OldSoul.blog

I’ve been relaxing and I’ve been procrastinating, so my fourth Advent reflection is late. So late that it has run into a Christmas reflection, which is also late. I’m hoping a reflection on Love is an appropriate way to end the year. Trouble is, what can one say about love that hasn’t been said before?

If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaky feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.

So goes the famous line from the classic Christmas movie, Love Actually. Taking advice from that movie quote I thought I’d do some ‘looking for it’ during the final week of Advent and Christmas, and here are some things I noticed:

1. On the fourth Sunday in Advent we gathered for our extended family Christmas Picnic.

While not everyone was able to make it, there were potentially 40 people who could have been there: one great grandmother, seven siblings and partners (my generation), 20 grandchildren and partners, and 12 great children. As you can imagine, it is a diverse and wondrous mix! We have our idiosyncrasies and our oddities; we pursue diverse lifestyles and vocations; we hold a range of beliefs and opinions; and some of us may only see each other once a year!

But we are drawn together by our common heritage which anchors us into an intangible but real experience of love. We know that we care about each other. We know that this is a place where we belong. We know that we are loved. That ours is a blended family only serves to make this festival of love more miraculous and delightful.

 

2. Nick Cave’s Red Hand File #307 landed in my inbox. Asked how he was planning to spend Christmas Day, Cave wrote of being with family, going to church, eating and drinking, walking and talking, losing and remembering, and of love. You can read the whole article HERE, but it concludes with what I understand to be an affirmation that ultimately the mess is held together by love:

And somewhere, amid the feasting and joyful human messiness – this beautiful, this happy, this sorrowful estate – I will acknowledge how extraordinarily fortunate my family and I are to have this good Christmas Day. I will remember, too, amongst all the making and the doing, the energising principle around which this day revolves that speaks so eloquently of rebirth and renewal, and the end to waiting – that of a mother bearing a child in a stable, revitalising the world for all eternity.

4. And finally, I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of tributes to Michael Leunig in which Love was a consistent theme. For example:

May you know the pervading experience of love amidst the messiness and the fun and the stillness of the Christmas/New Year season.

David Brooker (31^st December 2024)