Christmas is a beautiful season to stop and look deeply into what it means to hope and to experience freedom. The story of Christmas tells about people’s pining and hunger for liberation, both personal and societal. It was a time of great political unrest arising from the weight of oppression. The religious institution was stuck in tradition and teachings that were not giving real hope to people who were looking for a way out of suffering into freedom. In many ways, these realities reverberate through time into our lives today. This year in particular, in many countries across the world, people have been clamoring for justice and challenging oppressive power. On a personal level, we seek freedom from the inner cage of our anxieties and fears. We also long for the softening and loosening of unhealthy mental habits and behaviors that keep us away from connecting with ourselves and others in a genuine way.
Christmas is a beautiful time to celebrate the freedom that can be found in the quiet simplicity of a humble birth. This tells us that perhaps, the deepest and most penetrating moments of freedom, take place in the most ordinary of circumstances. When the heart has learned to rest and recognize the true taste of freedom, every moment can open a door to the real happiness we seek. Christmas is a special time for us to pause from our busyness, to wonder at the giftedness of each moment, and to regain the vision of our true north star. This act of courageous and open-hearted awareness is Christmas. We bring this quality of awareness as a gift that nurtures our relationships and beloved communities, sending ripples from our inner freedom to transform the world around us.
All of us from Circle of Hope send you our deepest wishes for a heartful and liberating Christmas.
-Joanna Herrera
Executive Director
Circle of Hope Community Services, Inc.
“Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life
would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite
your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here
with no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
that have helped to school your mind
in the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands
urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
your health, eyes to behold the world,
thoughts to countenance the unknown,
memory to harvest vanished days,
your heart to feel the world’s waves,
your breath to breathe the nourishment
of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
may you open the gift of solitude
in order to receive your soul;
enter the generosity of silence
to hear your hidden heart;
know the serenity of stillness
to be enfolded anew
by the miracle of your being.”
― John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings