Tags

Christianity, Christmas Eve, Grace, history, love

Well, it’s been a tough year, for all of us, our blogs, and our countries. I’ve lost dear friends, to death, and to internet silence, the vaccine madness, and I’ve dearly missed my friends on All along the Watchtower, so this Christmas Eve let’s join again in fellowship.

I was reminded today of Winston Churchill’s Christmas message in 1941 from the White House, to us all, Briton, American, and the rest of the Anglophone world. We were then engaged in a mighty endeavor to save our nations and our freedom. So it is again. (h/t Victory Girls)

24 December 1941

Washington, D.C.

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.”

In that same broadcast Franklin Roosevelt reminded us:

Our strongest weapon against this war is the conviction of the dignity and brotherhood of man which Christmas Day signifies—more than any other day or any other symbol.”

He continued, “Against enemies who preach the principles of hate and practice them, we set our faith in human love and in God’s care for us and all men everywhere.”

From me, Audre, and Nicholas, and all who frequent NEO

Merry Christmas to all

with our hopes and prayers for the renewal of this, one of our favorite places on the internet.

Tags

Apollo 8, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Quality of life, St Joseph

In the last few days, we’ve talked a bit of St Joseph, and we have commented that we see a lot of him in what we call ‘ordinary Joe’s’. Well, I’m not so sure that they are really very ordinary, because they too are creators, not of life perhaps, but of quality of life. What do they create? Kipling put it like this:

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,

   We were melted in the furnace and the pit—

We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,

   We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.

Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,

   And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:

And now, if you will set us to our task,

   We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
      We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,

      We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,

      We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,

      We can see and hear and count and read and write!
Would you call a friend from half across the world?

   If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,

You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled

   Across the arch of heaven while you wait.

Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?

   You can start this very evening if you choose,

And take the Western Ocean in the stride

   Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!
      The boat-express is waiting your command!

      You will find the Mauretania at the quay,

      Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand,

      And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.
Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head

   And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?

Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

   Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?

Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down

   From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,

To work the mills and tramways in your town,

   And irrigate your orchards as it flows?
      It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!

      Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake

      As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,

      And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,

   We are not built to comprehend a lie,

We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.

   If you make a slip in handling us you die!

We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—

   Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!-

Our touch can alter all created things,

   We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
      Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,

      It will vanish and the stars will shine again,

      Because, for all our power and weight and size,

      We are nothing more than children of your brain!

True, isn’t it? We did build that, and more

Tonight back in 1968, the America that I grew up in, and still love, using mainly our brains (and our slide rules) sent the world a message as well. Here it is

Sometimes, it seems as if those days are gone forever, and in a way, I suppose they are. But you know, that America (And the rest of Western Civilization) is still here, plugging away, without much notice or reward, just like Joseph, to protect, comfort and feed our families, and the rest of God’s children as well.