A Holiday Wish
Christmas is the time for telling stories.
Remember, we were told that good would always triumph?
That most of us are really good at heart?
That underneath the evil there would sometimes beat a heart of gold?
But alas, on some days, I forget that the glory always lives behind the ordinary.
Some days it is easy to believe that the duckling stays ugly,
the princess keeps sweeping cinders for the rest of her life, Hansel and Gretel do not find their way home,
and the frog never turns into a prince, ever.
Some days it is too easy to forget our own stories. So I have one for you.
**
Long, long ago, when I was very young,
I used to visit my grandmother’s porch. Now my gram had a porch full of green plants, and among those plants was a special lily called a night blooming cereus,
that bloomed only one night a year, if you were lucky and had a green thumb, which my gram had. One night when the flower was ready,
it opened, and its heavenly aroma perfumed the world (or so it seemed to me). Gram said, “look into the flower” and I looked deep into the flower and saw what looked like the Holy Family. What had been an ordinary green plant that afternoon was suddenly transformed into the mystery and beauty of creation.
I have never forgotten the glory that was in the ordinary. It took my breath away.
So here is my holiday wish for you. Make your memory your hope. Memories of beauty can resurrect faith. Memories are real. They happened. And if they happened once, they can happen again in some form or another, and our hope and strength can be reborn.
So, I wish for you a magic night with your own night blooming cereus.
And don’t forget,
in all these stories, the glory is hiding in the ordinary.
© Linda Beatrice Brown