Belated Star-Lighting

My local grands returned yesterday from a visit to Arizona, where they celebrated Christmas with their other grandparents and cousins. On their drive, they saw immigrants walking north in the roadway, exhausted, risking their lives. They wished them safety.

They returned home yesterday, and today I was invited to the annual ritual of Bella, lifted by her dad, placing the star on top of the tree, and Evan lighting the star while their mom and I look on. Tomorrow the Christmas decorations will come down, but today we hugged, we shared some light snacks, and we exchanged a few gifts. I gave Seth Rashid Khalidi’s The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine. Cristina gave me ATRIUM, a book of poetry by Palestinian-American Hala Alyan. 

We celebrate a less glitzy winter holiday this year in the context of great suffering. I’m grateful to cbimages for sending me the most powerful Christmas sermon I’ve ever heard. It’s only 17 minutes, this sermon by Munther Isaac, Lutheran minister in Bethlehem, worth a listen whether you’ve ever been interested in Christianity or not. I had heard sound bites from the sermon on social media, but the whole seventeen minutes is a beautifully-crafted, masterfully-written piece  that leaves us all contemplating what it means to be complicit with “empire.”