Nollaig Shona Daoibh! [Happy Christmas to you all ]

All grace comes precisely from nowhere – from silence and emptiness = which is what makes it grace. It is both you, and yet so much greater than you at the same time, which is probably why believers chose both up-rushing fountains and down-rushing doves as metaphors for this universal experience. Sometimes it is an uprush and sometimes it is a down-rush, but it is always from a silence that is larger than you, surrounds you, and names the deeper truth of the full moment that is you.

The word “prayer” has been so consistently trivialized to refer to something you do, instead of something that is done to you, with you, in you, and as you.

Then, like Mary, you are ready to give birth. You are ready for Christmas.

Richard Rohr