking the streets, buying up time on the airwaves” was not aimed at talk show hosts and personalities on television and radio (although there are plenty of those to go around). Rather, I was meaning to personify the bogus counterfeits of hope, namely, positive thinking, optimism, fantasy, or false hope which are so rampant today.

Here is a Poem for Christmas that I think you will enjoy.
Carol of Brother Ass

In the barnyard of my bone

Let the animals kneel down—
Neither ecstasy nor anger,
Wrath nor mildness need hide longer,
On the branching veins together
Dove may sing with hawk her brother.

Let the river of my blood
Turned by star to golden flood
Be the wholesome radiance
Where the subtle fish may dance,
Where the only bait to bite
Dangles from the lures of light.

Let the deep angelic strain
Pierce the hollows of my brain;
Struck for want of better bell,
Every nerve grows musical;
Make my thews and sinews hum
And my tautened skin a drum.

Bend, astonished, haughty head
Ringing with the shepherds’ tread;
Heart, suspended, rib to rib,
Rock the Christ Child in your crib,
Till so hidden, Love afresh
Lovely walks the world in flesh.♦

© Vassar Miller
Source: from If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems of Vassar Miller.

Christ is born again!
Dan

Artwork: Peaceable Kingdom, Fritz Eichenberg